281 Days Until the Big Five-0

"Try to Remember the kind of September when life was slow and oh so mellow..."

My mother could not remember an address yesterday. It was not just any address, it was “ours”, hers and mine. My mother lived in many places over her 90 years but she spent the longest stretch in a building she bought with my father with money they borrowed from their sisters, my Aunt Ruth and my Aunt Lonia. Before we sold the building I emptied every drawer and cabinet. I found paper bags filled with black and white photos. I spent hours putting them in albums and asking my mother questions so I could fill in the facts of her life. I wrote down names and addresses and memories of events and stories. I wrote down how all the people were related to my mother and me. My mother remembered everything. She knew all her addresses from birth on and wrote them down somewhere. She could recall where other people lived and where she bowled with the team from Terry Sportwear, or why her own mother was standing in front of a train station with packages. She remembered weddings, funerals, bad tempers, funny expressions. I did my best to record it all. I did not want to rely on my memory. It was never as good as my mother’s memory. She loved elephants and there tons of ceramic elephants filling her apartment. Aren’t elephants known for having good memories? Was that her connection to this large animal she found so beautiful?

Once all the pictures were placed, I carefully took the albums back to my own home for safe keeping. Now I bring them to her in the nursing home hoping to jar her once iron clad memory. She reads the stories I wrote next to the pictures and I can see a faint smile and I say a silent prayer, remember Becky, remember your cousin who called you silly names. Remember Becky, remember the little boy you took care of whose mother owned the bakery where you had to go to work when you were only 10 years old. Remember Becky, the address of the building where this woman is gazing out of the first floor window, she was your best friend at the time. Her name is May. She is still alive Becky. You two still talk. And I think, May has no idea where Becky is now or what is happening. Now it is February, but soon spring will come and mother’s day is in May. My mind leaps from the picture of the woman named May leaning out of the window and into the green grass of spring and I don’t know if I will be with my mother on mother’s day this year. I want to gently kiss her wrinkled face, as wrinkled as an elephants skin and say Happy Mother’s day, just in case we are not together then, but I don’t want to jink myself so I fight back the tears and I find the strength to put a smile on my face for Becky so that is what she will remember and think about someday is me smiling. I got that strength from her. It is part of being Becky’s daughter.