Amy Grant Christmas and Happy Birthday to my Mom

I'm really revealing myself as a child of the 80's, and a christian child of the 80's at that, when I share that while many of you associate things like Charlie Brown with Christmas time and are gearing up to re-watch such movies for the millionth time, one of the strongest associations I have is this movie (that I haven't seen in probably 2 decades) of Amy Grant and "A Tender Tennessee Christmas."

I'm having trouble even finding evidence of it having ever existed - but I remember loving watching this show we had taped on TV over and over again each Christmas as a kid. I was a huge Amy Grant fan, and the songs, like Tender Tennessee Christmas give me warmer-fuzzies than any Bing Crosby songs out there (though I enjoy those too). While I was still sweating out my holiday festivities in hot and humid Houston, I loved to curl up to this video in the air conditioning, dreaming of riding along with Amy Grant on a snowy Sleigh Ride and singing carols in her barn some day. My cousin actually went to college in Tennessee and did get to regularly sing with Amy in her barn [this was part of Songs from the Loft] - awesome.

But as a kid, I thought I had an even better deal when some of the girls from my church asked me what it was like to be Amy Grant's daughter. After my initial deer in the headlights blank stare I returned to their comment, shocked at such a suggestion, my little brain started to put all the evidence together. My mom, whose name was just "Mom," as far as I knew, did sing a lot of songs in front of our whole church that were on the Amy Grant albums we always listened to. My mom was also beautiful, with full brown wavy hair, like Amy Grant. She'd never mentioned anything about her fame, time on the road for concert tours, or the challenges of the music industry, but being an awesome mom was her number one job, so why would she have worried me about such things? This was so awesome! My mom was also my favorite musician (next to Cindy Lauper), and she was famous, and it made all my friends think I was cool. Queue fireworks and fan fare in my little childhood mind.

In case you hadn't guessed, it turns out my mom isn't actually Amy Grant, which is maybe a good thing, since it meant she had time to be around for my childhood and my parents aren't divorced. BUT, my mom might still be my favorite vocalist - she brings me to tears pretty much every single time she sings with her beautiful voice - especially when she sings "Breath of Heaven," which so happens to be an Amy Grant Christmas song by the way. She was famous, just in a smaller realm - we still can't go anywhere in Houston without running into a handful of people who recognize and are delighted to see her [in addition to all the fans of her musical performances, she's been a teacher for close to 2 decades and has many former students who just love her to death]. And my mom has invested so much into me, that she deserves the credit for most of the "cool" attributes I might have, if any. She taught me valuable lessons about how to be a good friend, how to be creative and passionate, how to be a life-long student, and she just generally set the bar really high for me to live up to in becoming a woman, wife, and soon-to-be mother.

As much as I have been able to write about all kinds of significant events and people in my life, writing about my mother has always been the most challenging topic, and therefore one I've avoided. There is something about the fact that I am, as we say, her "little clone," the fact that perhaps my connection to her is one of the most intimate and mysterious relationships in my life, that it is the least knowable or least able to be expressed. Really articulating what she means to me requires the most profound level of self-reflection, and its a feat I always stumble over. The complexities become too overwhelming. I sense that something about this experience is somewhat universal - any other women understand what I'm struggling to express here? But - I'm supposed to be challenging myself creatively, right? And today is her birthday, so while being serenaded and comforted by old-school Amy Grant Christmas music, in honor of her special day, I'm making my first attempt here.

I have stood in awe of her all of my life, and expended so much energy trying to emulate her. She found the love of her life and began to date him when she was 13 and they are married to this day. I had my first boyfriend at 13 and was crushed when he didn't turn out to be "the one." [though I'm glad that my Manny found me later in life, as it gave me time to work out some kinks that might have permanently scared him off if we'd met each other in middle school, and at the same time, I wish I could have met him back then, as I know I would have had a huge crush on him and wouldn't have wasted so much time and emotional energy elsewhere] I went to the same high school she did and tried to work so hard at my studies, inducing many a nervous-breakdown, only to have my 10th grade French teacher, who had also taught her French, bring in his dusty grade book from the 1970's one day, opening to the page that proved my mother had made all A's in his class and asking me why I was only pulling of B's. [I've already mentioned in an earlier post how my father took the fall for the genetic dilution in situations like this, but I probably just should have studied harder and spent less time talking on the phone]

She was married by the time she was 18 [I was 22], had a masters degree by the time she was 21 [I was 27], and had her first child by the time she was 22 [mine is still on her way . . . ]. It is hard not to feel like I am just behind schedule. She raised my sister and I with creativity and dedication that I've never seen matched in any other mother. For one example, every single birthday party was a unique and original creation. There was the Jonah-and-the-whale pool party, where all the favors were home-made and we played all kinds of pool games that all managed to tie into the Jonah story. The dress-as-your-favorite-historical-heroine party (I was Helen of Troy, who I think I only learned about because she taught me about it for the sake of that party - I was only in 2nd grade or so) was a huge hit that included a home-cooked fancy luncheon where we all ordered from menus that had code names for each dish and utensil, so you might order a spoon with a salad for your first course, a knife and fork with your ice cream for your second course, and a straw and a croissant sandwich for your last course . . . it was hugely entertaining and recalled to me by one of my school mates after we graduated high school as one of the coolest birthday parties she could remember attending. Even when she went back to work to become a rock star teacher, she still transported me to and from school and all my extra curricular activities, attended all my performances, had a well balanced home cooked meal on the table every night, and read to me before I went to bed. When I went off to college to start my own career track, she went back to school and earned her second masters - which by the way, she juggled with working full time, and planning my entire wedding before she graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA. Amy Grant is looking pretty shabby by comparison now, isn't she? ;)

And yet, as impossibly high as this bar is that she has set, I can not think of a single instance in all of my life that my mother has lorded this over me or spoken to me with anything other than love and encouragement that empowered me to exceed her example or my own expectations for myself. She pushed me, yes, especially when I was coming home with those B's in French class, but never using words like, "when I was your age, I . . . " I often marvel at how she managed to instill in me the values that she did, or how she helped me to make what good decisions I did make growing up. As I start to read books on parenting, and read studies about all the ways parents parent poorly, or the inevitability of your children lying to you, etc. I want to know what magic she worked that had me 100% convinced that I could not lie to her without her seeing through it, so I just stopped trying after I was about 5 and I realized I couldn't get away with pretending I'd brushed my teeth when I hadn't. I want to know how she and my dad communicated to me so that I understood so clearly our family values for being servants of others, living passionately, never fearing to deviate from the norms for the sake of conforming to negative influences around us. Not that I've perfectly lived according to these values my any means, but the goal to do so was so clear.

I want my own daughter to have so many of these advantages, and yet my mother's effectiveness seems as mystical as the workings of the Wizard of Oz did to Dorothy and the crew. I already feel astounded at the power of the bond of love I feel for this little life inside of me. I am so curious and excited for the experience of holding her for the first time and being impacted by the skin-to-skin contact, the resulting hormonal onslaught, the first glimpses into her little eyes. I think this all makes my mother's birthday all the more significant for me this year, as I consider how she has shaped me to be a mother to my own daughter, not to mention the new bar she will be setting for grandmother-hood! Thanks for letting me get a little extra-personal today in a vain attempt to give her a taste of the honor she deserves on her special day as I bumble through the challenge of putting such things into writing. Happy Birthday Mom!