Grandma is a Saint
My mom is amazing. Truly amazing. My dad died three years ago, and my mom has created a new life for herself after nearly 40 years with Dad, who had an extremely strong personality. She has traveled, done mission work, increased her volunteering at her church, and comes to spend lots of time with us, which we love.
This was our year to have Christmas with my side of the family, but my brothers’ children are all grown with families of their own in many cases, so we asked Mom if she’d like to go to Costa Rica with us as our Christmas time together. Of course, she was game.
Having her with us made it so much more fun and less stressful for everyone. Buds and I were able to have a couple nice dinners together at the beach, just the two of us, for example. And Mom and I got to have our facials, which we both loved.
Mom has also survived breast cancer. She had a double mastectomy several years ago, and did a reconstruction TRAM Flap procedure at the same time, which takes a lot of strength, physcially and mentally. She came through like the champ she is, and decided to have a prosthetic piece made for when she wears a swim suit. It looked something like this: Prosthetic.
When we were at the beach, Noa came across the silicone piece. It feels very soft, and looks just like a nummer, which, of course, Yessa loves. I saw her playing with it, and asked her to be very careful. (Sometimes my faith in my own offspring is a little misguided. A person’s definition of “careful” is very subjective.) She promised she would be.
When I came across the “nummer” again, an hour later…well, let’s just say that Mom is out having a new prosthesis made right now. Noa had obviously decided to see if this nummer works like the other nummers she is familiar with, and there were several sucked on hunks all over the silicone num. I tried to push them back into place, but as you can imagine, it was for naught. And I couldn’t even be upset with Yessa. It falls within her definition of “careful” to have a suck on a num. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Luckily, Mom laughed, too, when she saw her now-misshapen, extra piece. I think we’ll hang on to it, and bring it out to show Noa when she’s older.
And if nothing else, it was a good reminder that kids have a totally different view of the world than adults.
