Happy ninety-sixth birthday, Mom! Mary Lloys Rice Himes was born on June 27, 1925, and died October 4, 2011. What a life she lived!
My mother and I did not always see eye to eye. We butted heads over so many things. Our personalities were different, our outlooks and reactions different, but I am who I am in many ways because of the gifts she gave me.
My mother loved God and His Word . She read and memorized and taught (teaching a Bible study until she was in her 80s.) When I quote Philippians 4 I hear her voice. At holidays I quote the verses she insisted I learn: Luke 2, Matthew 28, Psalm 103. When I want to stop at a friend’s house, I hear, “Withdraw thy foot from thy neighbor’s house lest he be weary of thee and so hate thee.” She used Scripture for every situation.
She loved music. At Easter I sing with her ‘’In the End of the Sabbath.” She and my dad sang, “Just Keep on Praying.” In desperate times she sang, “It will be worth it all.” She played the piano for church services, choir, and special music. She taught piano for most of my growing up years, but my favorite times were after we had gone to bed and she finally had time for herself. She would sit down at the piano and we would hear “Clair de Lune” floating up.
Mother loved beautiful things from china to flowers to beautiful clothes. When I was very small and we were very poor, we used the silver she had gotten for wedding presents for our everyday meals. I wonder what it cost her to see the dents and scratches in her beautiful silverware, but I never felt those beautiful things were more important than we were.
Mother loved to use cloth tablecloths and napkins. One of my first jobs at about the age of eight was ironing those, along with Daddy’s handkerchiefs. The smell of freshly ironed clothes makes me think I am back there.
Food was important to my mother. Her sisters called her a gourmet cook. She taught me to make it pretty, healthy, and tasty. Every evening meal had a small serving of meat, a vegetable, a green salad, and a starch, usually a boiled potato or two to fill up on. These were served with the program Candlelight and Silver on the radio, classical music to dine by. Mother made amazing meals on almost nothing. She loved unusual foods—some of her loves she passed on to me—artichoke, avocado, asparagus; some I preferred that she keep to herself—pickled pigs feet, anchovies, smoked oysters, and calves brains in scrambled eggs.
Mother was an accomplished seamstress by the time she was twelve years old and she passed that love for sewing on to me. She helped me make my first skirt when I was twelve. She had an amazing knack for putting the right fabric with the pattern you picked out. I would talk her into cutting out my project because that was the part I hated, then I would finish the project.
I started out by saying how different we were, yet in many ways my mother celebrated our differences. She would bring three different pieces of fabric home saying we (my sister and I) could pick the piece we wanted. But it was a given, one would be bright and a little wild, usually with orange or yellow in it—that was mine; the soft feminine pink or blue was for my sister; and the one in the middle was hers. She bought me black and white patent go go boots. She bought me bright patterned stockings. In so many ways she let me be different from her.
Probably my biggest memory is the way she loved people and their eternal souls. One of my father’s pastorates was in a military town where hundreds of young newlyweds were stationed temporarily. Every week on visitation my mother found lonely young women who needed Jesus.
I can see my mother getting out a china saucer for a neighbor to use as an ashtray, not saying anything about the cigarette because she wanted to reach a soul.
My last picture is from a visit my mother made to see my brother. A lesbian couple was visiting his home. The couple had just had a miscarriage after trying to get pregnant over a period of time. Mother sat between them on the couch, held their hands, and cried with them. She had experienced miscarriage several times. She knew shared pain. She knew that condemning them for their lifestyle would not show them Christ’s love and that was her chief desire.
Mother has been gone ten years and I still miss her, as do other of her friends and relatives. But up in Heaven she is surrounded by many other loved ones, many whom she loved to Jesus. Mom, I call you blessed.
~~Faith Himes Lamb
