A Stabbing Pain in the Solar Plexus

Collage cards by Rhonda Dore.

She made my first Halloween costume. Things were hurried and she had a new baby, and my costume became black tights and orange streamers made into a skirt. Brilliant. We laughed for years over the boys who tugged off those streamers, and I must have gone home with about three still holding to my makeshift waistband. A year later, she'd sew a clown costume for me that doubled as pajamas.

On Valentine's Day our teachers got the biggest most beautiful cards from us, made by our mother.

She carved two lamps from diamondwood found in the forests of Alaska.

She did paint by numbers exquisitely and precise.

She could be cranky, stubborn, religiously narrow minded, and stingy.

But she also made two hotdog sandwiches for me so that I could give one to the boy in my first grade class who I'd noticed came to school without a lunch.

She sewed a red gown for my Barbie, even a bathing suit. She loved to hike, picnic, and to swim.
And today on her birthday, I know how much she is, was, and always will be. And I miss her in a desperate, maddening way.

 My father has been gone for 12 years. I was trying to remember tonight if his first birthday away from us was as painful? I understand why they say our mother comes to guide us from this life to the next.

It hurts too much to write tonight. This is the best I can do.