Hands

Dear Mother,

Do you remember walking me to school?  I remember the Autumn mornings, the air crisp, my hand slipped safely and gently into yours.  I remember the roughness of your fingers from your labours, cooking and cleaning, but more than that I remember the safety and warmth of my tiny fingers grasping at yours.  Your fingers have always seemed long to me, delicate.  I can close my eyes and remember your hands, your fingers, just as they were.

I remember skipping along to school, sometimes chittering out a child's conversation with you, sometimes singing, sometimes subdued by the early morning.  You never complained of those walks; in fact, you seemed to enjoy them.

Even when the weather turned cold you were right there with me, holding my hand and in my mind those will always be happy times, just the two of us.

I can almost feel your gentle fingers now, the same ones that applied band-aids and rubbed my back when I was sick and ran through my hair in times of sorrow.  Your hands made flower chains and made my bed and made my dinner, giving goodness after goodness to my life.  Yes, your hands at times brought chastisement, but even those moments were in love.

I know that no matter what happens, no matter where we are, you are still holding my hand, and I yours.

Letter Two

Dear Mother,

Remember the elephant, with me high upon it's back?

It was amazing to me that they'd let me do such a thing.  It was magic that I'd been chosen, of all the children in the whole world, to be allowed to have my body near such a special creature.  It had something to do with you, I knew it.  It was because my Mommy was there. It was so special my Mommy was there.

In a moment I was riding and waving and smiling, gazing out but more than anything, feeling the warmth of the large, gentle creature carrying my tiny self.  The magic of the world found me then, how something so huge could be so gentle to something so small, and what is trusted into our hands.  I didn't know it, of course.  Such a mind only saw the bright lights and the faces and felt warmth and a lurching step and a bubbling laugh - and magic!  I'd always believed in magic.

Something in the warmth of that large, gentle creature was the same as the warmth of my Mommy's lap when she read to me, my tiny body all twisted as children do to tuck themselves to the forms of those they love, tiny frame to the tiny frame of my mother.

The smell, of course, was different.  Circus smells - sweet and sweat and  wide open space filled with bodies and animals and dung and air instead of the smell of lotion and hairspray and warmth that was my mommy.

Maybe this is what made me look for her in the crowd.  I waved my pretty little girl wave, smiling, genuinely happy, but eyes always searching, wanting more than anything to find the smile upon her face.  I wanted to see the poofed out hair and the blue eye-liner and more than anything the matching smile.

I can close my eyes and feel that face more than see it, the warmth of that hug to carry me.  I'll remember that moment in the circus always, but I'll -know- my Mother's embrace forever.

Letter One

Dear Mother,

Do you remember when I was a little girl?  I know you do.  It was so very long ago to me now, those days when sunlight was golden and pouring down like warm rain upon my shoulders, every day as sweet as the last.  My days were that way because you made them so.  You instilled in every day joy and wonder and peace.  You unleashed my imagination and it has never been restrained, never boxed in.  For this, I thank you, Mother.  I have never had to truly be bored, for I have a mind that writes stores, that creates worlds in which I live.  Even at the worst of times I had an escape within my own mind.

Do you remember, though, those days when I was a little girl and we would sit in that sunshine in the empty lot next to the house next door?  We would sit in the sun, or sometimes in the shade of that one lonely tree.  You would help me pick dandelions or laugh as I ran picking them myself, gathering them up in tiny hands (hands that have never grown much beyond small dimensions).  I would bring them proudly to you, wondering as you showed me how they would yellow my skin like butter.  I would wonder even more as you took needle and thread, slipping heads from stems and making chains and crowns that were the worlds very best, very most precious jewels.  Do you remember, Mother?  I do.  I live in such moments.  They are golden and sunshine filled in my mind.  I can breathe the air, hear the quiet even in the urban noise.  Bliss.

Hold that memory close and close your eyes, feel the dandelions upon your brow.  I let the milk inside the stem be your panacea.  You are healed of all this world could do to you.  We are back there in that golden time.  We are both young again.  We are in that sweet sunshine, just the two of us.  I will sit upon your lap and you will run your fingers through my hair and fell my child-lips upon your cheek.  Close your eyes, Mother, and dance with me through our memories, hand in hand through fields of dandelions, flower chains upon our brows and sunshine in our hair.  I'll never let go of your hand and time will never find us there.