Though I can no longer hear her voice, the memories are joyful, and that is everything.
Grocery shopping and riding in the cart, sometimes with my legs sticking out from the children’s seat, but more often piled into the cart itself along with the groceries. On good days, those that didn’t involve David and I resorting to blows, we were rewarded with red ropes of licorice from the deli counter at Champagne’s Grocery Store.
Late nights typing at her old black typewriter, her many Master’s papers, along with all of our high school projects.
One-piece bathing suits, full body coverups and bathing caps with ornate and colorful rubber flowers, just so she could sit under an umbrella on Hampton Beach, guarding the Scotch cooler full of sandy sandwiches and Penguin sodas as we swam in the ice-cold waters and collected starfish along the tide pools.
Those legs! My God, that women had legs!
Endowed in a way I’ll never understand, she found relief from Cruex in the summer months to sooth her heat-chafed skin.
Her laugh.
Her beautiful kind brown eyes, always sympathetic and filled with mirth.
Her smile.
The ‘age’ spots on her arms and her faded wedding ring on her hand. (I see these both on my own body now).
The smell of Replique on nights she and my father went out.
Baking brownies and magic squares knowing she couldn’t eat them.
Teeny, tiny lipstick samples and visits from the Avon lady.
Coffee and laughter with Aunt Marge at the counter in our kitchen on Red Coat Lane.
38 years gone, but still here in my memory, in my life, in my children.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.
Nancy Wiley writes. 