Little Story #27

The mommie and I didn't do well during my teen years. There was the normal stuff that mothers and daughters go through but it happened while so many other changes were shaking us both. I left home when I was 17, a few days after graduation. The mommie said she cried harder than she had ever cried. I cried too.
And.
I was back in a few months.
I registered at the local community college. I got a job at a upscale hamburger place. I found an apartment with a friend. Then my own tiny studio. And then I got hit by the truck,
And.
I was back.
It's funny when I look back at it but it wasn't funny then. I just could not get my adult life going.
Because the dog had caused me to step into the truck we sued the dog owner. They should have had the dog contained. It felt weird but I wasn't actively doing it. The mommie was. I got enough money to get to San Francisco, which was the last time I left home. I still wandered around with no real focus for years.
When the mommie and I talked on the phone it was always tense. She wanted me to go to college and be a more "normal" person. I didn't feel like I wasn't "normal". Years of tension went by.
We both started watching the soap opera, Days of Our Lives. We could talk for hours about it without fighting. There were good guys and bad guys and a few guys you could argue about but it wasn't real so the arguing felt fun. Slowly we repaired our relationship.
And then she started visiting me with out K. We had lots of time to talk. She bummed cigarettes from me. She ate the candy I kept in a jar. I worried that I was giving her lung Cancer and Diabetes. We had the one on one time we had always had when I was a kid. Things got better.
In some ways they never got to where we might have wanted them. She still wanted me to be something that I just wasn't ever going to be. We had been so close when I was a kid and we never got back there.
Once she told me she realized that she and Grandmom's relationship had become so fractured at the end. She didn't want that to happen to us. That relationship fell apart because the mommie wanted to have her own life, much like I did. I appreciated that she wanted to have a better relationship.
The mommie's dementia was the hardest thing I've ever had to watch. But it gave us a gift. We had a lot of time together. We played. We sang songs. I was the adult and she became the child. It was distorted but very sweet.
And.
Then she was gone.