3 Years Ago Today.

(photo taken with Pentax Digital SLR)

Lynda Jean Polkinghorn was born in NJ, but being a child of an Air Force officer, she moved around frequently, living in Germany, Levittown, St. Louis, Fairfax, Hawaii, among others… my grandfather was from Kansas, and she and my aunt spent time there for vacations. However the bulk of the family, my grandmother’s side, was in Texas - and Texas was where my Mom’s heart resided. Even though she never lived there she always considered it her home - from all the summers spent there with the family. My grandmother is the oldest of five children, each of her siblings had at least a couple of kids, and in the summer they’d all be there together… cousins who would all grow to have their own families and bring us all together in Texas at least every few years to get a glimpse at what their childhood was like. When you got her talking about her childhood (which wasn't very hard) she would start to twang and drawl Texas-style.

Family was family, and no matter what, family came before all else to my mother. There were folks she didn’t always like in our clan, but by God, she loved them all – because that’s what family is. She taught her own children that… Mom was like a lioness with her cubs - and she would fight to the death for all of us kids. I'm the youngest of 5; both my parents had kids when they married each other, including one who is adopted, and I was the only child born to both of them. Not that it mattered. My mom never made a distinction between those she gave birth to and those she didn't. Although not all of us lived together all the time, it never felt like a "Yours, Mine & Ours" type of family. I had 3 brothers and a sister, case closed. I can't imagine it was easy, especially 30 years ago, to make a blended family work - I think that her success at doing so might be her greatest legacy.

This is not to say Mom and I always got along. In the grand tradition of teenage girls, I couldn't stand her when I was in high school. I wanted nothing more than to get as far away as I could for college to assert my independence. When I did, moving 8 hours down the East Coast, I missed her as madly as she missed me. We would watch movies we both loved while on the telephone together; movies like Mothra , or Charade, or Tremors . She'd call me, as she did with my grandparents, and give me program notes on stuff she thought I'd like or should see - sometimes we'd both be watching something and call during commercials to talk about it.

We talked almost every day from then on, if only for a minute or two. Later I moved to a school closer to home, eventually moving back in to my folks' house for a few years before moving to NYC. It is very different being an adult child living at home, it gives one a whole new perspective on your parents as people, and on your own place in things; I feel so lucky to have had that time. Again, not that we never fought, but I realized how much more important she and my dad really were in my life, and how much I enjoyed them.

Mom had a gift for the gab - especially when she hadn't talked to you in a while. There were no such things as quick conversations with my mother. But folks just opened up to her and chatted away. Even telemarketers and telephone customer service reps would get sucked in. She believed in good conversation, and that it was the key to all relationships. She frequently stayed up talking into the wee hours of the night - be it on the phone with distant family & friends, or with one of us kids, or with company at the house. That company could be her friends, family, or her kids' friends that were staying over. This never ceased to amaze me - our friends would tell her things that they'd never tell their own folks, and sometimes that they'd never told us. She kept confidences... God only knows what secrets that lady took to the grave.

Mom always tried to be supportive, even when she knew I was making mistakes. She'd tell me she thought so, and then let me learn the hard way. But she was there to listen and console me afterwards, and encourage me to find the right path. Whether it was changing colleges and majors, or relationship problems, or the trials of job interviews she advised me and then supported my decision.

My mother had a pretty wide assortment of jobs herself, everything from an executive secretary, to a cab driver in California, to private cleaning lady in rural Virginia. She was an excellent, self-taught, gourmet cook. She had been born into the military and twice married men who were Coast Guard officers; life as a military wife is a job in and of itself. Like my dad, she struggled with civilian life when he retired from active duty service. Eventually, she got her real estate license in WV. She cared about her customers and listened to their needs; her lifetime of experience in moving and understanding the stress of finding the right home making her successful.

When she died, I went through her jewelry to find a ring she wore when I was a child. It's silver, which she didn't often wear, and has a pale green turquoise stone that I always thought matched the color of her eyes. I've worn it every day since. I think of her every day. Sometimes I talk to her, and sometimes I cry, not only for the years we will never have, but for the time I had with her that I took for granted. Usually I think about all the things she taught me - about life, about being a woman, and about learning to be myself.

Mom wasn't perfect, and she never proclaimed to be. She was a great gal, though, and a hell of a mother. I'm proud not only to be her daughter, but simply to have known her.