Dear Mom,
Thank you for being you. Thank you for trying as hard as you could to make a happy home for us. Thank you for working hard to create memories of game nights and Halloween parties, of home baked goods and garden fresh vegetables.
Thank you for sewing our clothes, and let me tell you . . . that little blue and white fleece jacket was my favorite. I still remember the little red watch you gave me and how you put it on my chair so I would find it when I sat down to eat the tomato soup you made for our lunch.
I remember how you told me I couldn’t play behind the dry cleaning machines when you realized how noisy they were and how you wouldn’t let us ride our bikes behind the DDT sprayer. That was good parenting, thank you.
Thank you for stretching the budget so we always had enough to eat–you must have been quite creative with food.
And your artistic creativity is bountiful. Thank you for passing that on to me. Thank you for teaching us to work hard and to mind our p’s and q’s. I remember how you played with me and dressed me in my finest when Lorena went to her friend’s birthday party, and I remember how you had the planter with Little Golden Books ready and waiting for us to read.
Thank you, I still read a lot.
You did your best Mom, thank you. I love you.
This will be a memorable road trip, I thought, as I was driving down the street admiring the bittersweet beauty of the Garry Oak’s shedding their leaves in a final burst of red, orange and yellow glory. My sister and I were traveling four hours away to fling my mother’s ashes into infinity at the edge of a cliff.
“Oh, I hope she’s ready,” I thought. You can’t honk the horn at five a.m. and I really don’t feel like getting out of the warm car this morning. That’s when I saw her, looking through the windows on the closed in porch, just like our mother had so many years ago. “Man! I miss her,” I thought. I didn’t know if I was missing my mother or my sister at that point. And that small emotion grew to a threat of even more loss as I remembered…
View original post 2,447 more words
Purple Pennies 