Sunday Musings ~ My Mother's Footsteps

All at once, I had awoken to the rush of consciousness that springboards thought into being and it was only eleven in the morning. What a strange time to wake up but then against that very thought, my face grew pale and the painful expectancies of last night's festivities embraced my prefrontal cortex. The reward system established long ago throughout our evolution still punishes our mistakes the next day and such was my brief and dramatic morning commencing. Such was my karmic predicament.

Like any morning, I uttered softly to myself my usual mantra - pop up like toast. Like the perfectly golden brown piece of bread that breaks out of it's warm bed, I was ready to seize the day. Not in the slightest moment soon then after, did my parched mouth require a bit of water to quench my mind. Without a word spoken, my mother understood and handed a glass of cool water to my outstretched hands. It is these distinct moments that I reflect on the kindness offered by my mother and ultimately will remember her for.

The sudden markings of our day spent together would etch itself into perhaps one of the best days of my brief existence. As I spent the next hour getting ready, washing off the residual effects of alcohol and bad tastes. I continued onward to proceed to our unexpected adventure.

Unbeknownst to my mother, I was going to drive. This was only my third remarkable month of legally driving. So believe me when I say, my mother braced herself at the sight of her 24 year old son gracing the streets of Napa Valley at the rapid pace of 80 miles per hour. I had received plenty of back-seat driving at this point and fully encouraged my mom to show me her tips.

Along the road, I would turn on my Spotify playlists and play music that would soothe our ears. I remember turning to my mom and seeing her gently smile back at me, while I had one hand steering and another locked closely to my mother's hand. These were remarkably simple times yet paved distinct memories in the limbic system.

While cruising down the 101 to San Francisco from Napa, I roll down the windows to seap a cool breeze throughout the Nissan Sentra rental vehicle. As I try to recall that day, the time seemed to fly towards our next destination. So there the road remains, lost in time.

What wasn't lost on me that day were the eternal smiles that were left on my mother and I's faces when we walked through the Muir Woods National Monument.

Once we finally arrived on site, each and every parking lot was filled to the brim. Upon going down the hill to Muir Woods and circling several times down the road looking for a parking spot. The last circle led to a brief moment of sudden realization. I had to decide whether or not to stay and consider the brutal walk to and fro from the long winded road and just dropping off my mother in front of the national park...

Or..

Leave.

I chose the former and considered that we would already be walking quite a bit anyways. I asked my mom permission and she humbly replied that she wouldn't mind waiting along with the trees and lovely people passing by.

So I dropped my mom off, went down the street for a few miles and found a parking spot in a great distance between our original intentions of parking close to the site.

In hindsight, I honestly didn't mind as I had brought water and my trusty ukulele for the pre-journey hike to the national park. I had met a couple from Maryland along the pre-trail and they instinctively asked if it was worth the hike to Muir Woods? With a gentle smile, I encouraged them to continue walking as today would be a memorable one.

Here I am writing to you, about a journey recollected from the rays of sunshine that beamed through the Sequioa Sempervirens and the warm green tea sips that brought back my soul and rekindled it next to my mother alongside the very beating heart of nature.

My spirit lept with joy when finally reaching the front entrance of the natural park. All I needed now was to find my mother. I curiously peaked my head around the bend of the bathroom area and saw families with their younglings and elderly bundled together. The youth starting to change and grow up as they played unexpectedly waiting for their parents words to softly grace their ears with instruction.

The parents simultaneously smiling as they shared brief conversations on what to do next on their journey into the woods.

There she was in all her angelic grace sitting on a wooded bench - my mom.

I looked at her and lifted my right cheek to offer a warm genuine smile and she returned the favor with eyes as bright as the stars and a smile that could comfort any human being. I found exactly what I was looking for and she took me by my hand (as she so often has done all my life) and we slowly walked together hand in hand.

Usually when we are together, I'm the one who walks with swift feet ahead of my mother but this occasion called to slow my pace and coincide with hers - altogether now.

We walked over to the café to pick up breakfast and discovered a smorgasbord of food to choose from. I can't say I remember what we had to eat but the green tea though. It was the tea that kept my mother and I's hands warm whilst the steam from our cup thins into the air amongst the trees. We kept walking down from the cafe into the woods.

From the three miles we walked, the cerebral experience brought upon us both a magical wonder and simplicity to life. My mother's dancing eyes often perusing about the moss covered trees near by. Each one of my steps gingerly taken for knowing all to well the momentary bliss that the journey would give and take back into her own. This was a dream, I thought.

To have lived it, all in one day's time is to have realized God's intention of peace on earth. There were no confrontations or ignorances to be had. Simply put, just the awe-struck feeling that we were in the midst of a master at work. Or at play. Neither how the course in which our world has been built, we were witnesses to the reflection of God's creation. Nature.

Within that same reflection, our own nature from which God breathed life into us and to dust we shall return. The vapor that evaporated from my cup and the same water that spills out seventy percent of my body can only elaborate these words of sheer elation and shared collection of memories with my mother.

Throughout the film, my life kept rolling through the misty hills of Muir Woods. As they rolled along, we'd capture the foggy moments in pictures and I'd look over to my mom and see her content being in all her majesty. I couldn't help but realize that our partaking of the simple walk into the woods was no mistake. It was divine. All that could ever be that led up to that moment simply didn't exist because we allowed it to, but because it was meant to be, because there is a God. To whatever God has allowed and done, the work of art is done carefully and by divine hands.

Throughout my time in California, working with my hands I thought I wouldn't last at the winery in Napa. But there it was again, the divine watching over me - protecting me even when I lay fast asleep in the hopes of waking life.

To every day that I wake up, most of the time I don't consider that the sovereignty of God throughout each and every thing in this universe is taken care of. Including the majestic woods on that day, that have lasted centuries. Including our bodies, made in the image and likeness of our own creator, we can take delight and comfort in that deep love.

The same love in which I seek, I've already found in my mother's eyes.

Throughout my depression in Argentina, I doubted her presence. I would ask her in my dreams,"are you here?"

Are you always here? If so, I miss you. I think about you all the time. I hear her voice say my name when I dream and when I'd wake up, there would be tears streaming down my face.

I just missed her, it's as simple as that. I wanted to tell you everything. I don't understand what you're saying. I can't hear your voice.

And in flash - I knew now what it is not given to me to know: why this had to be the way it was. This pain that we feel yet cannot express. This love we have for one another and yet so much suffering in the world.

Our rational minds can never understand what has happened in our world, but our hearts - if we keep them open to God - will find their own intuitive way.

One lasting memories I will always keep in my heart on that day were finally my mother's footsteps.

With each step along her journey, she has shown me how to walk. With each smile she has given me, she has shown me how to be kind. With the love she has poured out from her whole entire being, she has gracefully aged and taught me how to live a beautiful life.

Each step she took on that day, I can remember. Especially the steps up the hill, those I would look back once I reached the top and see my mother taking one small step at a time. Then her intuitive (Yoda) self would look up from staring at her shoes up at me and would notice me looking at her. She always has had a sixth sense for noticing things of that nature.

In that moment of noticing me, she said "I love you". More so than anything in this life, it is the exact moment where you are beloved, to actually feel yourself beloved on the earth.

That is it. That IS it. That direct connection reflects just a shimmer of what God's love truly is for everyone. It is a message that stands the test of time. So whenever I doubt or am afraid of what is possible or impossible in this life.

I think of my mother's footsteps or my father's work or any one of my brothers and sisters whom I've met in this life and I see the true meaning of what Jesus meant by his spirit and love still being with us amongst the whispering trees, faraway stars, and moonlight of His people, "Do not be afraid, I am with you."

-Angelo L. Gonzalez

In that deep love, devoted written work of charity and with each footstep I take, I dedicate this story to you - Mama.