For mom's unveiling

It hasn't quite been a year since my mother left us. As much as I miss her and found it jarring not to have her a phone call away anymore, I have realized just how much of her I carry around with me each day. Of course there are the physical artifacts: lush green pottery coffee cups, a painted wooden chicken that greets me when I walk into my house, the gold-framed mirror that hangs opposite my bed, a handful of necklaces, earrings, and socks with tiger stripes and ladybugs... things I didn't need but remind me each day of her passionate aesthetic sense, one that combined humor with Victorian flare, and usually on a thrift store budget.

I'm also beginning to recognize her various lessons and inclinations I hadn't till recently realized that I carry: A hatred for waste - I can almost hear her voice behind me when I cut the moldy edges off a block of cheese that's otherwise still fine... flare for the unexpected and quirky, when I bake blueberry muffins in 3-D dinosaur shapes (a tin she had gotten for me, of course). An inability to sit still and just...relax...when there are things to be seen -- parades, sheep shearing festivals, the ocean... Unabashed, nagging awe for small objects or details that have in some way achieved perfection: white daylilies in the height of bloom -- or a fresh boiled lobster (and when I say nagging, I mean that she would nag me, literally, to acknowledge agreement of the superlative).

Obscure memories of the time we shared have begun unfurling, as her life is now spread behind us as a complete tapestry. The years when she raised me seem just as far away as the later ones. These memories come and they go, often at unexpected moments:

Eating chocolate twizzlers on the Staten Island Ferry... inspecting all the potted plants (yes, all of them) and fresh-picked peas at Paisley's farm stand....The rose-colored, pleated, corduroy sailor dress she sewed for me before the start of 6th grade (it was amazing, at least by the standards of 1986 fashion)... The lights in our eyes in a community chorus concert at a local Elks lodge -- at the time she was in her 40s, I was about 12... Pepperidge Farm cookies in her office at school between classes...Stopping to read the plaque on Every. Single. exhibit at the Pompideau art museum in Paris, then cream puffs at the fountain outside...

Good memories. She did not waste her time here. I will try to share her lessons with my children. I wish of course that she were still here to share them herself, but I know she's never going to be all that far off, as long as I can keep these memories close at hand.

Miss you.