My Mother’s Arms

My mother’s arms grabbed her suitcase fresh from the Cedar Rapids class of 1941.

Her cheerleader’s uniform left behind

along with days crooning Glow Worm in the chorus,

she set off to seek her fame and fortune in Columbus, Nebraska.

It is there where my mother’s arms clocked in at J. C. Penny Company

where she worked in ladies’ foundations, as she started building her own.

At one warm Fourth of July social,

my mother’s arms held a young man close, as they danced the night away.

She would continue that dance for the next 67 years.

My mother’s arms held eight babies tight,

and one more that was gone too soon.

Each grandbaby and great-grandbaby that followed were cocooned in her embrace.

As a full-time parent, my mother’s arms also worked the factory line inspecting syringe needles.

Later they gathered up other children as she started her own in-house daycare—one of the first licensed in Platte County.

My mother’s arms punctuated the pearls of wisdom that came from her mouth with phrases like,

“You kids get along” and “Why can’t we have anything nice in this house?”

And of course the ultimate response to know-it-all teenagers, “Well okay then, I’m stupid.”

But it was the special ways my mother’s arms reached out to her children that revealed her quiet wisdom.

Her two squeezes as she held your hand in church at the end of the Our Father.

The words she’d underline in our birthday cards to emphasize how we were special.

Each was equal in her love.

In the later years, my mother’s arms struggled as she tried to reach through the fog that clouded her memory, that took away her control.

My mother’s arms are quieted now.

But I suspect, in spirit, they’ve found their way back to the love of her life.

And it is the memory of my mother’s arms that will always find its way back

when we need her warmth around us, still.