Mom and Jackie
The world does not need another tribute to Jackie Kennedy. Far greater writers than I have already praised, analyzed and eulogized her.
Though I never met Mrs. Kennedy, I had a unique wish for her…I wanted her to become my mother.
My first impression of her formed as I sat on the living room floor, watching President Kennedy's funeral on the black and white Zenith. I remember the expression in her eyes when she gently encouraged and supported her son, as he stepped out and saluted his father's coffin. John-John and I were about the same age.
Her hand gently brushed his back in a way that I recognized intimately. It was the same touch I had felt so many times from my own mother, when she wanted me to step out into something.
I had never seen a funeral before, but something about it reminded me of the carnations my dad pinned to my dress each year on Easter Sunday. I could almost smell its sweetness, see its tiny red veins and feel its cool soft petals against my cheek.
I had never seen that expression on anyone's face before either, and I hoped never to see it again. But I did. It was the same look I saw in my father's eyes a few years later, as my own dear mother's coffin was carried past us. We smelled carnations that day too.
The next time I saw that look, it was in the eyes of my precious husband. A routine medical procedure had gone very badly, and I awakened to see him briefly as I was being prepped for emergency surgery. Thankfully, I came back to gaze into much happier eyes - and to help raise our daughter.
Mrs. Kennedy was talented, beautiful, rich and famous. She could have been or done anything at all, but her children came first. "If you mess that up it doesn't matter what else you get right," she said. She did her job beautifully, and evidence of that was borne out as her children grew into adulthood.
The Kennedy children - and I - had amazing mothers, and for both legacies — Thank you, Mom, and thank you, Jackie.
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Mrs. Larkin, like her mother and Mrs. Kennedy, is a devout lover of books. She recently accepted a position as Vice President of Operations with Marathon Publications, and, even more recently, became a grandmother.
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