Dear Mom

I miss you today. So much. I want to know what you’d think of Whitney Houston’s death. Would you have cared? I just want to have a superficial conversation like that. Are you going to watch Idol? Have you had lunch with any of your friends lately? Any run-ins with old classmates of mine at the grocery store? You know, the kind where someone tells you to say hello to me but you can’t for the life of you remember what his or her name was. I want to hear you laugh when I make fun of you for this.

I want to see you at the kitchen table having your coffee. I want to see you with your glasses low on your nose, flipping through cards and receipts stuffed into a too-small wallet. I want to see a purse strap over your shoulder and your uneven gait walking to your car. I want to see your socks scrunched down to your sneakers. I want to see your painted toenails in flip-flops. I want to watch you watch the river. I want to see you lick your finger before turning the pages of a gardening book. I want to see you jotting down notes. I want to see your notes, your handwriting--- “birthday card to Cherie”, “breakfast with Betty.” I want to see you chatting with Dan, the way you guys loved each other. I want you to chat with me, the way you loved me.

I want to tell you your eyes are beautiful. I want to tell you I love your smile. I want to hear you say, “My girl, my Laura.” I want to smell you. I want to see your hair wrapped in a towel after the shower. I want to watch you brush your hair in the bathroom mirror. I want to see you rinse foamy tooth paste down the drain. The way your hand cupped the water before splashing it around the rim. I would watch your hands all day. Then mascara, then lipstick---the way you put on lip stick, the hollowed curve in its middle and thinness at the tip.

I want to see you bend to pick up a sock and sit down to sew a button. I want to see you hose off the deck on a hot day. I want to see you close all the windows before a heavy rain.

I’m waiting for you to tell me the crocuses are popping, the tiny blooms of violets rising through heart-shaped leaves. Where will we do Easter this year? You never did like ham. Remember when you, Dan and I spent the whole day on the newspaper’s Easter word scramble? Wanna do that again this year?

I want to see you on the floor playing with your grandkids.

I dreamt of you the other night. Two nights in a row actually. One night we hugged. The next you asked me what I love so much about you. More than everything, Mom.

I miss you being of this earth. On this earth. I like thinking that you’re out there but I get so scared that you’re not. That you’re gone forever---your face underneath dirt and grass---and I will have to live an entire life without you.

I don’t know why today. Why today is a harder one. Usually it comes at night---it’s early today. I heard someone say that when you think of your lost loved one---when a little thing reminds me; graham crackers and milk---that it’s you putting the thought in my head. Your little,"Hello, my girl. My Laura."

When I cry, like now, I think of you watching me.

“I’m sorry you’ll have to miss me,” you told me once.

Are you standing by me now, sad that I am sad?

“You’ll feel me holding your hand,” you said.

I search my palm for you.