Mama and Me

This is Mama and me on Aunt Lois's flowered couch.

My Mama was killed in a car accident when she was thirty-seven.  I had just turned twenty.  

I have always felt robbed.  I can never remember a single time in my life when my Mama was holding me or hugging me.  This picture brings me a small bit of comfort.  She did hold me when I was a baby.  But maybe I should be mad when I look at this picture.  Since I don't remember Mama holding or hugging me, maybe she was holding me on Aunt Lois's flowered couch only because she had to.  After all, I was helpless.

I look closely at this photograph.  There is a bruise on Mama's left leg and I wonder what happened.  I wonder if she was kind of a klutz like me, always rushing around, trying to do everything at once, bumping into things, no matter how careful she tried to be.  

Mama had just washed her hair.  She always wore a head scarf when she had just washed and done her hair up in bobby pin pin-curls.  

I wonder if Aunt Lois knew how busy her livingroom looked - with all the different patterns on the couch and the floor and the curtains.  

Although I see patterns all around me, even in Mama's dress, and in a festively decorated Christmas tree in the corner, I see that I am wearing something colorless.  I am plain against a room of swirling colors and designs.  

The Christmas tree looks as though it is reaching out to Mama and me - reaching to annoint us with a touch. 

I look at Mama's arms wrapped around me.  I realize it actually looks more like she was holding on to herself...

To this day, I love a sofa with a floral design.

Blessings to you and yours!