mom

My coworker, who also lost her mother at an early age, recommended a book to me and lent me her copy. It's called Motherless Daughters and I have finally begun to read it, crying intermittently. Every now and then I have to put down the book and sniffle for a minute or two before continuing.
A couple thoughts occur to me here. One is that this may or may not be appropriate blogging material. I just got a facebook account and have realized that it is not an appropriate forum for seemingly any quality of meaningful interaction, with the possible exception of party organizing. As an adamant sagitarian, I see this as a meaningful interaction. But any expression of genuine emotional or intellectual import is confined to a meager word count and has the aura of being taboo.
Why, now, as I'm losing my father, am I compelled to mourn my mother? When I actually write the question out the answer seems obvious. I am not eagerly anticipating the sense of being alone. But I am anticipating it, and in this anticipation I find myself missing the dead. Where is my dog? Where is my grandmother? Where is my mom?
The other thought that occurs to me is that this process is boring. I can eye it with a kind of intellectualized repose and say, yes, this makes sense. This is quite probably the part in the story where this occurs. But can't I skip ahead to the good part? I can't explain this any further. It seems like the dull and obvious truth of my tumultuous emotion. I can't possibly imagine why I'd write a long sad blog entry.
This is a blog entry about my mother, or what is left of her as such, which is to say my memories. This is one.
This one is about the time we went shoe shopping and I wanted a pair of shoes just like the ones I was wearing. Always this is how this story went. I have several memories of shoe shopping with my mother. She was always the one to take me shoe shopping. Always I wanted a pair of shoes just like the ones I was wearing, only bigger and newer. I only actually got my wish once, because we shopped at a shoe store that stocked new styles continuously at discount prices. I wanted pink shoes, but there was always an entire aisle of pink shoes. I liked velcro, and was especially fond of the shoes with the little lights in the soles.
My mother was very patient with me. She would put the shoe on my foot and push down on the toe. She would make me wiggle my toes. She would tell me to walk around the store. She would tell me to jump up and down. It would take a long time, this process. It always felt like a big deal.
One time we were in a hurry, and I was being a hellion, and was making a lot of noise and skipping around the store. How old was I? Six? Seven? Five? My mother kept threatening to give me a spanking. She kept threatening to take me outside and give me a spanking right then and there. But we both knew she had never ever hit me, and I ignored her. She threatened to do this all the time. And as I came skipping around the aisle she swatted my bottom, very lightly, as if there were a mosquito she was trying to kill. As if she didn't really want to kill it. And I burst out crying at exactly the same moment as she burst out crying, and we were both crying and holding eachother there next to the pink shoes. And she said she'd never do it again, and she was sorry, and I said I was sorry and we cried.
I remember the last time we went shoe shopping, because we came home and my mother discovered that I could fit into her shoes. My mom had tiny feet, smaller than size five, and I could almost walk in them comfortably. For some entirely unfathomable reason, this made my mother cry, which I thought was very funny and sad. I told her not to cry and I hugged her.

my new favorite artist

Aaron's niece has just recently turned four and is now a real little person. She is drawing real things now and had me label one of them for her. It is on the refrigerator and it goes like this: Supercat is getting the jelly bagel before it falls into the river!
She likes exclamation points.
That is all.