Remember When

Remember when you were 12 or 13 and you and your friends were waiting at the mall for your mother to come pick you up and drive everybody home?  And do you remember the feeling when she showed up and she had only remembered to put make up on one eye and had left one roller in her hair in the back?  That feeling never goes away, does it?  Not even when you’re 40.

My mother is a woman who stands on sentiment and familiarity.  She finds comfort in the nostalgic and seeks solace in habit.  I understand; I am her mini-me after all.  However, I have given up much sentimentality and living more pragmatic ways.  Don’t get me wrong, I did briefly contemplate saving the hair I’d plucked from my chinny chin chin last night, but it’s not what you think.  For days before, I had been sure it was there and was just eluding the pinch of the tweezers.  I had fairly gouged my chin in an effort to get at it over and again.  All I’d succeeded in doing was bleeding and scabbing and then mistaking the scab for the hair and beginning the cycle of insanity all over again.  Anyway, yesterday, as I was sitting in an in-service, I found myself, once again, worrying at my chin and lo and behold if I finally hadn’t managed to find the elusive hair!  I couldn't be more excited to get home, go run upstairs and pluck the offending little thing from its stronghold.  Which I did.  And for the briefest of moments, I gave some serious thought to tucking the little bastard into some scrapbook.  It had occupied so many of my waking thoughts and moments that I felt, almost, connected to it.  (Insert stupid attachment joke here)

All that to say that I understand attachments to things, no matter how seemingly insane that it is.  When, on Easter, my mother had presented me with a paper bag holding half a dozen or so plastic eggs with candies inside of them, I was not surprised.  And, if you think that the fact that she gave them to me in a paper bag is odd…no, it’s not.

I opened one or two of them…mini Reese’s cups or small foil wrapped chocolate miniatures were inside of some, a few jelly beans in others.  All in all, I was actually pretty pleased, as, even if I’d sat down and eaten what was in every single one of them, I wouldn’t be putting myself in a caloric position to have to skip dinner later. 

Over the next couple of days, I was pretty good about rationing myself an egg or two whenever I thought about it and when I’d exhausted all of the sugar, I set the plastic eggs aside in a pottery bowl on top of the china cabinet until I could ask my mother if she wanted them back.  And promptly forgot about them.

My mother came over last night to help me do a few things and she’d evidently seen the eggs on top of the china cabinet, as she mentioned them when we were sitting in a booth waiting for our dinner to get to the table. 

“Do you know where I got your Easter eggs?”

Insert quizzically fearful look, “I don’t dare ask.”

“Well, you know the ****’s house?”

“Oh dear god.  Mooom!” (Although with my Buffalo accent it came out “Maaahm!”  Pretty.)  I couldn't imagine what she was going to wind up saying, but I knew that this story was headed somewhere I wasn't going to like.

Mom bursts out laughing.  “Sophie (the big headed, smiling pit bul….sorry…Staffordshire Terrier) and I were out walking the night before Easter and they had put them out all over their lawn…”

“Mom!”

“Well, I wouldn’t have taken any if there wasn’t a ton of them out there!” she justified…and still laughing.

“And you aren’t in the least bit embarrassed to be saying this?!”

“Why should I be?”

And that’s my mother for you. 

I hope this helps to clear a few things up.