writing about mom

I've been waiting to share this new piece, "Mom Can't Remember," out in Thimble Literary Magazine's spring 2025 issue.
I won't say it's deeply personal (though it is) because duh, all writing is. As writers what we put on the page is filtered through our worldview, is our creation, what's on our mind, sticks in our craw, excites us, frustrates us, worries enrages motivates thrills us.

I'm avoiding getting to the point but the point is, this one's about my mother and the complexity of her after suffering a grave illness.

If adulthood is figuring out who to blame, I'm still working on that.
I loved her and love her, I feared her and sometimes admired her.
I miss her every day.

joy on a tough day

Yesterday we acknowledged the loss of mom, 21 years ago. 

It seems so long ago and also feels so fresh. I put on her rings, ate a Ding Dong and video chatted with my sisters. 

Then, last night was Krewe Bohème's parade. Short, creative, alight and gorgeous. It brought joy to a tough day.

Mother’s Day is a toughie.

 

Mom has been gone for twenty years and I still feel her absence so deeply, still think of her almost every day, trying to remember her voice, seeing her in my reflection in the mirror more and more, the lines parenthesizing my lips and my turkey wattle neck, the need to stuff my cankles into ankle socks with sneakers and confide in grocery store clerks.

It’s complicated though because she wasn’t very kind to me for the first quarter century of my life. She was a fundamentalist pastor’s wife and godliness and obedience were of utmost importance in our household. Her hand and her touch brought pain much more often than tenderness. Then a fluke brain aneurysm wiped away her meanness and cleared her memory banks. We were gifted a little over a decade with a mother whose emotions ran close to the surface, who cried easily and laughed and smiled a lot and forgot she’d ever been cruel.

I wish sometimes we’d had more time with the good Mom, had longer to laugh and cry together and settle into a relationship that felt easier and more normal.

But we didn’t.

Life is cruel too, and I laugh and cry now with my sisters, or sometimes just alone.

a momash gift

The longer I don’t post here, the worse I feel, and also the harder it is to post.

Bsp has been on the road. In Canada for a week, enjoying family, projects, and delicious vegetarian food (a mezze feast here, vegan pizza here and a Rajasthani thali here). And some non-veg pastries, the best of which were pillowy donuts filled with the lightest of cream fillings. Incredible dining.

*

One of the projects was typing up a handwritten journal we found in a box of family items retrieved from the trash heap in Kansas. A diary my mother wrote when she was 17 years old, a handful of double-sided lined loose papers that covers only half a year or so, but it’s an engagingly immediate piece of writing, of her crushes and friendships and desires, her frustrations with the nuns who educated her -- and alternately, her desire to join the sisters because romance and life sometimes felt so difficult. She adored music and listed bands and songs that touched her: The Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Animals.

I never knew this Mom of course. I feel such a nostalgia for her. How could this vivacious, witty, petty, scheming, big-hearted, fun-loving teenager know that just a year later she’d be unexpectedly pregnant with me, and hastily marrying the father, a guy who never even appears in the journal?

As we draw closer to nineteen years since her passing, I am beyond grateful for this gift of my mother.

So long

On Monday I said good-bye to the trailer my Mom helped me find a few years ago.
The cozy little Majorca travel trailer dwelt on my lush acres for a dozen-plus years, a shelter from rain and wind and sun, and haven for about a million ants, and the odd mouse. Lately though, the floors sagged, a pair of tires cracked and went flat; moss grew inside the window frames and after the March windstorm where four cedars toppled, I began to worry about the trailer's long-term prospects.
Over the summer, helpers and I cleaned out the interior, hauling carloads to Goodwill and recycling, and last week I posted the photos online, hoping to find a new home. Twenty-some people e-mailed me, many ignoring the details in the post (nope), some saying they'd re-hab and sell it (sorry, also nope), but one person wanted the trailer for an organic farm property north of town. We e-mailed, I made clear the Majorca's fragile condition, she reassured me she was a farm girl and could figure it out.
So on Monday, we all met up and headed out to see if the trailer could be safely removed from its home. I was nervous, worried, and sad, honestly, thinking back to the day Mom and her husband and dog brought the Majorca. A rainy, overcast day, struggles to get up the gravel driveway, a muddy bottoming-out, and finally, success, the truck's engine over-heating and the smell of burned rubber lingering. The experience Monday was much more peaceful. The farm-ers came prepared, patching the tires, raising the jacks, applying duct tape where necessary. After barely an hour of work, they snapped on the hitch, and about twenty-five turns later, were rolling down the rocky, twisty hill. I did shed some tears, but this feels right. The Majorca is off to be useful somewhere else, with people who can properly take care of it, and I have opportunity now to do something more permanent for myself, too. It feels momentous.

when people show you who they are believe them

When people show you who they are, believe them.
--Attributed to Maya Angelou
I like this quotation, and it frightens me.
*
A friend with a patchy dating history used to tell me about how she could see the red flags with guys, and she knew she was ignoring the red flags and she continued on with assholes and idiots anyway. We see, and yet we don't. I see, and yet I do nothing.
*
I felt some hurt this past week and I think this is the only place I can dig into it. Mother's Day was a tough one for me. Everywhere you look, there are people with bouquets, moms and daughters, social media, stores, everything, hyping Mother's Day. So I laid low and made plans to see one of the few people who really gets it. We agreed on a time. I took a shower and made a cake. And waited. Texts came in about an hour before meet up time--running late, no don't come meet us, just wait. And then--cancellation. The person was tired. They needed to get some rest. Get some rest, I messaged. I felt sad, but I got it. It had been a tough day.
And the next day I saw on fb that the person had not gotten rest, instead they went to a birthday party.
So what to do with this? A tough day was made tougher with a lie. I would have liked to have felt important. Or at least, respected enough for the truth. This is not a conversation I feel like I can have with the person, tbh. What can I do? I can feel the hurt, remember how utterly alone and miniscule I felt. I can put up a wall with this person. I can not let them hurt me like that again.
*
On a happier note, I was fortunate to see so many good friends this week, to take my favorite thirteen-year-old to coffee and ballet, to have canal-side drinks and catch up time with a pal after work one day, to laugh my way through trivia with old friends--Pops and Phatty and Jojo and Bubbles and my fellow Gin Blossom--then on Thursday, drinks and pizza in south Seattle with a glam couple.
*
So for today, all I can do is do me. I can seek to understand the complications of love and family and pain through my writing.
Straw into gold.
*
Today's jam:

shranque the shrinque

So my CEO shrink became ill during our session this week. She was getting over bronchitis, she told me. First, a break for water, then for an inhaler, but neither seemed to help. She sat down, appearing to listen to me but she was also staring intently at my knees with watery eyes, so I gently suggested that we stop for the day.
She demurred. I'm fine.
You always say, accept the things you can't control, I said.
She laughed, and made a face. And we called it a day.
*
The thing is, I could have used someone to listen to me this week. It's Mother's Day tomorrow, and I miss my mom so much. Even 12 years later! She was a vibrant, vivacious soul and is terribly missed. This is a weekend to remember, to stay off social media, to avoid stores and restaurants and events.
To hide. To create.
*
Working on tattoo ideas. This one below is a contender. Like so much in life, I'm not sure how to get it.

shoegaze

I wonder about my self--my Self--and whether she is or ever will be fully established.
Is getting older the establishment of Self?
Or merely the calcification?
I'm trying to stay fresh and open and confused (yasss Geo Saunders) but such a state can be so painful, no?
I realized that a former shrink passed away last fall, and I hadn't known. Andy was a genuinely lovely person and perceptive, kind, thoughtful listener. In one of our first sessions, I said to him, "I'm shy," and he didn't say a word, just raised one of his magnificently expressive eyebrows and smiled.
The current shrink is no less talented, and this week she probed, and the pain was exquisite. I'm still reeling.
Tomorrow is a day that I dread each year. Eleven years since my mother departed this Earth.
I miss her so.
There were good things this week, too, and I must remember them.
Drinks and giggles and intensity and hugs with a friend in town from California.
Happy hour with another dear girl. A workday visit to KEXP, where we trooped into the herbacious green room and felt like uber-squares.
Getting somewhere with a few stories, slowly, microscopically.
And new (to me) music! Erik Blood, featuring a new friend's vocals. Check it on bandcamp.

bittersweet

Bittersweet is great for chocolate but tough on the heart. Missing my momash today.
Eleven years since I kissed her goodbye for the last time.
At the coffee shop today I picked up a heart-n-hatchet cookie.
Seems appropriate for this conflicted kind of day.

confuze

Lots on my mind and it's hard to think straight. Missing momash--it's been 10 years since we lost her. Yula and I visisted the cemetery with sunflowers and yellow Gerbera daisies, chocolate cherry drinks and a chocolate covered graham cracker. We put our arms around each other and looked at the grave stone and wept. The loss is fresh somehow. We talked about her. To her. I know she's not there but when it's time to go I hate saying good-bye. We talked to my grandma and aunt, who were at the cemetery in Kansas, having braved the snow and cold to leave a rose for her. I had a moment where it was too much and I couldn't speak. Then we FaceTimed with our sis in Canada and Ms Hammy (distracted by wardrobe planning for a dance last night).
She was a good momash and we were lucky to have her.
*
A doorway looked at two ways, in LQA.

recipe

Don't think I've said much about my grampa Bill. He was a tough old guy, worked on oil rigs in western Kansas most of his life and gardened and cooked in his spare time. The man had a way with candy--the holidays were a glutten fest of fudge, divinity, peanut brittle, and his fruitcake. A little fruitcake goes a long way, but I dug up the recipe the other day and with some customization--candied citrus from DeLaurenti and a splash of rum--I think it'll be delicious. Also, the recipe card is spotted with batter and was handwritten by my Mom, which makes it extra special. Miss you Momash.

Miss you Momash

We lost my mother 7 years ago today.
My sis, niece and I made our annual trek to the cemetery. It's pretty remote so we had a little trouble finding it. Then, when we finally arrived, we had trouble finding Mom! We walked up and down the rows, careful not to step on any of the stones. Finally I yelled "Mom! Did you move and not tell us?"
We all cracked up. That would have been classic Mom.
We found her, finally, set down some daisies and chocolate covered graham crackers and told stories, how she gave my niece her first diet soda at 8 months, how the former health-food-nut thrived in later years on a diet of cheeseburgers and brownies.
It's still hard to believe, and harder still to find a way to write or talk about it. I'm just glad we had her, and glad my sisters and I have each other.

Miss you Mo

Six years ago today we lost my mom.
It was sudden but not unexpected. I'm still sad, I still miss her every day. Six years on I'm no less resigned, in fact I'm still pretty pissed off about it.
However, I also realize I'm lucky to have had such a good mom. I'm lucky to have my sisters and aunts and cousins and nieces and a very feisty 88-year-old grandmother who remember her and feel that twinge of sadness with me today.

Miss you Momash.

Call me Chip

I picked up a pair of shoes from the cobbler today. The whole idea pleases me immensely--drop off an injured shoe--heel worn down, strap torn--and turn up three weeks later to pick it up. Besides the obvious draws--recycling, supporting a local small business--there's also the fact that my great-grandpa was a cobbler. We have a photo of him standing in the basement of the Kansas hotel where his shop was located, wearing a long leather apron, surrounded by dozens of pairs of shoes.
*
His son, my grandfather, loved to refinish furniture. My aunt told me this, in April. How did I not know? Maybe I did, deep down--a whiff of sawdust brings back a flood of happy grandpa memories, a madeleine a la Proust. When I was a kid, his daughter--my Mom--re-did an entire cherry wood upright piano, sanding and varnishing it completely by hand. Next winter, when I'm tucked away in the basement with my Dremel contour sander, sweat dripping off my safety glasses, I'll think of them and this wood-working DNA we share.
*
I also inherited another of mom's affinities. From the bus this morning I spied a pile of interesting junk on a corner, labeled with that magical word: FREE. Later, I detoured to that corner, and sure enough, the pile was still there. What I thought was a shiny red bread box was a strange square microwave, with a broken door latch. I walked on. Oh well. Free isn't worth extra radiation with my nachos.

Momash Day

Momash is what my sisters and I called our mom. I can't remember why.
Another nickname we had for her was Eagle.

When, back in the late 1980's, she came home from the hospital after a life-threatening illness, we hovered over her like anxious waiters. Being a feisty, independent spirit, she reluctantly allowed us to do a few things--make her tea, help her on the stairs--but she drew an absolute line at assistance in the bathroom. She would shuffle inside and close the door firmly. Quiet seconds would tick by. Then, triumphant, she'd call, "Eagle has landed!"

Eagle left us over five years ago.
I still miss her as though it were yesterday.
We're going to try and observe Momash Day today as sisters, for the first time since. It will involve chocolate covered graham crackers, and a thrift store or two. Lots of laughs, definitely some tears.
Miss you Momash.

My 2nd favorite holiday

Happy April Fool's Day! In my opinion, this day ranks second only to Halloween, because just as with the big H, there's no special menu involved, no minimum family dosage, no hoary songs or ill-suited gifts. What could possibly be better than one entire day devoted to pranks, jokes, and tomfoolery?

This was my first AFD at my new job, so I dialed it back a little. Just a little. I reeled in a few suckers, but gently.

The last e-mail I got from my mom was dated February 13, 2004. She'd forwarded a dog joke, along with a few extra lines telling me about her recent road trip. April Fool's Day makes me feel close to her. Her corny jokes embarrassed me mightily when she was still with us, but now I think I'd give anything to pick up the phone and hear her pretending to be the U.S. Postal Inspector.

Beautiful Mary

Five years ago today we lost my Mom.
*
It’s still hard to say that she “passed away” or that she “died.” Those words seem to have no bearing on my mother.
To say that we lost her somehow seems most accurate.
My sisters and I still feel a deep sense of loss.
She’s not with us.
We aren’t quite sure where she is.
*
After her memorial, someone said—intending to be kind—that heaven must have needed another angel. I replied angrily, Well, no one from heaven checked with me.
I still feel that way.
Cheated. Sad. Mad. Lonely.
She’s not with us, and yet she is. In our memories, in Lynn’s goodness and Jill’s mad sewing skills, in my dark eyes and Martha's laugh, in our Mom stories of chatting up strangers on buses or garage sale-ing or whistling the Hallelujah Chorus.
In dark chocolate graham crackers and diet Dr. Pepper and gooey brownies.
*

Today, I took Mom’s collection of heart jewelry with me to the cemetery.
Do you know how busy cemeteries are on Valentine’s Day?
I took her heart jewelry with me, and looked at it and photographed it.
I watched fat robins hopping around in the bushes. I looked up at the fir trees and breathed in the piney air.
What hit me hardest that day five years ago was knowing that my mother would never again walk the earth, see her beloved trees, inhale the cool sea air.
*
The heart jewelry always seemed corny to me.
She had stick pins, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, brooches, hearts of all sizes and shapes. I think now that her obsession with hearts wasn’t naïvete. It was a decision. It was a challenge.
Mom wore her heart on her sleeve, quite literally.