September 08 Martha's Musings

As I typed the date for this note, I could not help but see that September 8th is my Mom’s birthday. She died in 2013 one week after her 91st birthday, which means she has been gone for 11 years. That is a long time, but really not long at all compared to her time as my Mom. She lived a full and lovely life, long enough to meet and be a part of the lives of six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. We are driving to Hillsboro tomorrow to spend time with two of those grandchildren, our son Nicholas and our niece Sherece. Ah, the cycle of life continues, and lucky little me and my Joe are here to see it, participate in it, and be blessed by it. As many of you know, “once a parent, always a parent”, which refers to the fact that even though your child grows up, they are still your “child”. The two kiddos we will be seeing are both 43 years old. It seems like yesterday that they were hunting Easter eggs together; attending St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Irving, where one sang in the choir, and the other was an acolyte; and performing band members in their respective high schools for all four years. My sweet Mom went back and forth quite a bit to see her grandchildren play. They both graduated college Summa cum laude and went on to receive post-graduate degrees. As we visit Nick and Sherece on Tuesday, it will not be lost on me that I am now the matriarch of my side of the family. My brother’s widows are still a big part of my life, but they knew their husbands as grown men, while I knew them as both a boy and a man. The family stories will die with me, if I do not record them. And they are way too precious for that to happen, so I am going to work hard on this new venture and get input from my sisters-in-law and my cousins to fill in any blanks in my memory. I am going back into my past to preserve it for my current family members and those yet to come. Very exciting and a tad scary, but onward I go! Because if not me, then who? Walk beside me, Dear Lord, and please don’t let me mess this up. Families matter.

Blessings,
Martha Arizpe, St. John’s Prayer Team