29 year old me misses my 6 year old self.
Moreover, she misses her Mom. 23 years ago my Mom managed to hold a cigarette in her mouth while simultaneously singing/cleaning/cooking/watching me & my sister (then 2). Impressionable 6-year-old me was awed and amazed by her, my real-time Mom, not by the cartoon mothers or TV mothers I had vague recognition of. Even my young mind knew that those mothers were made up, make believe and I knew that my Mom was real – I mean, I lived with her.
Obviously the years have given me insights and have thrown the blinds of innocence off of my dark brown eyes but the memory refuses to be tarnished. I still hold in silent reverence the image of my beautiful Mom caring for us, loving us and her happiness continues to shower over me. Time has made me wiser (and older) but I can still look back at my Mom, all those years ago, and see her with the innocence of a child – before reality came into play. I can still hear the records, see the cigarette smoke, see her big, round, tinted glasses, and hear her strong voice singing along to the music. I sat among the noise pretending to read but really watching her, memorizing her.
I smile as I think that my sister, then 2 and now about to become a Mom for the first time, probably doesn’t have much recollection of this Mom that I remember.
In years to come I hope I can laugh with my nephew and recall my memories of the apartment where his Mom & I were young, the apartment that my younger sister lives in now and will probably be in for a few years. An apartment that, when I lived there briefly as an adult, still invoked memories, ghosts of laughter and tears. I could still see the memories playing on the wall.
People change and grow, surroundings change and grow old but the memories that form our belief systems remain intact – if only colored by the tiniest hint of blue, reminding us that time moves forward not back and that sometimes memories are all we have.
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