Reminisce

I visited H-town this weekend, and my sweet mommy. It was the first time I'd seen her since January. It's basically criminal to go six months without seeing your mother if you only live three hours from her. I blame it on the price of gas, which, at three dollars a gallon, is almost a legitimate (albeit lame) excuse.

Still, it was nice to just lay around, unselfconscious, and eat pizza and ice cream with her. No matter how old I get that is the kind of home base she will provide. One where she and I lay around in our pajama's and watch fluffy girlie movies, talk politics over breakfast and a pot of coffee, and spend money we don't really have for the sheer sake of enjoying every minute together.

It's hard to think of leaving her again to move eight states and 2,000 miles away. I wish that I could take her with me, but for all of my trying she will not budge. She is determined to succeed in Houston. She will not be rescued away, carried off in a flurry of other peoples wishes. She will scrape and claw her way until that very last point of breaking - she will either go through the top or the bottom - but she will have done it entirely on her own.

And I wonder where I get it from.

For that I cannot begrudge her. No one (especially no one in this family) likes to be told they are doing it wrong. Be damned to Hell if you say those words to our face.

Anyhow, I feel pretty certain that she knows there's no way to hold me back from this plan. I talked about it so much over the weekend that I almost felt bad. Then made the mistake of telling my machismo uncle that I was making the move with my boyfriend??? Oh, sinner beware! I thought he might send me to the fires of hell, right after brunch.

I just don't want her to be alone anymore. After all these years she still hasn't made any real friends, and though my sister debates that she's never had any real friends I feel that my mother is totally capable of this. She is capable of giving so much love. Maybe L is right though, and she holds it back, reserves it like a special secret to be given only to the chosen.

So much I don't know about her. As a child I used to wait until I was left at home alone so that I could go through her dresser drawers. I don't know what I was looking for exactly. Clues, hints to her past. I know so little. I have one Aunt that I have never met or talked to, and hear less of. There must have been so much pain there. I never found it buried in her nightstand.

When I called my father for his appropriated Hallmark day, he talked incessantly about our family. He had stories and pictures and stories to go with pictures. Almost the whole family still lives in Pennsylvania. They are (reportedly) crazy back woods characters, who love to have barbecues and dances and play music under faded porch light. He jokes that I could write a book about them, but what he doesn't know is that I want to. That history - that extensive family that has been a lifelong mystery to me - that was the reason I wanted to get to know him. I wanted so badly to know where I came from. Lord knows I may never find out about my mother. Though, Lord also knows I will continue to try.

I looked at the photo of my father and mother, a year before I was born. They stand in the field of my great Aunt Millie, probably at some backyard get together. He is thin, with thick hair still fairly blonde from outdoor work and play. She is beside him, also still thin, wearing the exact same blues as he is in her jeans and shirt. She has my face, with bushy black hair to confuse the picture.

Like a foolish child I imagined what it would be like if my real mommy and daddy got back together after all these years. It's the kind of five year old fantasy I never before allowed myself to have. It's unrealistic, for all the pain and hurt my mother still harbors, and for the obviousness of my perfectly lovely stepmother. But for a minute I thought about it.

Maybe some piece of me feels guilty. I fear that she will think I've chosen him over her - though it's not that at all. Its the whole lot of them, and my sister too, and this beautiful dream of mine I've entertained for too long not to make it real. And, foolishly, I wish that she would just up and change her mind. Make this fourth cross country move with me. That she would want to be with her baby more than be alone and "make it".

This is all the more reason that I have to have a stable job to land with in the city. I will not put myself in a position that doesn't allow me to see her more than once a year. I need that mommy love. That one relationship that I have been so blessed with that will never ever change or falter. I need to see her cats, and the old dog we raised from a puppy. I need to smell her mommy smell - Covergirl makeup and soapy lotion. I need to be able to go to church with her, hold her hand during the "Our Father", and kiss her cheek when we all greet each other with "Peace Be With You".

I suppose time and space never change these bonds. What stories to tell...what stories will come...