Mom was busy.
Not too busy, mind you, to cook us dinner every night. Not too busy to help us with homework or dry our tears. Not too busy to help when I tried to climb
a barbed wire fence and didn’t quite make it over or when I crashed my bike (twice) or literally ran into a parked car. And not even too busy to teach
us to cook and clean and get along with our siblings.
No, the thing that Mom was too busy to do was jump on the trampoline.
I guess that’s the reason why the memory of her out there with us sticks out so vividly in my mind. The day was sunny, bright, and warm: the perfect day
for trampolining. We’d finally convinced her to leave her work and come play, and play she did. She jumped higher than the rest of us. Her laughter
and smiles were bright enough to match ours. The wind blew her short hair and her clothes rolled and rippled.
In the end she went inside (amid our pleas for her to stay outside longer) to make dinner.
Mom was busy. She was busy being a mom.
– Chalice Maddox