Story #14 - For My Mother

Hi everyone! Happy Mother's Day. This story is different from any of the other ones, because it's a "tribute story". It's for my mom, the best mom ever. It's not only Mother's Day today - it's also my mom's birthday. So this following story consists of a few of my most significant memories of our time together. Hopefully anyone who reads it will be able to find similar experiences!

Title: For My Mother
Warnings: None
Summary: A tribute to my mom. :)
Length: ~1,500 words
Notes: First person point of view, mostly past tense. I suppose this fits into the memoir genre, and inside that, it's a tribute. I don't know if tribute is a genre, but it should be!

Enjoy!

My mom has my hair - well, I guess I have hers. Long and blonde and wavy. She has an easy laugh and smile. She’s tone deaf but loves to sing out loud. She can’t fathom why I like instrumentals but she loves the Beatles and “songs with a beat”. She likes to make up words, like “scrunkly” and “boof” and “mosy”. The definitions of these words change to fit her sentence.

                My mom likes to play Angry Birds on her new iPad. She also likes to watch old shows and movies that she grew up with (and she wants me to watch them). She loves sunny weather and hates clouds and rain. She’d prefer if I went to college on the West Coast but won’t stop me from moving to the East Coast.

                There are so many more things I could tell you about my mom. She’s really a character! Suffice to say, she’s my mom, and it’s her birthday today, on Mother’s Day. So this is a tribute, so to speak, to my mom.

                Mom, I love you, more than infinity and past forever. J              

My very first memory is of my mom. It’s not a particularly significant memory (apart from being my first), but it’s an odd one. It was August of 1996, and I was about two years old. My family and I were visiting the East Coast. On this day, we were walking along Boston Harbor, where our rebellious forefathers enacted the Boston Tea Party. It was a windy day, and before we knew it, the wind had snatched my mom’s hat from her head and tossed it into the water!

                The rest of my memory isn’t very clear. We might have gone to a restaurant after the hat incident. I know at some point we had someone fish out the hat for us using a long pole. That’s all I remember, but it’s enough. Enough to know that my mom has been with my since my very first memory, and even before that.

                In preschool, it seemed like everyone had a rock with their name on it. Not a pet rock, just a small pebble with their name written on it. It was the thing to have, and I wanted one. I told my mom about it, and she agreed to get me one.

                I remember walking around my preschool, searching the ground for a perfect rock, my small hand held in my mom’s, feeling happy and safe. I remember carefully going through every rock that we found until we hit the perfect one – gray, shaped like an oval, and about the size of… well, of a small pebble.

                My mom wrote my name on it. I still have it, tucked in my “memories” box. I only need to look at the word “Julianna” written in my mom’s handwriting to remember that day and the feeling of being safe and loved.

                My parents met in England. They also decided to get married in England. And when they left England, they agreed to come back in twenty years. The first time, they left my brother and me with our aunt (my mom’s sister).

                It was the first time my parents had ever left me for an extended trip. They were probably only gone a week or so, but it felt a lot longer to my young mind. I had never thought I could miss my mom and dad as much as I did. They sent presents to us every day, but presents could never make up for their mere presence.

                When my parents came back, they realized that they liked England so much that they wanted to go again – and this time, they wanted to bring their kids! I was only seven or eight, so I didn’t understand all that well, but I just knew I wouldn’t be left alone again, and that was good enough for me.                                                                                                                                                                                       I don’t remember too many things from our two trips to England back in the day. But I do remember one moment in 2003. The fifth Harry Potter book was out, but there were too many big words in it for me to read it alone. My mom and I would read it together, lying next to each other by the pool. She would patiently tell me what this or that word meant, and we would read. It was great.

                In eighth grade, I was having a lot of trouble with math, especially factoring. I just didn’t get it, and that really frustrated me. To be honest, I was used to things coming fairly easily to me. But factoring wasn’t coming easily to me at all. In fact, it wasn’t coming at all.

                I brought it up with my mom. It had been ages since my mom had done factoring, but she said the magic words: “I’ll help you.”

                Of course, those words didn’t seem too magical an hour into my mom’s impromptu tutoring session. My mom had spent the previous night combing through my Algebra textbook, relearning how to factor so she could teach me.

                I remember being frustrated at first. Factoring was always frustrated to me. But as my mom patiently explained this or that to me, gradually things began to make sense. And after my mom’s help, I found that factoring wasn’t so bad after all. I finally understood it.

                Both my mom and I are readers. We often have “reading breakfasts” when we read books while we eat. Sometimes we’ll have “reading lunches” and even “reading dinners”. We go out in our hot tub and read books. If we have a second of spare time, we’ll pick up a book (or, nowadays, an eReader). We always carry reading material with us.

                Reading is a truly unique pleasure. I’ll never tire of simple joy of turning pages (or pressing a button) and the happiness at escaping into another world, even if your own world is perfectly fine. The excitement of meeting characters that you like and even characters that you hate. The fun of reading great dialogue.

                But the best part? Discussing books with other readers. I can’t count the number of times I’ve discussed a book that we’ve both read with my mom. I also can’t count the number of my books I’ve told her to read and she has… and the number of books my mom told me to read and I haven’t.

                Well, I did read Bridget Jones’s Diary… J We can discuss that, mom!

                Another thing I share with my mom is the TV show Lost. I remember the fateful day that the pilot of Lost was free on iTunes and I decided to download it. It had an actor I liked, and I had heard many friends and strangers rave about it. I wanted to know what was so good about it.

                I’m not going to say what’s so good about it, because then I’d wax poetic for another few pages and we really don’t have time for that. Suffice to say that it’s a great show, and I knew that from the very first episode. That and I was hooked.

                My mom took me out to Best Buy to purchase the first season. I was really excited. But even more excited because my mom had promised to watch the pilot with me. And there’s something that I’ve found out in life – if you like something, it’s a thousand times better to share it with you loved ones. So you can discuss it, of course, but also just so they can enjoy it too. And I suspected that my mom would enjoy it.

                My mom told me later that she planned to watch Lost with me largely because I wanted to, but she didn’t really think she’d be that into it. To her surprise, she became hooked as easily as I did. The nights after that became a blur of trying to finish my homework quick enough to curl up with a blanket or two, maybe a cat, and my mom and watch an episode (maybe two episodes if we were lucky) of Lost. I will always remember that time with fondness.

                Even better, just this winter my mom and I rewatched all of Lost. It’s rare enough to be blessed with a mother who will watch six seasons of a really intense, 50-minute show with you. But it’s truly miraculous to have a mother who will rewatch it all, and at the same breakneck speed as the first viewing!

                Mom: happy birthday and happy Mother’s Day. I wish you a great day today and for all the years to follow. You’re the best mom ever, as these memories show! I’m looking forward to making more vignette-worthy moments in the future. Like watching Lost for a third time. J And who knows what else! The possibilities are endless.

                Love,

                                Your daughter J