Memories for my Mom

Dear Mom,

This morning I made your oatmeal muffins for breakfast. And then I decided that since I was on an oatmeal kick, I should make your oatmeal cookies too.

 

I've been trying to make your oatmeal cookies for five years now, and this is the first time they've turned out right. They didn't flatten out into weird shaped pancakes. They didn't disintegrate into exploding cookie shards. They didn't end up looking like fried eggs.

I never realized how much they depended on that perfect combination of talent, hard work, and blind luck.

Tonight, as I washed the dishes and watched the weather, I was thinking of you.

Mostly I was thinking about that time I came home on school break and we made oatmeal cookies and only actually baked a dozen cookies because we ate so much of the dough. We were pretty sick afterwards, but that dough was good. That's one of my favourite memories with you. Not because I don't have hundreds of other wonderful memories with you, but just because it was so much fun to laugh with you and do something that was just...being together.

Also, in case I haven't told you this, you have a fantastic laugh.

 

As I rinsed out the last dish and the steam from the sink fogged up the wind battered window, I realized why I'd been thinking about you all day.

You emailed me this morning about your dad.

I know it's hard to not be here right now. It's hard to not be here when your parents are aging, when the days your daddy remembers you are growing fewer and fewer. I know it's hard for you to not be able to help, even in the small ways, that you would be able to help with if you were here, instead of there. I know it's hard to be half a world away when the parents you love are aching, fading, dying.

I know because I know you.

You taught me how to be a daughter, just like you taught me how to be a mother.

Perhaps both too are a combination of talent, hard work, and, maybe not blind luck, but grace.

 

I know that you have memories with your own daddy, like I have memories with you. Memories that play themselves out subconsciously, perhaps, when we are missing each other, when we are longing for nearness. So I just wanted to remind you that, on the other side of the globe, I am baking oatmeal cookies and thinking of your laughter.

And soon, Buster Daddy is going to remember again his own moments with you too.

I love you.
Marian

PS The pictures of the boys are just because I know you'd rather have them than a letter any day. msf