Card Shark

My mother is full of surprises.  I remember the time she had her knee replacement surgery.  Cory and I went up to the hospital to see her before she went back  to surgery.  There had been a lot of apprehensive talk about how her recovery would go.  All of us girls were most worried for my father, who already waited on mom like she was some type of royalty on the daily.  How much more could the poor man give?  We tentatively planned to break him in shifts so he didn’t fall over from pure exhaustion.

Cory and I tried to give Mom the pep talk about recovery being a snap, although privately we pictured a long and drawn out ordeal, ending in my father with a permanent stoop in his back from leaning over her bedside to brush the hair out of her eyes or sing her a lullaby when she couldn’t sleep.

We decided to take “before” and “after” pictures, hoping it would spur Mom into at least putting on a brave face, and perhaps ringing the bedside bell a little less often.  Dad would have to go to the bathroom sometime, after all.

When we returned to take the “after” picture, we were nearly dumbstruck at the clear eyed, smiling, strong, little bulldog fighter masquerading as my mother.  She had taken on her recovery like a fierce card game she was determined to win.  If you’ve never played some type of organized table game with my mother, you may not know that this gray haired five foot squirt is a ruthless shark when it comes to competition.  She is smart, she is determined, and she will take you down…smiling sweetly while she does it.

Mom applied this same spirit to becoming mobile again, and was back in church in no time, walking without a cane before the predicted time, and kicking everyone’s ass in rehab.  She gloated over her progress,  proving to every one of her children that we did not know her quite as well as we thought we did.

Cory and I just stared at this wondrous creature, looking behind the years, erasing the lines, smoothing out the wrinkles, ignoring the gray, until we could see the dark haired, blue eyed beauty with the bikini worthy body that had captured my father so many years ago.  As I wondered if he still saw her the way she looked when they fell in love, I realized it didn’t matter.  The body and face may have changed, but the smart, cunning, mischievous personality that had landed an absolutely amazing man like my father had not changed one bit.  She could -and likely did-  look up at him sleepily when he came in during the early hours of the morning to turn off her tv, and take the glasses off her face, and just gloat.  She was married to the best man she knew, and he lived to make her happy.

 Game well played, Mom.  You amaze me.