List 100 things I remember about my mom

she sometimes said “If it was a snake it would’ve bit me.” This is a country expression that means you were looking for an item, and it was in an obvious place, usually really close by, where you should’ve seen it immediately but you overlooked it.

was a collectable plate. Later, I donated it to a church auction that was raising money for mission trips. I didn’t know I was going to lose mom soon. I wish I had it back. Maybe I will replace it someday. I’ve always liked poppies, and almost any sort of dog. I think we saw the printed advertisement for the plate and cooed over it together. I never dreamed she’d actually buy it for me. I remember making a magnet out of the ad and giving it to mom – can’t remember if I did that before or after she gave me the plate.

That’s something I’ve always done – if I see something advertised that I can’t afford, I still pin up the picture or stash it in some file. As a girl it was often pictures of gemstones, larger and more luscious than in real life. As a young teen, it was pictures of models and actresses that I felt drawn to. Now it’s often landscapes.

1) My mom loves peanut butter and crackers.
2) My mom collects Fanny May Crosby hymns.
3) My mom crochets.
4) My mom loves databases.

I moved out of my parents’ house at 15. Before I was 18 I was back, but things were different. I had an epiphany while I was gone. I heard their voices on the phone, and heard all the things they couldn’t put into words, heard them aging, heard their regret. I’m a bright enough girl, but I suspect divine intervention played a part in the very mature decision I made to forgive them both for the wrongs they did me. I knew the hate would kill me if I held onto it.

So, back in their house for a short, sweet, peaceful time where we all learned to interact in this strange new world where I was nearly an adult, and not frothing at the mouth with self-righteous rage. I worked at Subway. I got a GED (equivalent to high school diploma). I tried to get my act together.

One day, I must have been mooning around, waiting for some boy to call, because mom called me into her room and asked “Hey, you busy?” I was clearly not. She slips twenty dollars into my hand with a grin and says “Why don’t you go up to the dollar store and get yourself some worthless junk?” We were dollar store fiends, she and I. Of course, I can’t remember what I got that day, but I’m sure I found some little something for her, to thank her for my hour or so of feeling like a Rockefeller.

10. She dreaded the day I’d start. Not because she was afraid of me growing up, but because she can’t stand the sight of blood and seemed convinced that putting a razor in my hands would lead to me amputating a foot with a Lady Bic.

_{And the fear was not ungrounded. When I was three, I decided to imitate my Dad (as I did in all things) and shave my face. The only reason I don’t have a nasty scar is that the razor was very, very dull.}

And unfortunately for her, I started needing to shave quite young. So she bought me Nair, thinking she’d put off the shaving lessons for a few years.

What she didn’t know, until years later, is that I’d already started shaving in secret. Long before she bought me the Nair, in fact.

8. For whatever reason, we both lean towards the OCD side of the fence. The other day, she came outside to talk to me while I was smoking, and I watched her do the exact same thing I do – check the door to make sure it’s not locked. More than once. I even taught her my little trick of twisting the doorknob but not opening the door (if the doorknob turns, it’s obviously not locked).

This brought back memories of other things that she double-checked when I was young…things that, with some variation, I now double-check. (I don’t iron, so I know the iron’s not on – but the curling iron could be.) We check, and check, and check again. Three seems to be the magic number.

Which reminds me of

9. She always sneezes in threes.

7. The times she was most unhappy were the times when she felt she couldn’t take care of herself. Like the time she broke her foot, when I was 8. One day, she got a tub of yogurt out of the fridge, and dropped it on the way to the table; it’s hard to juggle crutches and yogurt. The yogurt hit the floor and splattered, and she started to cry. So I (Miss Fixit that I am) cleaned up the yogurt and tried to make her feel better. But I couldn’t, because the problem was not the mess but the fact that she couldn’t do things herself – even something as simple as getting yogurt out of the fridge.

I didn’t get it then, but I do now. Because she raised me not to rely on anyone. It’s nice when people help you out, but you can’t count on them doing so. And it feels really good to know you got where you are on your own.

We laugh about that story now. I guess that’s a bonus lesson I learned from her: No matter how dark something seems, the pain fades. And becomes part of your story.

It was for my second wedding. We were sitting pretty far apart, just by chance, but I sat there so happily, just watching her there in the lovely deep blue dress I’d helped find. I wish it could’ve been a longer ride.

The limo was sort of a dumb, expensive extravagance, but now I’m glad we did it, if only for mom. The one in the photo is not the one from my wedding, but it was white. I can’t remember how long it was. I would’ve preferred a black one.

My mom’s prom date was a guy named Orville. To the best of my knowledge, once she moved away from her hometown, they didn’t speak again. By chance, he read her obituary and he came to her funeral, where we met and he gave me some cool pictures from mom’s early life. He’d had them for…around thirty years? So I guess you could say that she’d had an impact on him.

As we were highly disfunctional, the holidays were not a sacred time of togetherness in my family. We all just kind of did our own thing and did our best to ignore the sad truth all around. One year I’d been given permission to attend the Thanksgiving feast with a friend’s family, which I thoroughly enjoyed. My brothers were off who knows where, and dad padded around the house softly as mom lay in a drunken stupor in her dark, cold, cavernous bedroom. At some point she woke up enough to realize what day it was, and she felt something, either sadness or anger, and she insisted dad go buy a turkey so she could cook it, even though we weren’t there to eat it. Dad dutifully brought home a bird, and mom put it in the oven…with the plastic bag of giblets still inside. Soon the kitchen was full of black, foul smelling smoke and dad was trying to salvage the poor thing. It made for a funny story later, but at the time, it was just pathetic. I don’t know what mom was thinking. Maybe she had a little fit of guilt and remorse that her children all wanted to be somewhere else on Thanksgiving. Maybe she just wanted some turkey.