my mother

my mother. when i think of her, i think of cigarettes and french manicures. i think about her unwavering green eyes that i was always jealous that i did not inherit. my eyes, the same blue as my father’s. i think about my mother’s huge purse with an iphone inside. i think about her face the morning we watched my father die together.

how many years had it been since i’d spent a night with my mother? and the one we spent was curled together on a rollout hospital cot listening to my father’s breathing slow. i think about her strength and her viciousness in the same moment and it takes my breath away.

this beautiful complicated woman, my mother. she has always been my greatest adversary, the voice i hear inside my own head as my inner monologue. the leo she is, sits across the zodiac from my aquarius, just as she has sat across from me in life. she is and always has been governed by fire, the same rage that burns inside me, also burns inside her. but i am an air sign, i’m the oxygen that fire needs to burn. am i her adversary too?

we go out today to do some shopping. we go to our favourite thrift store and she buys me candles and a vintage dress. we go for lunch and talk about my struggles and hers, too. the world rejected her just as it has rejected me. when i was diagnosed with autism, she declined to see it at first, and now, it is obvious where it came from. her brain, just like mine, fixated on justice that doesn’t exist, seeing patterns where others see oblivion.

how can we be so similar and yet so dfferent? this dance of the mother and the daughter that we do has always seemed like a struggle for who will come out victorious. there are no girls weekends, not with us. but we make sauerkraut and pierogi and borscht. we talk about the abuse my grandmother went through, and then later dished out. we talk about the war and trauma.

we have such a strange relationship.

when we visit, we sit on the front step and smoke cigarettes and drink black coffee together and yet it can feel sometimes like we send messages back and forth from other planets.

she is beautiful, but of course, like with everything, she doesn’t see it. i notice it today as she is handing me her roasting pan. i’m the one who cooks christmas dinner. a tradition passed on now to me. my mother talks about the best way to roast brussels sprouts and i realize how beautiful she is as she prattles on over carrots and potatoes.

i realize how much i’m looking forward to christmas dinner with her this year.

it’s such an odd feeling because there have been times since the death of my father where i haven’t been able to find much to look forward to.

she sends me home with bags of food and a thrift store dress.

i love her, so much, my mother.