I have always known my daughter and my mother shared a special connection; just as I did with my mother’s mother, Grandmother Maris.  The similarities between them are uncanny.  My mother was a little older in her picture here and I notice she’s wearing a good dress and pearls.  Mama was a true red head with light brown eyes and Maris is auburn with eyes so dark brown you cannot see her pupils.  But the resemblance between them is not merely physical.  They have the same mannerisms and say the EXACT same phrases, which is inexplicable given my mother passed away when my daughter was barely three; so one cannot argue they were learned.  My husband remarks upon it almost daily.  I lost Mama the day after Thanksgiving two years ago.  She was 81 and she had physically started slowing down so I affectionately called her “Zoom.”  I cannot tell you the number of times Burk has bulged his eyes out and pointed at our daughter hollering, “LOOK!  IT’S ZOOM!!!”  I always tell him not to point, holler, or refer to our only child as an “it” but I do love that he recognizes it.  She is almost the spitting image of my mother physically and in so many other ways as well.  I had three precious Mother’s Days where I had Mama with her namesake.  Now my mother lives on through my child.  And that is a great kindness God, in His infinite mercy, has granted me.  When I ache for my mother I watch Maris get her purse just like Mama would.  I see her put on “Chapsticks” in the precise same way my mother used to apply her lipstick.  We cannot leave to go to a restaurant until she has picked out a necklace — just like my mother always did.  I am so glad my husband got to know my mother since he was never able to meet my father, whom I lost when I was 28.  I will always take with me the greatness of my parents.  And they were great.  American soprano Leontyne Price said:

“Momma was home.  She was the most totally human, human being that I have ever known, and so very beautiful.  Within our home, she was an abundance of love, discipline, fun, affection, strength, tenderness, encouragement, understanding, inspiration, support.”

That is the kind of mother I strive to be for my daughter.  I hope one day she says I am great, too.