My own mom

Jet Blue flew my mom up to my cute red brick house for the weekend. The pilot hovered above my house long enough for her to climb down a rope ladder, and we put our lovesac on the lawn, and she landed with a graceful poof. I grabbed her arm and her shirt and pulled her around, showing her the tulips, the old window panes, and I let her go only because I wouldn't let her carry her suitcase. I gave her a tour of the inside of my house as well, the wood flours, the torn surfer magazine pictures with our autographs, the dungeon, and the white lights in my room. She was my own mom, in my house, and it felt really good to have her there.

When she is happy, or proud, or even silly and sarcastic, her voice goes soft and high. Sometimes I hear my grandma come out of her voice, and I love it. When she is telling a story, her voice carries emotions, and I have a greater understanding of them as a result. My mom and I share the same hands. During my mission, I rarely missed my family, like three times in the year and a half, and this was partly because I felt my mom's presence always in my hands. When she is tired she is an inch shorter. When she is sad, she doesn't seem to fit into any form at all.

This weekend, it was lovely to see my mom again. We went to the duck pond, a quirky attraction (young mothers, lip-smacking couples, aspiring photographers, and little boys who love to chase ducks). My mom and I sat and admired a mother duck, sitting on her 9 babies, completely altered in form to cover them up. The father rested nearby, and kept an eye on his family. My mom had her sketchbook and mused aloud over their various markings and tracings, trying to capture the life of a duck family. "He has a flat beak doesn't he... and look, there is a line that runs through their eyes... and black feet!" She was as interested as the one-year old little girl, gawking at the birds, but with a life's experience enhancing her ruminations.

As my mom sat and studied the birds, I desperately wanted to hold one. I wanted to feel the soft slick feathers, and I wanted to feel the warmth of the bird. I wanted to examine not through eyesight alone, but through touch and smell, and also through a sense of trust between the bird and myself. Growing up, I was allowed to touch. My mom keeps a beautiful garden, and when she used to trim the giant hedge that acted as a fence, I took all the branches and built a fort on the driveway. I went as far as to rub the green of the plant onto my face, marking myself as a child of the bush. She also let me run my fingers through dry macaroni, and have macaroni tea parties with my tea set. In the summer, when days were long, my sisters and I collected all the empty containers and scratch paper we could find, and built paper cities. An upside down paper cup could be a small home, and an empty cracker box turned into an apartment building. My mom always made it possibly for me to have a constant supply of watercolors, to paint the world as I saw it. She allowed for me to interact with the world on a very tangible level.

My mom is as tangible to me as the macaroni I played with. She is a very real force in my life, and I have been greatly shaped by her. I am thankful for her today, not just today, but especially today.