Heart

What does it take to give of yourself; to sacrifice for others? It takes strength. It takes courage. But, most of all, it takes heart. From an early age I remember sitting in corners watching. I wanted to understand the people around me. I wanted to watch and listen. I didn’t understand the day I watched my mom, bundled in her warmest clothes, clad in boots and gloves, walking the quarter of a mile driveway to get a ride to work. One of the doctors at the vet was able to make it out and needed someone to help with the animals and he knew exactly who to call. Looking back, that moment resonates in my mind as the first time I began to understand my mother’s strength and endurance.

I don’t remember the day my grandfather stood in front of my father and asked him to leave. I imagine him in that moment like Kevin Costner in the Bodyguard; an unspoken desire for my father to give him a reason to rain down a violent justice for my mom. For what she’d been through, for what we, his grandchildren, would go through because of him. I don’t think I was ever supposed to know about that moment. Mom protected us from it. She protected us from my father. And from that day she set out to protect us as we grew to the adults we are today, doing everything in her power to see to it that we never felt “less than” because our father wasn’t around. She was a little bit mom, and a little bit dad. She was present for everything, always there to see my sister and I achieve our goals, all the while working every day running her business.

People don’t always understand what goes into dog grooming and boarding. Boarding animals for customers while they go off on vacations means that she never got one. Grooming dogs who are new to grooming and don’t take kindly to the buzzing of clippers or filing of nails means holding on in a battle of stubbornness of shear will as they come to understand that they’re not in danger or pain. She showed them that she loved them and that grooming them was her was of making them feel better, smell better, and live better. In the end, even the most aggressive of them came around to her and let her do what she needed to do. Day in and day out, sometimes as many as 16 dogs a day in the early years, but my sister and I never saw her tired. All we saw was a mom who did everything she could to be present while she worked to take care of us.

I was older when I started to wonder about friends. I’d started to garner friendships of my own and, as I sat and watched, I noticed that mom didn’t seem to have friends the way I had friends. Customers were friendly, some more than most, but they didn’t include her in their lives the way I did with my friends. At least not normally. As I sit here writing, I’ve erased this part multiple times because, though there are many stories, no one story speaks to the toll that repeated trauma must have taken as time and again I watched as my mother gave of herself, extending heart and compassion, only to get burned in the end, causing her to recoil back into the safety of home, solitude, and work. From the yorkie owner that spread rumors that my mom was harming dogs, to the long-time friend who, after my mom gave her own bed to help her get sober shut her out of her life after a drunken rage, to the elderly couple who one day told anyone who would listen that she loved my mom like her own daughter, then the next swore that my mom was taking advantage of her. I watched as she took the pain these moments brought and, contrary to what even I would expect, she never hardened. Instead, the sadness that she carried grew as the light of her heart continued to dim.

In the story about mom, I shared the moment she told me she wanted to be Martin Henderson’s friend. From comments he shared in interviews about his own struggles with depression, to his dog, Sammy, to moments he shared on social media, she feels a kinship. There’s another person out there who understands the cloud of depression but, instead of hardening themselves, they carry on loving, extending themselves and their heart to a world that doesn’t always return the favor. The desire to meet someone who understands is what drives us 3000 miles across the country, what drove her to leave our house for more than a day for the first time in 20 years, to get a passport for the first time in her life, and for the first time since the birth of her first child, to put her own dreams above all else.

If you’re reading this, please share it. Help me get the word out, and help me make this dream of hers come true. Help #mommeetmartin.