I (Heart) Mom

New York, NY - kc - Sunday, January 15th, 2006 : goo

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My mother, a widow, died in November, peacefully and unexpectedly. I don't think of myself as sentimental, but a year before she had amost died in a shocking choking incident, and after two days of chanting, "I love you, Mom," over the noise of a respirator, I was no longer the same daughter she'd had before. I have been wandering around with a camera--only occasionally taking pictures, trying to record the relevant places or memories, as if they were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle--or really, oddly shaped fragments of a scene you once thought you knew by heart, but now realize you didn't know at all. 1. My mother and I had just finished this crossword puzzle, sitting side by side on a bench in Battery Park City. I wanted to remember the day. She hated to have her picture taken. I told her I wanted to capture the puzzle and the Statue of Liberty in one shot. 2. The apartment. 3. The church where my parents got married. 4. A store window featuring the new, illustrated Elements of Style. My mother loved grammar, and she tried to explain the point these paintings were meant to illuminate. 5. My mother thought this place had the cheapest vodka, and we went out of the way to get here. 6. One of the last pansies in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 2005. It had suddenly occurred to me that if the weather got just a little bit colder, the world would no longer be recognizably the same as when she left it. 7. The valentine I might have given my mother in 2006.

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barry: kc I now what you are taking a about.

Nairi: this is wonderful. great job.

Peter: wow. just wow. this is a really moving entry...

adam: a+

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