Partnership.

"Just make enough so that I can stay home."

I thought about my mom a lot yesterday and how it felt so natural to 'be like her' and if I could have called her, we both would have smiled and understood. Because I stayed home yesterday. All day, never left until seven at night. My car tucked in the driveway on the rainy day, and I released in home.

I stayed home and made it a home. Washed dishes, changed bed sheets, cleaned bathrooms, Swiffered floors, wrote, and simply stayed home.

Once in a while, mom would be able to do this, and she would be so content and blessed in it that it was as if it was a gift to simply stay home. She'd brag about her car never leaving the driveway and how sometimes for two days, it would remain. It was the most content you could hear in her voice.

I thought about it yesterday as I made this a home. Taking care to have everything in order when my roommates arrived and sitting with each as they came through the front door, listening and hearing about their day.

In my letter to my mom, I wrote that she was the 'presence of the Holy Spirit' in our home. She was steadfast, serene. I've reflected on this a lot since then, and still completely agree.

Yet this morning, and many other mornings since, I've also reflected on it with connection to my dad. Because I think it was both of them that allowed this to be this way. Mom was purposeful in it, in the use of her time, her prayers, and her way of being. But dad also was. By going off to work, he allowed her to be. By providing food for the table, he allowed her to be the best she should be.

I've wondered what my mom's life would have looked like if she wasn't 'allowed' to stay home. If she had to put up with the throngs of work and busyness and constant pull to here-or-there. I wonder what her spirit would have looked like, and how that would have looked in her home.

I am thankful that it is only wonder. That because of dad's work, she was allowed to stay home. She was allowed to be the presence of all that she was. I'd asked her about it on several occasions, asking questions about how she could be so many things for so many people, and always seem to be so steadfast, so listening, and such an incredible mom to me. And she would remark about how God blessed her and being at home allowed her to be.

There is a lot of my mother in me. There is a lot of these things, these ideals, underneath the cover of me. This longing for home, a place to create. This giving of the Holy Spirit. This way of opening the door to greet others and sit down with them, to really be. This way of making home a serene, steadfast place that always feels welcome and open.

The partnership of my mom with my dad allowed her to do so, to live as God created her to be. It was as if they lived on the Genesis creed. I don't have the partnership that allows me to do so. But right now, I am allowed to stay home. To greet my roommates, to make a meal, to sit down to call friends, to clean, to see a bit of my mom in me.