Mother's Day rumination

as some of you know, i was raised by my grandmother. my mom's a junkie. i've met her a few times, starting (besides birth, that is) at the age of 18, culminating in her move to Jacksonville, Florida, where i had moved to at the age of 22. we hung out a few times, but one of the last times i ever saw her was when she conned me into buying crack cocaine for her. i won't go into it here, but enough will be said when i say that the experience made me pretty bitter about her.

i haven't seen nor heard from her in about ten years now. that's just the way i like it. for all i know, she's still in Jax, or maybe buried somewhere.

which brings me back to my grandmother. she was, and will ever be, the only woman i will think of as a mother figure. when you ask me about my mother, i'm likely to forgo bitching about my junkie biological one, and instead talk to you about my jolly surrogate one.

here's a little anecdote that should illustrate what a mother is:

i came home to New Carlisle, Ohio in 2000 for my ten-year class reunion. she had been sick for a few years by then, and had already staved off a few cancers... but cancer again was starting to take her, this for one last time. she had stayed in her bed, in her room, for a few years, rarely ever coming out.

i had a hardcore reaction of some kind to the environment... i'd guess that it was a massive sinus infection. for a day or two i lay, barely able to think or move, on the re-upholstered version of the sofa we used to lie on together when i was a child, on lazy summer days.

the image of that time, burned in my brain forever, is of my grandmother coming out of the hallway, hobbling pitifully on her cane, coming out to lovingly play nurse for me (she had once been enrolled in nurse's school in her youth).

barely able to walk by herself, she was caring for her sick grandchild again. she looked alive, concerned, tasked... purposeful.

love is a wonderful, amazing thing.

so are mothers.