Some Things Cannot be Taken Away

I will always be my mother’s daughter. No one can take that away. She was my mother and I will be forever grateful. She sang while she did the dishes, her colorful bandanna bouncing along. She taught me how to pick up things on the floor with my toes. We would make Rice Krispie treats and watch the Wizard of Oz. We both wanted to go over that rainbow. She loved me when I yelled at her, when I disappointed her, when I was selfish, when I was mean, when I was impossible to love, she loved me.

I loved her when she couldn’t remember my birthday, when she didn’t bake chocolate cake or yodel anymore, when she was scared.
She was my mother and I her daughter. We would protect each other with the blinding love that is born in the womb. Her by not telling me all the pain she felt, me trying desperately to keep the pain away.

We would always laugh and not appropriately, but at life’s sense of humor. My brother and I were with her at the Emergency room as her body grew tired and the muscles spent like frayed rubber bands A doctor was manually assisting her to go the bathroom. We ignored the indignity of the procedure. My brother and I volleyed crude commentaries of the irony, fifty eight years ago she was giving birth to a baby and today giving birth to a very firm turd baby, but it’s a beautiful little turd, in fact it was twins. She laughed till tears came, clutching my hand harder as the doctor continued the delivery. She admonished us for saying turd. She hated that word, about as much as fart. We of course had to use those words as many times as possible in our own twisted George Carlin routine.

This is my life, brief flashes of extraordinary light, tangled with comic pain and the strength of my mother’s fierce heart finding my way. I will always be my mother’s daughter.