Mama Tried.

Somewhere in Kansas---Along this long road-trip of visiting people and hearing their stories, an unexpected jewel pops out. This is a woman in Kansas. Trying to figure out her life of children, grandchildren and their exes seemed too confusing to follow. So sitting at a Mexican Restaurant, I got out a napkin and told her I wanted to write out a family tree of what kid married whom and who was divorced, remarried and what grandkid went where.

The more description the better.

So we decided to use song titles as descriptions or at least titles that SHOULD be songs.

This was the girl I grew up with that was the life of any party. She lit up a room and would make any stranger laugh. She was ALWAYS up to something. Her tiny body and big laugh could disarm anyone. We had a lot of mischievous adventures together, most were never discussed with our parents until a good 20 years later. But she was THE ONE who brought me out of my shy shell at about 15.

A lifetime has gone by within very different worlds between us, but no time has gone by in our friendship.

Little did anyone know that she would bear the burden of an alcoholic husband…and years of the ridicule of small town talk.  People can be so cruel. Words can be so cutting.

But that big laugh and an overdose of optimism kept her pushing through.

So at the top of the Family Tree I wrote: “Mama Tried.”

Next, her three children: “Smarty Pants is better than no Pants at all,” “Thunder Rolls,” and “The Teddy Bear Two Step”.

Pants, Thunder and Teddy all got married.

Pants got married to “Rags to Riches” and had “Candy Store Jazz” and “The Alps Yodel”

Thunder married “Chain Gang” and had “Blind me with Blond.”

Teddy got married and had “Karate on my Heart,” but the marriage didn’t work out so he married “Young and Innocent” and had “Bull Frog Ballet,” “Kid me” and “Grateful Dead”.  

Mama had gotten a divorce but met and married “Viva Las Vegas” years later.

Vegas is fighting cancer. He is amazing.

Mama and Vegas legally adopted their grandchild Karate.

Pants and Riches, Thunder and Chain, Teddy and Innocent, try the very best they can but Mama clearly still holds it all together.

…And so it goes, life is not perfectly orchestrated and you can do everything in your power but there is a part of life that is out of your control. Children will go their own way and if you are lucky like her, they will come back around.

But look beyond the face of a Mother trying to survive all the balls thrown her way in her dodge-ball-life and you will see a “Mama” to a community. She has an important job in a field where she sees intense struggle every day. She sees death most every day. She told me stories of being in the middle of gang clashes. I found out a classmate turned to her for council with his struggle as a drug addict. She told me of several occasions where people who had treated her terrible or talked her down in that small town, had come to her work in crisis and didn't recognize her, yet she comforted them, never reminding them of who she was and went about doing her job.  

And at Thanksgiving, she opens her home to janitors and drivers to singles and those struggling. Even though she is the boss, she includes anyone that she knows does not have a place to go.  Who wouldn't want to be around her high energy and huge heart.

Last year there were over 75.

And she laughs that big laugh and waves off my compliments and says, “It’s my job. At work,  I’m Mama.”