Certainly mothers continue to live on VanDyke Road, but not the ones that mothered me. Maybe that’s why I feel so protective of Phyllis Norton — our own “Private Ryan” of these original gravel road mothers. These women that shooed us gently home as we tried to hold up the summer sun. These women that called us in for dinners. Drove us to practice — to practice things that we would never excel at — things that they applauded nevertheless. These women that wiped the blood from our knees and elbows – blood that we did not share, but for the drops around the heart. These women that wiped our tears. Gave us cookies and baby aspirin. Unfolded card tables for selling lemonade — lemonade that they were the only ones to buy — the ingredients they already paid for. These women that came home from work and put the chains back on our bicycles before changing their clothes. These women that read to us. That brushed anyone’s hair that woke in their bathroom. This band of mothers that saved us daily. 

When I saw her picture yesterday on Facebook, riding a bus to Lake Latoka, it all came rushing back to me, like dust on a gravel road. Dust from a car that I can barely see now. Dust that rambles in my soul. Dust that begs the question, “Were we ever that young?” Yes. “Did we have such a neighborhood?” We did. These mothers that save me still, I give thanks for them, every day.