Mom

Above at the top: Mom in 1971

Below: Tracey, Lori, Suzy, Mom, 2005

I had a pivotal conversation with my mother on Sunday evening. We discussed the ever-so-serious issues of marriage and children. She is the one person who knows me the best, and the one person whose opinion I respect the most. I learned a few years ago that what my mother thinks about what I'm doing is the most important; after that, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.

On Sunday night, I opened my heart to her (although she already knew anyway, just by looking at my face when I spend time with my nephews and nieces). She has incredible wisdom (and boy did she earn it). She didn't tell me what to do, but her way of asking me questions was pointed and discerning.

At one point as she was talking, something about her mouth looked exactly like her mouth when I was 5 and she was 30. I looked into her dark brown eyes and for a few flashing moments, the lines on her face disappeared and she had that green scarf in her hair that she used to wear when we went camping or when she was in a hurry to go out somewhere. In my mind I fast-forwarded all the way from 1975 to 2005, like in the movies when they make the music and talking speed up and then with a smash I was back into the present.

What she was talking about was what her years of marriage were like for her, and there is so much over-lapping between her and me, I could envision it clearly since I am now 35 and could easily imagine what she had gone through. There are so many interlocking layers: I could see one of my sisters in her as she spoke, and I could see myself, and listen to her story. My heart filled up.

She would be embarrassed to read this. She would think it was no big deal that evening, sitting in her back yard with the candle in between us. But I will remember that moment for the rest of my life, soaked into my cells, to recall someday with pleasure and nostalgia.