The Best Gift I Ever Received: "After A While..."

What a day!
Ups, downs, middles, birthday celebrations, wedding celebraitons, champagne buzz, low blood sugar, heartaches, laughter and tears.

On days like these, I always find myself finding my the best gift I was ever given and seeking it for comfort and advice.
May you also find comfort, strength and support in it during your moments of need
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The best gift I ever received was given to me by my mother.

It was Christmas Day 1995.

I was sitting on the stairs of our new townhouse she had bought following her long-overdue divorce with my father.

I carefully unwrapped the package, making sure not to tear the paper. That alone was rare - usually I'd just tear right through!
I couldn't figure out what this was.
But it was heavy.
When I finally had it unwrapped and had laid the pretty paper aside, I saw in my hands, a bubblegum pink tome of a book, "Miss Manners: A Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior".
I laughed. I immediately loved it.
I mean it was pink. DING. Bubblegum pink at that. DING DING. And it was a 745 page book about good manners and being nice. DING DING DING.

Already, I was won over. I ran over to Mom and hugged and kissed her. I felt so proud of this woman who had recently recovered from: the aforementioned divorce, living with my father for 29 years AND Interconnective Tissue Disease (which is a combo deal of Lupus of Rheumatoid Arthritis"). My Nanny (my Mom's Mom) was there too and there was such a peace to her that Christmas - like, "Okay, now my baby girl is happy and on her own and all is good in the world".
Unbeknownst to us, at the time, it would be her last Christmas.

When I was hugging my Mom, she asked me, "Did you look inside?"
I told her I hadn't and she told me that I really should.
Inside was the best present I have ever been given.

I had found a quote, a small piece of prose, years before at age 13 that I had just fallen in love with:

After a while you learn
that even sunshine burns
if you get too much
so you plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers.

I was hooked.
I had told my Mom, "If you ever find the poet or whole poem that this belongs to, please buy it or cut it out of the periodical for me.
I said that knowing that it would be lost in time. And I forgot...after a while, myself.

Now, 5 years later, that poem was written HERE in my Mother's beautiful cursive handwriting on the inside front PINK pages of this book that would become one of my most prized possessions.
She had inscribed:

To Dawn, My Southern Sweetheart and My Southern Belle,
here is everything you need to know about "Correct Behavior".
May all your dreams come true!
You're already the most gracious Southern Lady I know.

Love and Kisses,
Mom
Christmas 95

Then on the second page was this treasure:

After A While

After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul and you learn that love doesn't mean leaning and company doesn't always mean security.

And you begin to learn
that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises
and you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of woman, not the grief of a child
and you learn
to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow's ground is
too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way of falling down
in mid-flight.

After a while you learn
that even sunshine burns
if you get too much
so you plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure
you really are strong
you really do have worth
and you learn
and you learn
with every goodbye, you learn...

Veronica A. Shoffstall, copyright 1971

Love you the whole wide world
and back again,
Mom
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