mother's day is always a hard one for me. even though she's been gone for a long time, i miss her every. single. day. she was such an amazing women & i am happy to have had her for the short amount that i did.
one of my favorite memories of my mom was in the early 1980s. now, we lived in a well, no easy way to say it, a shanty style apartment. it wasn't fabulous but she made it home. it was located at the end of the cemetery. it was a muggy summer in rural pennsylvania & my mother lay in our "front yard", if you could call it that. really it was a small patch of grass next to the parked cars. she was in her bikini on one of those little lounge chairs you buy for the beach. slathered in a mixture of baby oil & mecuricome. for those of you too young to remember, mecuricome was a dark red antiseptic that contained mercury. it came in a tiny bottle & you would dab it on cuts etc. she would pour the whole bottle into the baby oil, shake it & apply liberally. she was aiming for the "cher" tan....
she loved to read & her summer "novel" was mommie dearest. i brought her out an iced tea & sat with her for a few minutes and she turned to me & said "from now on i want you to call me mommie dearest"! i laughed and told her she was cuckoo. later that year i either read the book or saw the movie, i can't remember which, but i recall thinking, why in the everloving world would she want me to call her mommie dearest? i never did figure it out.
i love you mom.
