My mother, I’d lay around the living room floor soaking in the warmth of natural light flowing in from the windows. Her, in that old brown reclining chair, smoking, drinking, rocking.

The world is different.

I’m different. The old me is the old you. The new me, something you never had a chance to know.

I’ll never know.

The early years.

The beginning. Where it all went wrong.

Mental health. Abuser. Lover. Husband. Lost in sadness.

Years.

My own family. Did you understand the energy? Not possible.

She died. Three children. Three little girls. Helpless. Homeless. A father. A stranger. Where does time abandon us to go? The flowers were yellow and purple, wilder than our family? More peaceful.

Outside.

An encounter with the past. It was all surface level. Appearance. Sound. Space.

Expression and emotion. Who knew anyone? Lacking depth. Connection. Honesty.

To you, about you,

I remember a Mother’s Day. Wisconsin. A planned surprise. I was instructed to sit on a stump in the front yard. Watching. Waiting. There the memory fades. The day fades. The hope fades. Trying so hard to create. I’m failing. A transitional point. To imagine an ideal version. Wrong. Selfish. It’s not fiction. I don’t’ write fiction. Writing to you, about you, I love you.

Most of my childhood I was an observer of the life happening around me. I never had any real thoughts of my own, any dreams of life beyond what I could see each day, or any concept beyond the realms of our home.  My ability to act was limited to when the need arose in a life threaten situation.  Even then I knew whether I could intervene and help. On many occasions I would just stand and stare because I knew I could do nothing.

The violence. The drugs. The sex. The accidental and unfortunate.

My mother passed away when I was twelve and prior to that I had a limited sense of time and couldn’t correlate time to memory.  Even to this day I can’t remember the ages when things happen. Mostly I judge my childhood based on whether it was before or after her death. One day during this period, before my mother died, we were doing our normal sit and watch tv while my mother drank afternoon.  

Per usual I was sitting on the floor, my mother on her brown rocking reclining chair, I had gone into the kitchen to put away my bowl after eating cereal. When I came back, she was on the floor, choking. The breath had left her while she held her throat. I struggled as a little girl to dial 911. Of course, I knew how and was capable, but I shook uncontrollably, and I struggled to push the buttons correctly. 911 was called, my mother was revived, I was traumatized. We never spoke of it.

A little girl in an isolated world, a violent world, a world of confusion.

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