My mother was a constant traveler, but not in the traditional sense. All day long, she traveled from her stove to her refrigerator to her sink, and then back again.

“Stove-refrigerator-sink,” she once described her three-step life to me matter-of-factly. She loved the normalcy, the predictability and the routine — most of the time. But sometimes, when she was irritated with her children, her husband, or a church parishioner, she would break her sour mood and look afar, her eyes penetrating the kitchen walls. Her longing gaze belonged to someone standing on a community theater stage, hungry for a Carnegie Hall audience.

I didn’t pay much attention, if any at all, because her expression was too painful. The reality of her life washed out any grandeur dreams she had, such as crunching numbers in an accountant firm, one of her long-standing dreams.

That was the thing with my mom: her frustrations, disappointments and inner pain often led her to be emotionally wound up, but if you could step back and let her unravel, she would eventually find her equilibrium. It took me a long time to figure out her usual modus operandi, but when I finally did, I was able to love her fully.

Before I gained a wider, wiser perspective, adolescence was particularly rough. I had yearned for a different mother, one who wore dainty tennis skirts and crisp white sneakers, and who had a feminine sway in her hips. A mother who would come to pick me up from middle school in her shiny Ford Mustang, instead of the one kid whose mother was never there.

My mom (or dad) never stepped inside my middle school until my graduation day. (Grammar school was another matter, but that’s another story.) When I saw them, I hid behind a corner in the hallway, trying to catch my breath outside the suffocating layers of shame that had been dumped on me like stinky sludge.

Even though my dad blended in with the crowd, all I could see from my vantage point was my mom, standing there in her multi-colored dress, a tent-like garb that concealed her petite body and was as baggy as a beekeeper’s protective suit.

Her kitty heels, straight out of a 50s black-and-white TV show, clicked on the tiled floor as she paced nervously back and forth.

A hairnet captured her dark, old-fashioned ringlets, like bait worms. Her face was an expressionless doll with vacant eyes.

“Is your family here?”

“No.”

“Without family,” I felt different growing up. But I learned that while Hollywood love may be custom-made, ordinary love is not.

As I mentioned earlier, my love for my mother matured with me — especially after my young children taught me how genuinely unique and fun she was. It was then that I also fully understood why my mom rarely spoke to “Americans,” silenced by the embarrassment of her own foreign accent and awkwardness.

The upshot of the realization was that I walked tall next to her, my head held high, despite her size 4 Barbie body hidden in size 12 dresses, the unconcealed sheets of tissues lining her shoes, and the stale bread slices stashed in her purse’s side pockets (in case the food chain failed!).

My bulletproof mother didn’t believe in illness, and her passing from a stroke on December 29, 2015, showed me the perfect irony of life: we’re not in control after all.

When my mom fell ill in the spring and early summer of 2015, I felt bewildered and flummoxed (love that word!). In the process of her deterioration, I did the “next right thing,” as my program had taught me to do many years prior. Her gradual decline was a roller coaster that I became so used to and for nearly seven months, it felt like tying my shoe in the morning. But the exhaustion was unlike anything I had ever experienced, even when I got eight or ten hours of sleep. I was groggy, walking a foot behind everything that moved in my world.

When my mom landed in a nursing home, a feeding tube had been inserted into her, and it was clear she would never return to her three-step appliance shuffle, but the regular rhythms of our lives, like playing rock-paper-scissors, remained in my memory, like the whiff of Pond’s cream on her face that warmed my childhood particularly on bitter cold evenings. She had taught me well, and I went on with my old life, with familiar music playing in the background.

Three weeks before Christmas, my own “rock-paper-scissors” household routine escalated. I was a single mom and had to work, write and send holiday cards, purchase and package holiday gifts, not to mention cook and clean. I rationalized that since she was semi-conscious, she wouldn’t notice the stretch of time since I had last seen her. I certainly planned to visit after the holiday. Of course, after the holidays seemed just as frantic too, and I was driving my daughter to Massachusetts to visit a prospective graduate school. I figured once we accomplished our mission, I’d definitely see Mom again, the first week of the new year.

Unfortunately, Mom never lived to see 2016. But on December 28, in Massachusetts, my daughter and I had a terrible time finding appropriate lodging, since the first hotel room we had reserved was a dump. Luckily, we found mediocre accommodations just in time, because a terrible ice storm had made the outdoors look frozen in time.

That night, two weary travelers collapsed into bed and slumber found us easily. I opened my eyes at 5 a.m. to see the digital clock glowing in the dark room. I also knew without doubt: Mom had passed.

Her presence filled the room, every bit of her, including her lingering scent of Ponds face cream. I realized that instead of my visiting her, she had come to visit us one last time to let us know that she was okay.

Sure enough, I woke up to hear the news over the phone.

“What time did they record the time of death?”

“Five a.m.”

Thank you, Mom. I love you more than words can say. You taught me about faith, love, and even the power of love to transcend time and space. I’m grateful for the gift of your life.