My Earliest Memory Of My Mom

As I sit watching Rachel Ray I was feeling the urge to write. My first thought was to write more about what happened to me. There is so much that happened to me that I haven't even begun to think about writing about, but the last few posts I have made had been sort of on the sad side. Instead I want to share some of my memories of my mom. In this particular post I want to share my earliest memory. I think it might be a fitting way to celebrate her.

I'm unsure how young I was but I'm thinking I was 2 or 3 years old. I was drawing a picture on some paper with crayons. I was either drawing a picture of my mom's head and hair or a bush, I don't remember but I do have a very vague memory of a roundish ovalish shape that may have had eyes. It could have been a drawing of the bushes or maybe mom's tomato plants. It hard to say. I remember mom being there on the floor next to me. She was wearing blue clothes, I don't know if it was a dress, pants, or whatever. She was drinking something out of a cup and I wanted some of whatever she was drinking. I don't know if I asked for some or pointed at her cup, I really can't remember. I remember mom pouring some of the contents out of her cup into one of my sippy cups. I took a drink out of it, but I can't remember what it was or what it tasted like. I remember mom looking at me and laughing and the feeling of her hand as she wiped my chin.

I also remember her wrapping a gift. I think it was the same day and very near the same time as the sippy cup memory. It seemed like she spent forever wrapping this gift. I remember the wrapping paper was white. It seemed like she wrapped it, then unwrapped it, and wrapped it again. The memory is very vague.

Many years later when I reached the age where mom needed to sit me down and explain that I wasn't dying because I was bleeding, the whole ovulation deal. We had a long talk and we reminisced about the past, growing up, becoming a woman, and me as a baby. She bragged to me about how cute of a baby I was and the pride and love she felt when she felt me kick in her belly the first time. Somehow we got into the conversation of early childhood memories. I told her about my memory of the sippy cup. She couldn't remember that incident specifically, but she said that I use to make funny faces whenever I would drink some of her tea. I imagine that my memory of the sippy cup and mom laughing was probably because it was her unsweetened tea that she put in my sippy cup. No wonder she laughed, I had to have made a funny face.

I also asked mom about the wrapping paper but my memory was too vague and she couldn't recall what I was talking about.

This is just a few memories of my mom that I can always hold onto. I would love to talk about these memories with my mom again. I miss her more than I can begin to describe.

Anyway, this was my earliest memory of my mom.

A Bittersweet Reminder

I want to explain about one of the things that enhanced my triggering when I was around my family on Thanksgiving. Although many of you know that a few weeks shy of my 15th birthday, May 2010 my mom died in a car accident, but far fewer know that my mom had a twin sister that looks just like her. Thanksgiving day was the first time I had seen my aunt (mom's twin) since before mom died. She was a bittersweet reminder of my mom. It's hard to explain just how conflicting, sad, wonderful, beautiful, and disturbing it was to see a copy of my mom. It affected my dad too. I kept seeing him look at her and smile the same way he smiled at mom, but he would have to turn away from her to keep from becoming emotional. Our family is a hugging family, when we meet people or visit with family we say hello and goodbye with a hug. When my aunt walked up to dad  to give him a hug, I saw dad reach his hand out to shake her hand instead. Like I suspected she would do she ignored the handshake and wrapped her arms around dad.  She then walked over to me and gave me a hug. After she walked away dad stood next to me and I rested my head against him and I swear I could hear his heart breaking. His hands were shaking. Neither of us needed to say anything. We were both thinking the same thing, we felt, heard, and saw mom through her twin.

My mom and dad were highschool sweethearts, each others first love, and each others first. They assumed like anyone who is in love that they will grow old together. Mom's death affected all of us deeply, but in different ways. I lost my mom and teacher, but dad lost his firsts. Last year I heard dad crying a few times when he thought he was the only person at home. I felt so bad for him, but until this morning I have never let him know that I heard him crying. We had a long talk about things and I suddenly realized how lonely my dad has really become over the last 19 months. For lack of a better description I gave him my blessing to date. It's weird that a 16 year old will give their dad the green light to date.

Well, I'm getting off track from what this post was suppose to be about, but I still think I sort of explained the gist of it. In a future post I want to share some of my memories of my mom, I am way too emotional to try to do that right now. I need a hug, I know daddy will hug me and I'm going to go hug him when I get done posting this.