Trouble in Tennessee

Trouble in Tennessee

As Mom was dying, we talked about our usual varied topics of conversation and then some. 

She was always interested in my long term plans and I was able to tell her more specifically than usual about my goals, hopes and dreams.  We covered all manner of things; the garden I hope to plant when I have a patch of Earth to call my own, recipes I hope to perfect, places I hope to eventually call home.  Mom never traveled much and I travel a lot so we had fun with me setting the scene and trying my best to make a place she’d never been seem real to her. 

We talked about the travel I knew I had booked for the rest of 2008 and through 2009 and she loved the fact that this year, the good Lord willing, I’ll go to South Africa for the first time, to the north of England and back to my beloved Italy several more times. 

While we spent time together all through the fall, Mom knew I was working on a presentation for an educational conference that was in Phoenix in November, she knew I was heading to Madrid to teach in the largest Pilates studio in the world (15,000 square feet) in early December and she knew I was supposed to go to St. Pete for Christmas but, and hopefully, if she was still alive, that I would be keeping up my every other week vigil and spending the holidays with her in North Carolina. 

In early December, a good 5 weeks after she died, I booked 10 days of work in Signal Mountain, Tennessee.   I’m on the plane on the way back to Seattle right now and I must admit, it’s weird.

A couple times these past 10 days in Tennessee, I reached for the phone to call Mom.  I’ve gotten good at being in Seattle and not doing that but when I travel, I’m still used to calling her when I’m waiting at the boarding gate or waiting at baggage claim. 

As my work ended at 1 pm today, I experienced a strong urge to call Mom. 

She didn’t know about the Signal Mountain work and I felt really strongly at the end of my day the urge to call her and tell her all about the similarities between Chattanooga and Pisgah Forest, between the Tennessee Valley and the Ohio Valley, and about all the wonderful people and one icky one that I met while there. 

In a way, I feel like things are getting out of control, like too much of my life is happening without her. 

She didn’t know about the Signal Mountain work and she didn’t know about the new house I’m moving into Friday and she didn’t know about the article that featured my work in the Chattanooga paper and she doesn’t know that her dear friend Elaine McCoy who lives in Chattanooga read it and called Pooge to get my number and she doesn’t know that I called Elaine we had a lovely, long and rambling talk as if the 20 years between then and the last time I saw her seemed like 20 seconds, and she doesn’t know that I’ll be going back to Virginia and Tennessee to work again in July. 

I really hate it that Mom doesn’t know those things.

When I think about people who found their passion long after their parents or their loved ones passed away, and they never had the joy of sharing their success and happiness with them, I realize that I’m lucky that Mom lived to see me find my way.  She generally knows what I’m doing and she generally knows that I’m happy and she generally knows that there’s no stopping me but I really really wanted to call her from the tiny airport in Chattanooga and I can’t and it’s weird and I feel like too much is happening without her. 

Love and Prayers From Here to There.