DATE: Sunday, May 11, 1997                  TAG: 9705090201

SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN             PAGE: 02   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: FOCAL POINT 

SOURCE: John Pruitt 

                                            LENGTH:   66 lines

AT 80, A MOTHER'S STILL MEANT TO LAST

Dear Mom,

As if celebrating the best mother on earth were not enough, this year I get to tell folks that you are an octogenarian.

I have to admit that it's a word I never anticipated using in the same sentence as your title, as I never dreamed some store clerks would mistake your white-haired son as my daughter's grandfather.

Just as I say that white hair beats no hair - even it is fine and thin - I know that you would say you'd rather be an octogenarian than not. I'm proud that you've not only made it to your 80th birthday but that you've done it with such grace.

I know I've always given the impression that I just expected as much of you and that I rarely even bothered to say how much I admired it, but I do want you to know that life has taught me that grace in the face of adversity is not just something you have.

It doesn't come with age either, and it doesn't come all of a sudden, a wondrous gift. It's hard work, and that defines much of your life.

It would have been easy - and understandable - for you to have become bitter or to have lost yourself in self pity after my younger brother was killed in an accident on the second job that you had warned was too much for even a robust, 34-year-old man.

But you took the approach that bad things happen to everyone and that the rest of your family needed you. You carried on.

It would have been easy - and understandable - for you to have become bitter when my father developed Alzheimer's. Even all these years after his death, you talk about some of the mean things he said and did in his failing health, but you always add that you know they weren't really my father's words or actions but the disease's.

I'm glad, because I still fight resentment that such a wonderful man could become so afflicted that caring for him almost did you in. When I hear you laugh about some of his outrageous behavior and talk about how gentle and caring he was up to those dreadful years, I see - and feel - healing. He'd be glad.

It would have been easy - and understandable - if you had asked, after cancer, a stroke and heart surgery, ``Why me, Oh Lord?'' You didn't.

Putting all this together, I suppose, makes it appear that I see your life as one adversity piled on another. I don't. I just want it clear that your grace wasn't a good-times thing; it guided you in bad times too. Still does.

When we decided that installing the new kitchen floor covering you've wanted would be our combination birthday/Mother's Day gift, you fretted over our making this a working visit. If you could, you said, you'd just do it yourself.

That's always been your way. Remember when you and I installed the attic floor - heart pine that was so hard that getting nails into it was such a challenge that we bent more nails than we banged in?

When you used to hang out those same attic windows - and all the others in the house - holding on with your right hand and painting the trim with your left?

When you used to patch everything, including our underwear, so we'd get all the wear out of it? When you ironed everything your three sons wore, except socks? When you canned enough fruit in the summer that we had peaches and strawberries all winter?

Well, that floor is still in place, and I don't anticipate it's going any where any time soon. It was meant to last.

That's how I've always thought of you. You've lived up to that expectation - with grace - and I'm proud as I can be to say happy Mother's Day to the finest octogenarian I know.

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