A Mother's Memories to Her Child

In 2004, I gave my parents each a journal with prompts to fill out that would tell me about their lives. I started sharing my own responses to the same questions a couple years back, but I haven't kept up with it. I left off with my siblings last time.

I've decided to change my technique a bit, so I'll include my mom's responses as well as my own. Enjoy....

Joyce
My Hometown

As a child, I lived in
St. Petersburg, Florida

Mom's house on 39th Ave. No. The one in the middle, not the pink one.

Our street was
Patton Ave. No. then 39th Ave. No.

My favorite place in the neighborhood was
My home at 39th Ave. I grew up there. I was 21 when we moved. I loved the screen room on a rainy day. I was very happy there.

My favorite community event
Church festivals and school activities. We pretty much stayed to ourselves. Mom and dad had a few close friends but mostly it was family activities. Vicki and Gilda Lopa (friends)

Games my friends and I played
Hopscotch; hide and seek; jump rope; jacks and we loved to dance a lot. We listened to the Beatles and Elvis. We made up stories and plays.

Someone from my hometown whom I admire
Father Mulligan
Aunt Rose and Aunt Arna
And of course my parents Ezell and Eddie Colson

My Childhood Home
When I was growing up, our home was
Full of love; crowded as we had foster teens. We had up to 8 teens at one time in the house!! Busy with chores; did our schoolwork and played a lot. There was no air conditioning and only one bathroom.

My favorite place in our home
My room and the screened-in back porch. I loved when it rained and you could hear the sound on the aluminum roof. Always cool there. 

When I wanted to be alone
I would go to my room or walk around the neighborhood or go to the backyard under the tree. Sometimes go to the bathroom but not for long due to usage.

My favorite hiding place
Never really hid. I would just withdraw verbally and be quiet. My reading books was an escape. I liked silence.

My favorite place to play
Back porch or the yard. We were outside a lot. Played jacks a lot.

At home I could always
Be myself. I was relaxed but strong and bossy at times; like when I had to watch my little brothers or other kids.


Dawn
My Hometown

As a child, I lived in
Houston, Texas. More specifically, Alief, Texas.

My house on LaGranada

Our street was
La Granada

My favorite place in the neighborhood was
The park at the neighborhood pool and tennis court.
The playground at the elementary school. 

My favorite community event
Fall festivals at the churches we attended. First was Notre Dame where I won one of those totally 80s fuzzy piggy banks. Mine was a squirrel. Jean won a bunny. Another time, I won a jug of wine - ha ha! Then was St. Justin Martyr where they sell Filipino food, fried bananas, used books, and smoked meats.

Games my friends and I played
Cowboys and Indians. We played with almost all the neighbor kids. Our porch was huge,so it was the jail.
Dress up. One time, Jean, my friend, and I put on her mom's bras and filled them with socks, then proceeded to parade around with our "boobies."
Red Rover.
Marco Polo in the pool.
Truth or Dare. I was once dared to eat the leaf of a plant that everyone thought looked gross. I did.

Someone from my hometown whom I admire 
Sharon Thomas, my adopted aunt, who taught with my mother for many, many years and continues to inspire me to teach with my heart and a good sense of humor. She is also one of the best storytellers I have ever known.

My Childhood Home
When I was growing up, our home was
Divided. Mom and the girls on one side; dad and brother on the other. Mom was very loving and enjoyable when she was in a good mood. We did crafts, danced in the living room, and played cards. When she was stressed or in a bad mood, or when she had a terrible migraine, she was not much fun to be around. Dad was busy with work a lot, did a lot of Boy Scouts stuff with my brother, and withdrew and got really quiet when mom and brother fought.

My favorite place in our home
My bedroom when I was a teen, mom's bed, the front porch, and the back of the couch in the living room that looked out onto the patio and backyard. 

When I wanted to be alone
As a teen, I closed the doors of my room. As a little kid, I think I went in the closet or bathroom to be alone since I shared the room with my sister. 

My favorite hiding place
Bathroom

My favorite place to play
Front porch and yard

At home I could always
Isolate myself from just about everything and everybody

Mom's Obituary

Joyce Marie Ambuehl, resident of Richmond, Texas, died at the age of 67 years old on August 18, 2014 at OakBend Medical Center of a hemorrhagic stroke.

Joyce was born May 23, 1947 to Ezell and Edward Colson in St. Petersburg, Florida where she spent her childhood with her three best friends and her cousins. She married Ralph Ambuehl on February 22, 1969. They moved to Gainesville, Florida and stayed there for three years while Ralph finished both his bachelors and masters degrees. They moved to Houston with their 18 month old son Robert in the spring of 1973.

Joyce and Ralph set down their roots in Alief, Texas where they raised their three children. She worked in the Alief Independent School District for 18 years as a paraprofessional in a Special Education classroom with her best friend Sharon Thomas. During the summers, she worked tirelessly with physically handicapped children. She served as an officer and president of the Alief Paraprofessional Association. Later in life, she worked at the Fort Bend County Library in Richmond where she was able to share her passion for reading with her community.

Joyce was committed to her Catholic faith and was active as a Eucharistic minister and a member of the RCIA team at St. Justin Martyr Church for almost 20 years. More recently she had served as a member of the ACTS Core Team and Pastoral Council.

She is survived by her husband Ralph and their three children, Robert, Dawn, and Jean; her five grandchildren, Alexandra, Zachery, Anastasia, Maya, and Lila; as well as her brother John Colson. Edward Colson, Jr., her baby brother, preceded her in death 18 months ago.

Services for Joyce Ambuehl
Viewing & Funeral Vigil with the Rosary – Thursday, 8/21/2014
4:00 pm – 6:45 pm – Viewing
6:45Pm – 8:00pm Funeral Vigil with Rosary
Distinctive Life Funeral Home
5455 Dashwood St., Bellaire, TX 77401
(713) 933-0356

Funeral – Friday, 8/22/2014
10:00 am 11:30am
St Justin Martyr Catholic Community
13350 Ashford Point Dr., Houston, TX 77082
(281) 556-5116

Interment – Immediately following Funeral
12:30 – 1:00pm
Davis - Greenlawn Cemetery
3900 B.F. Terry Blvd
(FM 2218 & US 59)
Rosenberg, Texas 77471
(281) 341-8800

Reception Immediately following Interment (~1:30pm) at
St Justin Martyr Catholic Community
13350 Ashford Point Dr, Houston, TX 77082
(281) 556-5116

Note: The Ambuehl Family has requested that in Lieu of Flowers, donations be made to St. Justin or St. Faustina in that order of priority.

Eulogy for Joyce M. Ambuehl

Joyce Marie Ambuehl

Ages and Stages

On May 23, 1947, a two and a half pound fetus was pronounced stillborn before she ever entered the world. In the delivery room, her mother clutched her own mother's hand, pushed forth her infant who, to everyone's astonishment, she was alive. At the time, there was no medical technology to support such a premature baby, so the doctor sent my grandmother home with the stern warning to not expect her to live past a few weeks.

My mother spent the next few weeks sleeping in her father's shoebox with his handkerchief as her blanket.

It may be hard to reconcile this image of my infant mother with the woman we are here to say goodbye to. Her life was truly a miracle; thereby, all of our lives have been miracles. The child who by all means should not have lived did so and brought forth my life, the lives of my siblings, and the lives of my children. If she had not survived, none of us would ever have been born.

---

Mom and dad's wedding, Feb 22, 1969

"She was a saint," my brother in law said recently. My gut reaction was, "No, she wasn't!" I'm her daughter; I should know. In my mind it can be difficult to separate the mother I had growing up and the woman you knew in her later life.

As an adult and as a mother, I have come to understand the strain my mother was under as a young woman and what drove her to behave as she did. I've come to have more compassion for her, to understand that, just like me, she did the best she could with what she had.

Having moved from Florida - the only home she'd ever known - to Texas with only her infant and her husband, she was isolated and alone most of the time. This was particularly challenging for her because she is descended from the Colson clan, which includes about a hundred people all of whom live within a five mile radius of each other. Then she had me and two short years later, my sister.

As a child, ours was a house divided. Where my father was so silent at times as to seem comatose, my mom was so outspoken as to seem manic. At other times, especially around the times of her migraines, she would fall into deep depressions. I remember lying in bed at night and listening to her cry on the porch outside my window. Once, she went so far as to climb in her car and drive off without telling anyone where she was going.

There were wonderful times, though, too. I had terrible nightmares as a child. In the wee hours of the morning, I would run to her bedside and beg to get in. She pulled me close, comforted me by wrapping her arm around me, and kissed my head. In time, I could calm down and fall asleep to her rhythmic breathing.

Before school, she would lovingly plait my hair - the same hair she always wished she'd had. We held dance parties in the living room the three of us girls, flitting around to Strawberry Fields Forever, tromping around to Thriller, learning the jitterbug, cha-cha, and line dancing. She sang Que Sera to us in the morning and before we went to bed just as her mother did and as I do now for my girls.

All that changed 25 years ago when my dad finally embraced the faith he so admired and he and my mom got on the same page, to share their love of The Lord with their children.

When you read about the saints, many of them experienced similar conversions.

---

I have been trying all week to make sense of this.

Mom with her baby brother Ed before he died.

My dad has said that God prepared him in his thoughts and prayers throughout the past year. To be honest, God has done the same for me though I didn't know why it was happening. Every time I spoke to her recently, if I started to get annoyed with her, I would say to myself, 'One day, you're going to miss this.'

When my uncle died 18 months ago, I saw a side of my mother I had not seen in almost 20 years, not since my grandma died. For the first time in my selfish life, I saw my mother's weakness and asked, "What can I do to help?" I saw her depression and realized that she and I are the same.

When I got pregnant with Lila, My momma's 5th and final grandchild, I asked my mom to be by my side just like she was when Maya was born. Earlier this year, She missed Lila's birth by mere minutes, and I could see in her eyes immediately how sad and sorry she was. But in the five days to come while I was hooked up to machines in the hospital, my mom was the one I needed at my bedside. Though Lila may never remember her the way we will, her grandma is the one who helped form her earliest moments in the world. Her foundation. Grandma held her when mommy couldn't, comforted her while mommy slept, and became the rock upon whom We all trusted. My mother will forever be the model of motherhood I will try to live up to.

She was my confessor. She may not have been a priest, but I knew if anyone could ask God to forgive me, it had to be her. Like my sister, I have no regrets in regards to what I needed to say to my mom. I told her all in the last year. She did not judge me; she simply told me to use the rest of my life as atonement for my sins.

---

Look at that smile.

People love my mother for many reasons: Her smile, her compassion, her selflessness. She was the kind of woman who would take the vegetables her kids turned their noses up at and would feed to the poor. Her special ed students depended on her for hugs because they had no one at home to hug them. My friends told me over and over again they wished she were their mother.

She was mother to many; the rock upon whom we depended; our strength, our guide, counselor, teacher, wife, mother, sister, daughter, aunt, cousin, friend.

Perhaps to make sense of her death we must look inside ourselves and ask, "What have I learned from Joyce Marie Ambuehl and how can I share that with others so that I may carry on her legacy of compassion and perseverance?"

Was her life a miracle? There can be no doubt.

Was she a saint?

You knew her, too. What do you think?

Haiku

Last week, my summer campers and I studied haiku poetry together. It's definitely one of my favorite forms for its simplicity, concise phraseology, and adoration of Nature. We did a Nature walk, chalked out some rough drafts on pavement, and used word association to come up with unique poems. Here are some I crafted using several words the kids came up with. My prompt was Zoo Animals:

Zebra galloping
Ebony and ivory
Blurs across the plains

Monkeys are hyper
Whipping through the air on vines
Chattering loudly

Isolated fox
Roaming the woods, quiet, alone -
Where is his pack?

A Burden to Carry

A note: I wrote this just after the first year of Maya's life. It's the reason I was so worried about PPD after Lila was born this past January.

My daughter has caused me the most pain I have ever known; physical, mental, and spiritual anguish. She forced me to face my own humanity, to accept the burden I bear, and to love in the face of adversity.

After her birth on May 17, 2009, I suffered from postpartum depression (PPD). Statistics show that 8 in 10 women experience “baby blues,” but only 1 in 10 suffer from postpartum depression. Unfortunately, I am part of that 10%. The clinical definition is “a serious illness that can occur in the first few months after childbirth,” and it includes feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness. These words, and others like them, filled the multitude of brochures nurses gave me before I left the hospital with my little bundle of agony.

In fact, the mountain of information I received upon my daughter’s arrival overwhelmed and frightened me. She was preterm. Not premature, but preterm, so the hospital staff brought up a lot of concerns that I was completely unprepared for. In my hypersensitive, postpartum state, every breath she took, every small movement caused me alarm. I panicked when they took her away to run tests, but I couldn’t function if she was in the room with me either.

I never expected to have a baby. To be completely honest, the thought was abhorrent to me. I hated the thought of someone being totally dependent on me. Even more, I feared myself – my temper, my genes, my failures, my weaknesses. To have that kind of influence over any human being was too much to consider. My family has a longstanding history of depression, alcoholism, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, diabetes, cancer… the list goes on and on.

My pregnancy was even more unexpected. I was surprised by how happy I was when I found out. Feeling a new life growing inside of me was an aphrodisiac. I had never in my 30 years of life experienced true clarity; my mind was cloudless and sunny for the first time. Then, Maya was born four weeks too early, and – I’m almost ashamed to say it – my joy ended in one tremendous push to bring her warm and wet into the world.

Don’t get me wrong – I felt great joy when Maya was placed on my chest for the first time; great joy when I nursed her the first time; great joy when she was given her first bath; and great joy when they wheeled the two of us to our hospital room. But, in that room, terror grew inside me and threatened to overpower the joy. It started small like the tiny twitches of her hands, the sudden intakes of breath while she slept in her bassinet beside me. In the 24 hours to follow, my fear escalated to all out hysteria and frightened my whole family. Even my little niece and nephew turned to my sister-in-law and said, “What’s wrong with Aunt Dawn?”

Dawn. My name means daybreak; it’s a metaphor for birth. Because my mom has told me many times that I wasn’t named for anyone in my family, I wonder if my name was symbolic to her. She and I are very alike. She’s never been diagnosed, but I’d be willing to bet money my mother is also bi-polar. Growing up with her was an exercise in futility. Reason number 5,732 that I didn’t want to have children.

My baby’s name is Maya, and it means water in Arabic. Perhaps foolishly, I had painted my toenails aqua so the first color she saw as she came into the light would be the color of the sea. To a recovering Catholic like me, water is synonymous with baptism. I hoped Maya’s birth would cleanse me of my past – my bi-polar disorder, drug abuse, broken relationships, and, most of all, despair. Instead, I was crushed by her birth – the waves of terror blindsided me.

Postpartum depression felt just like that – like my own emotions would blindside me at any given moment, and there was no way for me to predict it. There were good moments, there were bad moments, and then there were the worst moments. The illness was like manic depression on steroids. I loved my baby so much, but I could barely stand to be with her. I also couldn’t stand to be without her.

Another thing the brochures say: “You may have trouble caring for and bonding with your baby.” Take it from me – that is an understatement! Breastfeeding was a nightmare. I wanted to so badly that I nursed until my nipples bled. I visited two lactation consultants to try to solve my difficulty, but to no avail. Compounding the problem were my violent mood swings. When Maya was with me, I couldn’t stand to look at her, and, when I did, it would only make me cry. When I was alone, I wanted to hear, see, or touch her just to reassure myself of her existence. One moment, I felt ridiculous joy holding her in the kangaroo position. The next, I was handing her off to a family member and running to hide in my dark bedroom.

My own mother held me and stayed at my bedside as I sobbed hysterically. My niece and nephew drew pictures for me. My sister-in-law told me that I didn’t have to be perfect, that I would be a good mommy no matter what. My husband did everything he could to console me – he took our daughter out of the room so I could sleep; he brought her back when I wept for her. He made sure I ate; he rubbed my shoulders and gave me words of encouragement – not just in the hospital, but also in the following days, weeks, and months after we brought her home. He took on every detail of our lives because I was incapable.

After five weeks in this manic state, I was suicidal. I told my husband, “If this is my life, then I don’t want to live.” My loving husband was the voice of sanity; he told me to call my doctor.

With Maya in the care of my father, I jumped in the car. On the highway, I contemplated just driving away and never coming back. But love forces you to do things you don’t want to do, to be brave when you feel like a coward. In the doctor’s office, I sat reading the pamphlets once again, noting the words that described exactly how I felt. When my doctor entered the room, I broke down crying (again!). She told me that every person has a burden to bear, and at least I knew what mine was. Most people, she said, go their whole lives not knowing. She recommended a combination of medication and a support group.

In the support group, I met women who were just like me and not at all like me. Some had much more tragic stories to tell and some much less. But we all had PPD in common. We were all drowning in a similar ocean and needed each other’s hands to pull us to safety.

It took about six months for me to finally feel “normal” again. At six months postpartum, the burgeoning love I now feel for my daughter was inescapable. I started to truly appreciate the love surrounding me – the love of my family and friends – but also my love for myself. It took courage and bravery to get me out of the darkness I was in, and, for that, I am proud of myself. I could easily have succumbed to the depression I felt, but I fought it tooth and nail.

In the first months of my daughter’s life, my family rallied to support me. They listened to me. They gave me encouragement. They pampered me. Most importantly, they held me up when I could not go on. I learned to see myself in my daughter’s eyes. I was like God to her, and she was me; frail, small, helpless, entirely dependent, but also strong and resilient.

The sacrifice of motherhood has taught me the meaning of love, but not in the way I expected it to. By forcing me to work through the debilitating pain of postpartum depression, I learned to be grateful for everything my parents had sacrificed for me, to appreciate the sacrifices my husband made to compensate for my frequent inability to act, and to know my own strength and resolve.

When Maya was born, my whole world seemed to collapse in upon itself. For a split second, everything ended and everything began. Her birth was my death… and my rebirth. Her life is proof that my life has meaning. Though I hope to never suffer through PPD again, the experience taught me that love is about knowing what your burden is and carrying it anyway.

I Quit

I quit.

Simple words that form a simple sentence. [Fragment.]

The sentiment is not simple. It is complex.

It’s complicated.

An overused, disabused articulation. [Fragment.]

Problematic in that, when I choose to use it 

Appropriately

I am misunderstood by the majority.

And the minority is oh-so-quiet

These days. 

Until they’re not.

Let’s go back to the original thought that provoked such a statement as:

I quit.

I quit my job. [Positive.]

I quit drinking. [Positive?]

I quit caring. [Negative.]

I care. [Positive.]

I am walking a tight rope of caring and not-caring

I am in no fit condition to do so

My balance is off due to the ever increasing girth of

My middle.

My hormones are playing tricks on an already

Tricky mind.

Insomnia is not responding to my defiance.

Her scorn is bitter tannins after I imbibe.

I quit trying to defy

That which is not susceptible to insolence

And so, 

I write.

Intimate Embrace

Smoothly
We lie skin to skin, our
Bodies entangled, our
Breath mingled

You feast to your desire
While my eyes enjoy the feast
The exquisite
Suck/swallow
The ecstasy in your eyes

Your hands clench, unclench, and
Clench again
My hands stroke your supple hair
My nose inhales deeply
Gathering your scent

My arm curls around your back
Pressing you closer
Engaging your eyes until
Your eyelids flutter
You expel a gentle sigh to
Indicate your appetite is sated

Your dainty hand now rests
On the plumpness of my breast
As we both succumb to the tide of
Tender sleep
We relent
Give in to its tide
We slide into unconsciousness and
Dream of each other

My babe,
I am yours
You are mine
We are unconditionally inseparable
Connected by the most basic bond
Of mother and child.