Love boxed up for safe keeping.

A friend of mine recently said, "I feel like you go down Memory Lane everyday".

I really had a very happy childhood.  I have far more happy memories than sad.  Although my parents separated when I was six and divorced when I was seven, I didn't have one of those "I had to grow up fast" kind of childhoods.  I suppose I learned coping skills and took on a different kind of role than the role I would have taken had my parents stayed together. (They write books on this stuff!)  I was the one (and still very much am) that tries to make everyone happy, comfortable, content, less lonely... I work hard to avoid conflict and make everything better before it can get worse.  Sometimes it's exhausting and sometimes it's effortless.

What am I getting at?  I think my mom was sad and lonely a lot after her divorce.  I don't remember it specifically but I must have sensed something because I took on this "duty" to make sure she knew she was loved very, very much.  If by nobody else, at least she was loved by me.  I remember singing "You Are So Beautiful" to her when I was about nine and she felt embarrassed, maybe unworthy of the title.  I made me sad for her so I sang it loud and clear.

This brings me to my point.  I remember , when I was nine, ten, and older, leaving her notes to find when she came home (where was she??  Perhaps out with her boyfriend at the time.)  I would miss her so much.  I left notes simply stating "To Mom - I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!" in every way possible.  Decorated with stickers, markers, crayon, yarn.  On lined paper, plain paper, construction paper and a combination of all.  I even made messages from needlepoint.  You read that right.

embroidery and crayon

I know my mom loves me with every fiber of her being.

Saturday afternoon I was digging through a bin she had marked "kid stuff".  Inside were every report card, every tooth, every school project, every mother's day card, birthday card, Easter card my older brother and I made.  I choked up a little finding that she kept a small cardboard jewelry box that I had given her as a gift.  I had torn up paper into tiny little pieces and put it in the box.  My mom tells me when she opened it, I "patted my little finger in the confetti of paper and said in a soft voice, 'see?  It's soft so you can put things in it' ".

She still has all the proof of how much I (we) love her in a box.

embroidered garden