10:02 a.m. - 2010-11-15
Fragments of My Mother
How does the mind decide which memories stick? The ones set on replay, like a favorite song? How can a full life reduce to a handfull of markers, arbitrarily chosen by subconscious whim? So clearly I recall the year she made mother/daughter dresses. I was six, maybe seven. They were crisp, white cotton imploding with a dizzying array of gingerbread men, oven baked brown with cherry cordial smiles. I was so proud walking beside her, so grown up in my identical dress. Not realizing that I was no taller, but that she so graciously stooped. I remember, too, the special cakes she made. The Easter lamb with coconut wool. I can feel the dry pointy slivers, bitter against my tongue, even today. The checkerboard cake she made only once. I remember her talking about it, not so long before she passed, wondering aloud how she had ever managed it. Marvelling at how she had navigated the unwieldy length of waxed paper and sifted flour, guided only by a greasy, folded page in Woman's Day. And, my favorite was the birthday cake. Moist and round with periwinkle frosting, magically forming a southern belle skirt for my silky haired doll, submerged to her waist. How is it my mind has written these fragments indelibly onto the blueprint of my heart? Which ones have escaped my notice? How many days did she make me laugh, meticulously pull off a bandaid, repair my teddy, kiss me goodnight, that I don't remember? That I'll never retrieve? Or, like a broken string of pearls, will I find them one by one in a dark corner of my soul? Waiting to be discovered. Reassembled in the persistent light of yearning.
�
�
