This weekend, I visited my mom. It was really nice to see her. I had a wonderful time with my mom, even though we had a record 103 degree heat and no indoor air conditioning. Mom had friend chicken waiting for me when I got to her place, so everthing was just peachy.
Mom's place was really organized and everything was in it's place. She even had a beautiful garden outside. Wow! What happened? Because over a year ago, her place did not look like that at all. In fact, my sister Sophia and I were always complaining to mom to stop buy stuff and to chill out on making more crafts. She had no space for them. It got really bad so much so that it was hard to move around in her home. We worried for her safety. When Sophia and I tried to organize mom's place that meant throwing stuff out when mom wasn't looking and mom somehow finding out and going to retrieve it from the trash. Nothing seemed to get through to mom that she needed to let go of her clutter. Just before I left for Ecuador, I had a wonderful conversation with mom. I really needed to listen to mom in order to understand why this stuff (which was junk to me but something of value to her) was so important. For the first time, I understood that she was lonely and that was her only way of controlling and holding on to something. All her kids were grown, had their own life and many had moved away. I was so happy that mom opened up to me like she did and then I explained to her how I personally felt. Many may not know this, but my mom was a super clean freak when we were kids. She was always cleaning ...rather directing us to clean. If we were not cleaning then she was having us move the furniture because she was always redecorating the house. I hated those days. The cleaning I could handle because afterwards we could go out and play. But, the decorating lasted all day... a missed play day. I explained to mom that it was highly disturbing for me to see my mom go from a clean freak to someone who was obessed with 'junk' ...
This past weekend was the first time that I visited mom after we had that conversation. She told me that she had made changes and have managed to keep her place in order for about a year. You have no idea how different her place looks... from being so cluttered that you literally had to step over stuff and move stuff just to sit down to having space and being able to see the floor. Mom really feels proud of herself and credits Maria, her cleaning lady, for most of the help.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment