Mom
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Under the Table
No, not drinking someone under the table. Napping under the table. When I was a kid, I loved to nap. I still love to nap. Now, my favorite napping place is on my sofa with my cozy napping blanket, or maybe on my bed. But when I was a kid, I loved to nap under things. Especially under tables. It felt so cozy, like a little cave, and if there were a party going on, I could hear the adults laughing and talking, and just soak it up until I dozed off. I know, I’m weird. I once fell asleep under a piano on a river boat*, and didn’t wake…
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Pomegranate Love
I adore pomegranates, but truth be told, I seldom buy them. They’re expensive, $2.50 or more each, and they’re a lot of work. While I’m at the store I might think, “Sure, I’ll de-seed it, and we can snack on the seeds, or I can put them in a salad, or whatever…” But then, the expensive fruit ends up just sitting there, not getting eaten, because none of us obtain the wherewithal to deal with them. Until now. On Saturday, Ted and I went into San Francisco in search of some specific walnuts to make a walnut pie for Thanksgiving (Franquette, which are rumored to have the best walnut flavor)…
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Looking Good
My mom was a big believer in reading. She was addicted to it. She read more than anyone else I have ever known. She loved to read everything, almost any genre, almost any book. LOVED it. When she was trying to figure things out, she would read to find a solution. Recipes, career advice, whatever. Parenting style. She loved her parents dearly, and she firmly believed that they did their best. But she also thought that they could have done better. So when she found she was going to have kids, she wanted to find out how to do things better than her parents had done. For the most part,…
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Mother’s Day
Pretty pretty please, don’t you ever ever feel Like you’re less than, less than perfect Pretty pretty please, if you ever ever feel Like you’re nothing, you are perfect to me* I don’t even like this song. Sorry Pink. Nothing personal. But the other day I was in the car, and it came on, and I found myself wondering if Maya knows that this is how I feel about her. I know, I nag. Pick up your clothes. Do your homework. Make your bed. Finish your girl scout award commitment. But none of that means I think any less of her. It means I know she’s a teen, and sometimes…
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Dear Mom
I miss you all the time, every day, but somehow Sunday evenings are the hardest for me. Sunday was our time, when we would talk for hours, sometimes about politics, sometimes about ideas – books, meals, Maya, family memories. All of it. I feel like the late teen years, I was so busy figuring out who I was, busy with work and school and friends, and I took you for granted. But still, we lived in the same house and I saw you every day, even if it was just passing in the hall on our way out the door in the morning. Then I moved out, went to San…
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One Wedding, Three Babies, and a Funeral
(artwork by Amanda Dagg, found here) Keep beckoning to me, From behind that closed door, The maiden, the mother, and the crone that’s grown old. I hear your voice, coming out of that hole. I listen to you, and I want some more. I listen to you, and I want some more. She will always carry on. Something is lost, something is found. They will keep on speaking her name, Some things changed, some stay the same. ~The Pretenders, Hymn to Her That whole ‘circle of life’ thing is much on my mind these last few days. On Friday, I heard from my dear friend Janet that her father had…
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Bereavement
A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to one of the women on my Meals-on-Wheels route, Joan, and she told me that her doctor had put her on anti-depressants because she was depressed. She tried them for a day, and didn’t like the way they made her feel, and stopped taking them. I know that one day wasn’t enough time to determine whether they would work or not, and she’s not likely to find out. The thing is, the reason that she’s depressed? Her son died. He fell on the icy steps this winter, and broke his neck. She is understandably devastated. But she gets out of bed every…
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Two Years
It’s two years today since my mom died. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss her. Not an hour that I don’t think of her. I wish things had gone differently. I wish she had recovered. Sigh. I was thinking about her today, about what she might like to do if she were here. One thing she loved about living in California was the produce, the variety of ethnic restaurants, and the beautiful springtime flowers. OK, that’s three things. So I decided to go to our neighboring town, which has a Tuesday Farmers’ Market, and check out the produce. I was spurred not only by her,…
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Happy Mother’s Day
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. Yesterday, I went to visit my Grandma and her sister, my Great Aunt Flo, partly for Mother’s Day, and partly because I miss them and haven’t seen them for awhile. We went to Marie Calendar’s, and they had strawberry pie ala’ mode for lunch, and we had a great time. When we were back at the house visiting, the talk wound around to my mom, which it usually does, and how adventuresome she was. And Grandma asked me how much, if anything, I remembered about the homestead we lived on, outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1970. I remember the dogs…there was…
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Mistaken Identity
My dear friend Cherry is having her baby today…as we speak, she’s going in to O.R. for her c-section, and I’m expecting a call and can hardly contain myself! Breath, J, breath. OK, but of course Cherry having her baby reminded me of when I had my baby, lo these many years ago. I wanted what any new mom wants right then…my mom. So we planned for my mom to fly from Juneau, Alaska (where she was living), to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (where we were living). At this sad point, I hadn’t seen my mom in about 3 years. A few weeks after Ted and I were married in ’93, my…
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Dear Mom
Dear Mom, First of all, Happy Birthday. You would have been 68 today, and probably would have gone to Stockton to celebrate with Grandma and Aunt Flo (whose birthday it is today as well, she’s 86). Maybe you’d have fried chicken and angel food cake, or maybe you’d go out somewhere. I would have come to see you at Kate’s house this weekend, and we would have celebrated somehow. Maybe with a pedicure for the changing weather. I think about you all of the time, though I don’t cry as much as I used to. Which is good, because Maya had a hard time with that, and would feel guilty…
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Missing my Mom
I was brought to tears this morning by Jon Carroll’s tribute to his mother-in-law, who died last week at the age of 98. I started crying, thinking of how sad his wife, Tracy, must be at losing her mother. (Really? Was I really crying for Tracy, whom I do not know? In an abstract way perhaps. But mostly, no. Mostly I was crying for me.) And then I started crying harder, because I still miss my mom so very much. I had to wonder, how is it different to lose your mother when she’s 98 than it is when she’s 66? When she’s 98, people are pretty much expecting it,…
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13 Again
(pic found here) I remember 13. I remember how emotional I was. Stupid hormones going crazy. I remember crying bitter tears because my mother thought I was ugly. My proof? SHE LOOKED AT ME. Clearly she hated me. And now, I’m the mom. It’s a confusing position to be in, because there are days that are perfectly fine, with laughter and happiness…and then there are days when hormones run hot, and I feel like I can’t say anything right. And when I ask her what’s wrong, she has been thinking I was mad at her the whole time. Which I was not. Not in the least. I remember that, from…
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Suzanne Vega ~ Men in a War
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR2o54X61No[/youtube] Funny how things change in life, right? This song isn’t even my favorite Suzanne Vega song, and before I lost my mom last year, it never would have made me think of her. But now. Now, any time I hear it, it makes me think of that horrible adjustment period after she died. Of how confusing the world suddenly was around me. Of how, though I still had (have) so many things and people in my life that were (are) so very important to me, things would never be the same again, would never be right again. I know how it is When something is gone A piece of…
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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Dear Sidney, How comforting it was to hear you say, “God damn, oh God damn.” That’s the only honest thing to say, isn’t it? Elizabeth’s death is an abomination and it will never be anything else. This short paragraph struck my heart, because it’s almost what my dad said when I told him that my mom had died. Everyone else was mostly sad for me, worried for me, and said kind things like, “I’m so sorry”, or “Oh, no”, or whatever wonderful and caring things they said. But my dad, he and my mom were part of their own group in High School, their own society that railed against the…