By Laura Robinson
Every December Sky must lose its faith in leaves, and dream of the spring inside the trees.
~Beth Neilson Chapman
I had been looking and hoping for a sign from my mom for months. She had died suddenly in mid-December and here it was almost the end of May. Still no sign. I was starting to think it would never happen. I'd been missing her so much, irrationally wishing I could somehow see her again. I was having a hard time moving on.
My father had passed away five years earlier. When you lose the second parent it can bring up a lot of unexpressed grief about the first, and I was finding my mother's death much harder to get through. With my dad's death I had also been shocked and bereft, but I had received a sign from him that had helped me. On the day of his funeral a little grey-feathered robin came to the tree outside one of my upstairs windows and immediately I knew it was him. The bird seemed so peaceful and calm. As I stopped and watched, I felt sure that he was communicating with me. In that moment I knew my dad was still there, that he was okay and I felt the sadness lift as I watched the bird fly away minutes later. My family name is Robinson, so it was even more meaningful. To this day there is almost always a robin on my lawn, and whenever I see it I always say, "Hi, Dad." I feel like he's still watching over me.
But back to my mom.
My mother was truly one in a million. A huge personality and character. A real sugar-cured ham, as she liked to call herself. She was born an identical triplet in Brantford, Ontario in 1927, and let me tell you those were three wild and crazy gals.
Growing up, I almost felt like I had three moms, and I think mine was the kookiest of them all. Everyone loved my mom — she was the warmest, most engaging, and more-the-merrier parent of all my friends. On the domestic side she was not the best housekeeper. As she would say, "A Suzy Homemaker I'm not." When we were kids, the joke was if she ever got the vacuum cleaner out, my brother and I would ask, "Who's coming over?" But, there was always an open door at the Robinsons'.
She threw a fabulous party and was extremely creative, smart, and funny. She was writing her memoirs when she died — a 200-page tome á la Erma Bombeck entitled I Married an Idiot. The opening line said that it was she who was the "idiot," not my dad. She ran him in circles but they had so many great times and laughs during their marriage. They loved their life together, in spite of all the shenanigans and arguments. In her book she joked that they had had the same breakfast for fifty years... a piece of toast and a fight... and sometimes no toast!
They instilled their love of music and theater and films in my brother and me, and one of the things we loved to do was watch movies together. I remember watching an old W.C. Fields movie with a hilarious scene where Fields is riding in the back of a Model T Ford, swerving down a county road followed by gangsters, all shooting at him. W.C. was just sitting back, smoking his trademark cigar, looking up at the foliage arching over the winding road, calmly observing, "Ah, look at the beautiful Catalpa trees." Now, none of us had the faintest idea what a Catalpa tree was but for some unknown reason, that odd little quote became a favorite in my family. We took a lot of road trips together and at some point, one of us, usually my mom, would imitate W.C. Fields and say, "Ah, look at the beautiful Catalpa trees," while miming the cigar. Don't ask me why — we just did, and we always laughed. It became one of our family "things."
When I went away to university my mom and dad travelled every few months to come to my stage performances and they became friends with all of my fellow actors. My mom especially was like the honorary den mother of my class. She kept everyone in stitches, telling jokes, adlibbing little skits and doing her famous W.C. Fields impersonation. One of my best friends even gave her the nickname "W.C." — and he called her that for all the years to follow.
So now here I was, the last weekend in May and, against our better judgment, my husband and I decided to have a garage sale. We had accumulated so much as our kids had grown and had piles of "junk" from both our families, especially lots of things from my mother's house, as she was the last remaining parent. Saturday morning I was out on our driveway, bright and early, trying to get the last few boxes sorted, items priced and displayed. It was a gorgeous spring day, and the flowers and trees on our property were just staring to bloom.
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Some of the "early birds" you hear about — the super-motivated insomniacs that read the paper and show up before the allotted time to try to scoop up the best deals — had started to arrive. One in particular really caught my attention. He was a sweet, older gentleman, wiry and small, with a dry sense of humor — a real conversationalist. He was talking a blue streak to me and I was patient for a while, but I finally had to turn away from him and get back to my work. The sale was starting to get busy and noisy. I had my head down in a box, trying to see what I could find to bring out next when I faintly heard a voice say, "Oh, look at the beautiful Catalpa tree."
I couldn't believe my ears.
I slowly looked up from the box, turned back to see the little man standing there again and asked in a half-whisper, "What did you say?"
"I said look at that Catalpa tree."
"What are you talking about... where?"
"Right there," he said, pointing to this huge tree in the middle of my front yard.
"Those are really rare here in Canada. I can't remember seeing one in Toronto."
"How would you know that?" I stammered.
"Well, I should know," he said. "I'm a tree expert."
I had never known what a Catalpa tree looked like, or that we had one on our lawn, nor had my mom, who was quite an accomplished gardener and had been to my house countless times.
"They have giant heart-shaped leaves, right, and they are kind of messy, aren't they?"
This time I could not answer him because I was suddenly filled with my mom's spirit.
Of course she was here. And she had found a way to let me know. My mom had the biggest heart of anyone in this or the next world. And she absolutely loved garage sales!
At last I had my sign.
Sometimes when I'm lying in bed I look out my bedroom window and see that tree... and somewhere in my head I can hear her say, "Ah, look at the beautiful Catalpa tree."
Thanks, Mom.
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