Dear Mom...

Call me

Dear Mom,

You drove me crazy. You would call and say “Hey, this is your Momma. Call me”, and in my Type A way, I tried over and over to get you to leave a REAL message that actually told me what you were calling about. Not that it would have changed callbacks, but because I believed it was more efficient. And then, I would call you back, sometimes almost immediately, and you would say - “I forgot what I called you about. It’s okay. How is my little girl doing?”

Sometimes you would call and ask for a recipe…your recipe…of something you cooked almost every day, but that you had forgotten how to cook. For years I thought wow, she’s forgetting a lot, but now I think maybe that was your way of making up a reason to call me. You didn’t have to.

Dear Mom, you were wild and crazy and untamed and so NOT politically correct in any way. You blurted things out in the middle of a store and all I could do was cringe and then try to explain why that wasn’t okay and you would stare at me with your big chocolate brown eyes and say “Okay, I didn’t know.”

You asked weird questions. You know, those questions that everyone wonders about but never really asks? Sometimes in the middle of an intense conversation you would throw one of these weird questions out and I would ask “Why are you even asking that?” and you would respond “Because I want to know.”

I remember almost every conversation included the words “Do you know how proud I am of you?” Most often this was followed by a story about someone you met and told them all about how I was doing something smart or ingenious or unique and how impressed you were by it and me. I would stutter and change the subject as fast as I could because it made me nervous. I know you meant “I love you”.

Dear Mom, you drove me crazy with your running around throwing out ideas like rain during monsoon season. It seemed like you never stopped and sometimes, sometimes I felt small because of it. You were larger than life, bold, decisive, beautiful, and everyone adored you. You were SO creative. I felt overshadowed because I hadn’t found my space yet. I am sorry I didn’t tell you how amazing you were. I am sorry I made it about me when you were just being you.

Dear Mom, you drove me crazy with your misunderstanding of everything I am passionate about. You never really understood my love of animals or the earth or more eco conscious living or my yoga lifestyle. You liked your plastic bags and your Clorox bleach and your nonorganic food. You couldn’t understand what the fuss was about and no matter how many times I tried to explain it all, you just nodded your head and continued on as if you had never heard it at all.

You drove me crazy with your perfectionism. You knew how hard it would be for a woman to rise in the world and be heard and you pushed me to be the VERY BEST I could be so my path would be wider and more open. You expected me to use every last cell of my being to it’s ultimate; and, for years, it drove me to distraction and an overwhelming sense of perfectionism and criticism of self and others. I discovered my Self.

Dear Mom, you drove me crazy with all of your stuff. You liked lots of silk flowers and knick knacks and furniture and each thing had some crazy garage sale story or side of the road tale where you met the nicest people and it caught your eye. I think you built a bigger house because you needed to store all of your “bargains”. It’s not that I cared that you had it or wanted it or bought it or collected it. It’s just that when I sat surrounded by it, I felt like I couldn’t breathe and I was suffocating.

Dear Mom, you drove me crazy…so crazy…crazy good and crazy bad and crazy in between.

and right now, I so desperately wish we could be crazy together once more…

To my Mom, the craziest woman I ever knew who drove me crazy and taught me that crazy was the very best thing to be. You are gone but never forgotten…

Aprille XXX