“Come on, let’s go,” she tells me. I couldn’t have been more than nine years old. Her eyes were alight with fire. “But it’s late,” I sighed.
“There won’t be any school tomorrow, and I’ll have to stay home.” She smiled.
I was psyched at the prospect of this. I didn’t mind school at this time in my life. In fact, I enjoyed school. But I tell you what I liked better: hanging out with Mom. Since the divorce, it had been tough for her. She wouldn’t accept child support, and we were just happy to have been rid of that tyrant who had created such heinous memories that no kid, wife, or mom should have ever had to endure.
She had been working like a dog—or better yet, an ox: a tough-ass farm animal who would just charge forward relentlessly to ensure we had a roof over our heads and food on our table. It was a tough time for us, but a good time and nothing could be better than getting a totally free day with my mom. This was before the laptop, or dial-up. Well, she was working on a new prototype for the first laptop, but the thought of a consumer-grade laptop was years from reality.
I was electric. I hopped off the bed and ran to my closet, grabbing my jacket and hat. I tugged my rubber boots on and was skipping around the apartment, waiting for her to meet me at the front door.
“You ready?” she asked with that kind of rhetoric smile, while she pretended to go a little slower getting ready. She was my world.
I opened the door and then pushed the screen door out. The blast of icy cold hit my face, almost stinging, but at the same time basking me in the crisp cleanliness that a snowstorm creates.
Looking down, there was a bed of fresh snow across everything. The plows hadn’t even come at this point. Virgin snowfall untouched by humans, perfection.
One boot followed the next, that Styrofoam crunch beneath each footfall. Almost a squeak from the heel of the boot. I inhaled a big deep breath of icy cold. It flowed through my nostrils, tingling all the way down to my lungs. I exhaled a puffy cloud of fog. Glancing up, I paused to watch the flakes against the back light of the street lamp. It created a hyper-space-like effect, like in the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.
My mom grabbed my hand, and we walked down the sidewalk. Any other time, I would have pulled my hand away, but this was okay. This was our time. Our boots crunching, breath fogging. We just walked and walked.
She talked about things that she would talk about. The content mattered not. We tried to make the perfect boot prints in the snow with each step. Trying to not let a little bit of snow flip off the front of our boots and leave little drips in front or behind each step.
We looked up and tried to catch snowflakes in our mouths. It felt like hours had passed when we arrived back at our doorstep. Our feet frozen, a slight shiver in our bodies, but we weren’t cold. We stomped off our boots in the threshold just inside.
I turned around and looked back out the door, tracing our footprints around the block and into the distance with my eyes. Each and every step was recorded in the unmolested snow carpet, except where we had stepped. It was a temporary record, for by daybreak they would be covered completely, wiping out any reminder of where we had walked only hours earlier.
I climbed into my bed that night, still numb from the cold, and stared at the ceiling. We didn’t get them that often.. you know, time between just me and my mom, but when we did have our moments, they were as if the world stopped for only a moment, and only she and I were the two things occupying the universe.
I fell asleep with a little smile and another little reassurance that my mom was the coolest thing in the world.
My little boombox dialed into KC101 clicked on at 5:00 in the morning. I pulled my sheets up about my neck. The room was cold, and I could see the snow on the roof of the Andersons’ house across the street. I sat there and thought of all the things we would do today since she was going to be home.
The DJ ticked off the various closures and delays of the schools that day. Mine was not one of them. I walked into the kitchen, and there she was doing whatever it is moms do. My face told all: There would be no Snow Day.
She could see my disappointment and probably tried to make the best of it… I don’t recall. All I know is that when I stepped out that morning, the magic had disappeared. The snow had many footprints, and piles were strewn about by all the neighbors and plows that had come by to start another day.
What only hours ago was our own personal domain—our kingdom of perfect white—was now to be shared by all. Just as it would in the many years to come. I kind of lost her that day for the first time. I found her a few times in the years to come, only to lose her forever.
Whenever it snows or hints at snow, I recall that night. I look up to the streetlights and watch the flakes reflect off its beam. I take note of the crisp of the air and imagine my little hand in hers just walking down the sidewalk. The only difference is that the tracks never return to the doorstep. They just go on and on into infinity—into the darkness where I can no longer see.
Three years ago today, I lost the second of three things most dear to me. First my grandfather a year or so before, now her, and eventually David.
I never really expressed to her how much she meant to me. Maybe I did, and perhaps I am my own worst critic. The bitterness of all those years after that snow night where she moved further and further away from me, trying to keep whatever the latest fire drill required. Her time, and our time, always the first to be sacrificed for some other thing. We always think at the time that there will be tomorrow, until you wake up one day and realize you don’t. You missed so many opportunities, and regret will pile up as you “only wish, you would have ______.”
It was only towards the end that we really started coming back together again. I could hold her hand again without being embarrassed that the other kids might see. She was fallible—she saw her mortality, and it brought her back to me again, only to be taken away by another.
That was my struggle, but underneath all the feelings I may have built up to that time. The little kid inside me never gave up hope that the radio would give us a day off, and we would be able to hang out together. And one day it did. It was September 5th, 2009 when life was cancelled.
I wrote down—but can’t find where I wrote it—the last time I saw my mother alive. It was, as I recall, almost a month before she passed away. We were at church… I think it was a post-service for my grandfather or grandmother. We were on the sidewalk and, for some reason, I just wanted to get back to NYC to my apartment. I had David drop me off at the train station in Bridgeport. How could I ever have known that would be the last time I would see her? She wanted me to go back to Milford or Orange and hang out for the rest of the day, but I couldn’t be bothered that day. Something more pressing was calling me back.
The next time I would see her, it was in a wooden box at Adzima’s funeral home. She looked fake, like a Madame Tussaud wax museum character. I would not have a private moment with her ever again in person, as I was surrounded by friends and family that were all in shock just as I was.
I’ll carry this regret with me for as long as I live. We get so self absorbed into our own little world, we forget the important things that are right in front of our noses.
I still stand in awe of Mom’s achievements and her tenacity and all that she was to so many people. I find myself emulating her a lot during my day-to-day. They say those lives who are cut short are like candles that burned brightest. If that is true, my mother was magnesium, and she burned so brightly that I was blinded. I only regained my true vision after her flame burned out.
Mom, you did the best you could. You drove us to be the best we could, and I forgive you for all that ill I harbored while vying for your attention. In the coming years, I will work on forgiving myself for being so stubborn and keeping all I have bottled up inside for so long. You were to both me and David the thing we sought approval from on a daily basis. You set the bar higher and inspired us to reach a little higher, leap a little farther, and to lead with your heart.
I’m going to try to live a little more today in honor of all that you stood for. I will continue to try to inspire and be inspired and to smile at the obstacles that stand in my way. I will do my best to recognize that those are the things that define us and that overcoming them is the ultimate achievement in living.
I miss you more than you will ever know. I am sorry I didn’t tell you that more often, but I know you knew.
