Now and then, a mother feels she is raising a hellion. Sometimes it’s in the cards you are dealt. A mom can rule with an iron fist if she likes, forbid this and encourage that, and some children will still wreak havoc wherever they go.
It is the child who humiliates a good woman in church; the little soul who prevents her from going to restaurants and is the solitary reason Grandma closes the blinds and locks the door when the family sedan pulls into her driveway.
It is the child who goes through phases when he pushes his mother to the brink of insanity, and watches her teeter there.
She doesn’t worry about ever having to pay a ransom for a kid such as this, for no kidnapper would ever want him.
One such child belonged to Aunt Vera.
She was the darling and beautiful child who melted her mother’s heart. Word has it that she could bring great joy one minute and in the next instant make her mother want to sit in the corner and hum.
Some mothers are just blessed with kids like that.
They are into this and into that and what they haven’t destroyed, they just haven’t seen yet.
These little hellions spend their toddler years with a crayon doing the walls justice. They write their name on the leather couch with an ink pen, dump a bag of flour onto the floor for no apparent reason, and singlehandedly flush a whole platoon of army men down the toilet.
They stuff cereal into the electronics, drop jewelry into the toaster and for motives unbeknownst to any of us, get their hands on a Phillips screwdriver and take the cupboard doors right off of their hinges.
I swear it would be enough to send a mother straight to her physician for a prescription of Xanax, only to have him point out that she had gained 10 pounds since her last visit.
Or so I’ve been told.
Although Aunt Vera had many children, one in particular was a handful. She was her precious child; her little darling angel. She made her smile, made her proud, and within seconds of a warm fuzzy, most likely made Vera want to climb the walls and rue the day she was born.
Still, like all of her children, Vera loved this child to pieces. She never gave up on her.
Word had it that Aunt Vera disciplined with an iron fist, tolerated no nonsense and at times would laugh through the tears when she saw what her “Handful” had done now.
Like so many of us, Vera saw that child through her phases. She held firm to her ideals, showed her the correlation between bad choices and undesirable consequences, and never thought twice about laying down the law and then reinforcing it.
Having raised so many children, Vera knew the child who colored on the walls with crayons would always have an artistic side and a flair for bringing color to the world. That the flour-dumper would one day cook up a storm and that the kid who removed the cabinet doors at the ripe old age of 4 would grow into a man who could fix anything. When her Handful finally grew into a beautiful, well-rounded woman, Vera celebrated all that her daughter had become.
And surely breathed a sigh of relief.
On the morning of Aunt Vera’s funeral, one of her many children walked to the podium. Her hands were shaking, her eyes were filled with tears and sadness covered her face.
Although she surely wanted to, she did not buckle under the weight of her sorrow. Instead she stood straight and tall and showed a strength that reminded everyone of Vera.
She recounted a few memories of her mother and then she said softly to the crowd, “I was my mother’s Handful.”
She spoke of incidents and tribulations and appreciation because, no matter what, her mother’s love was always there. “Mom often told me that she wouldn’t take a million dollars for me,” she said as she laughed through her tears. “But she wouldn’t have given a plugged nickel for another just like me.”
Some mothers are just blessed with kids like that. Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of the book “Are We There Yet?” You can reach her by sending an email to [email protected].