Changing Seasons

It’s the beginning of the school year. For the past few weeks, I’ve been gathering together school supplies for my son, making sure he has everything he needs. It’s the time of year when I sort through batches of clothes, trying to see what still fits and what I’ll need to buy. It’s a changing of seasons, moving into autumn and cooler weather, my favorite time of year. We celebrate my husband’s and mom’s birthdays, then move into the holiday season. For me, this time of year is a new beginning.

As I was sorting through my daughter’s clothes the other day, I realized that she only has a few remaining clothes that were given to her by my mom. Every fall and spring, my mom would buy a few outfits for the kids. One of my daughter’s favorite dresses and a shirt my son loves were given to each of them by my mom. It deeply saddened me to realize that my mom will no longer be buying clothes for the kids, that by next spring, these few remaining clothes most likely won’t fit them anymore. But I plan to save them.

You may be thinking, they’re just clothes, pieces of colored cloth. You’re right, but I know my mom. I know that she would spend hours looking at new outfits for each of her grandchildren, making sure the size was correct, trying to pick out something they’d like and wear. It was an act of love from my mom, and something that can never happen again.

It’s the little things that my mom used to do that I miss the most. She always thought of other people first, put everyone else before herself. It’s a quality, a trait, that she possessed even as she was dying. I hope to some day be able to follow in my mom’s footsteps and be the same type of person my mom was to others.