Mourning Mom

I mourned my mother last night. I've been mourning her for more than a year now, but I think it was different this time. This time, I missed her with no reservations. No judgment. No blame. This time, when I cried for her, I was in her arms. Surrounded by her smell, her soft arms I would rub in my hands and say felt like kneaded flour. Not hard like mine. And I would laugh. She would smile. Oh, the arrogance of youth.

I was twenty-nine when she died. I wasn't a mother.

I miss her now. And in missing her, I am inexorably drawn to miss my childhood, my teenage years, my youthful twenties. I miss knowing that my entire life is ahead of me. Possibilities are now crystallized into goals and everything is over thought and analyzed. Every decision has an end. Objectives have replaced dreams. There is a hard edge to imagination and there is never, ever enough time.

I want to relive that. I want to be able to ignore dishes in the sink and be perfectly, completely oblivious to laundry piling up. I want to surprise myself by stuffing something hot into my mouth without blowing on it first. I want to enjoy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches without the worrying about gaining weight. I want to forget phrases like “glycemic index.”

And then I look at my three month old. I love how she sleeps with her hands by her side, a tiny perfect being on the seat of a couch and her defiant, confident cry that announces to whoever will listen that she is hungry. How she gives herself up wholly in her sleep, how she smiles with her entire body. I hate to think growing up is going to change that. I want to rescue her, but I cannot. I am on the other side of the river and I cannot carry her across. I can only throw out a mental bridge – soft as a cobweb – and hope she catches it. She has to bear her own weight, swim against her own tide.

I wish my mother was here to see me swim against mine.

Then again, there is a certain beauty in her not seeing me struggle through the ugly pupal stage of becoming an adult. Through her, in some small place in my heart, I can remain forever a child. I can waste time by sleeping in. I can burn my lips and never learn. I can get my clothes dirty in the rain and let my daughter do the same. It’s just as fine to throw a fit and cry over being bored in the summer. It’s all just fine. Because when you are a child in the world of mothers, everything is just all right.

It's a huge responsibility to be a mother to my daughter, this tiny being now nestled in my arms. But then again, it's the easiest thing in the world. I just have to be here. As long as I can. And I have to love her and hug her for a lifetime.

I am the bridge between my mother and my daughter. And I am here.