I Remember: Stationery Stores and Childhood Stickers

"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter."

–E. E. Cummings

I don't feel complete unless there is laughter and smiles in my day. Even on days when I'm feeling cranky, am unreasonable, and shout because my moods have taken the best from me, I can count on laughter setting me right.

A few days ago I wandered into a stationery store. I didn't wander aimless, though. I had a simple mission to buy a single postcard for hubby. I had told him that I had seen it when I was searching for other postcards. I described it to him and he said why didn't you get it for me? I shrugged my shoulders and told him that I wasn't sure if he'd actually want it. Now he has it.

Ever since childhood I've adored stationery stores. I remember when my mother would take me for tea and a sweet pastry after ice skating practice or one of her doctor's appointments. After seeking her permission, I would wander over to the stationary store just across the way. I would look through all the stickers, turning the stands in search of the perfect set. I collected them. I had a book full of wonderful stickers of all kinds: stickers that sparkled and glittered; puffy stickers; hearts, bears, flowers–all sorts. I don't remember her ever going into the store with me. I would run back and ask her if I could buy some stickers. She didn't give in right away. She might take a sip of her coffee, ask me if I really needed them, and she would end up pulling out a few dollars from her purse and hand it to me. I ran back as quick as I could and I would return giggly–happy to have new stickers.

There were other stationery stores too. It wasn't always stickers. Sometimes it was miniature calendars, pretty paper, pens. But always, she stayed outside in the car unless we were at that one breakfast shop where she could wait inside. She was dying, and as the cancer progressed, she was in pain more often; but as a little girl these realities register in the mind differently. 

I realize, too, that my mother didn't like being home, even if no one else was there. She preferred being out and about. As the cancer took its toll on her, these were some of the ways that we were able to spend time together, knowing that her life was drawing to a close. So, I see now that she not only needed me as her little rock, but that she also relished the last moments that we would share–and those moments I remember with the core of my being, with joy, and a hint of sadness. But what would life be without both?

She was serious and angry a good part of her later life, but right now in this moment, I can remember...I hear her laughter and see her smile, and it fills my soul with blue skies, sunshine, and the happy chatter of birds.

Mother and Daughter

When I was a young girl, I was, in a way, my mother's doll. I was an extension of herself–an extension of all of her hopes and dreams; it wasn't always easy for many reasons, for the choices she made in life long before I was born and had to live with, for the anger she held inside and acted out on. I think she felt trapped; in many ways, I became the only thing that made her feel free, so all of her time went into me, even if it was haphazard at times.

When I search and search for words...I don't remember heart-to-hearts, except once in the conveyance of a smile from her being at her most uncomfortable hour awaiting her exit from this world. I remember going to her sickbed at my grandmother's home, two houses up. She could no longer care for herself; the pain was worsening, life was escaping her.

I had just shaved my legs for the first time ever. I was 13. The other girls were doing it. I showed my older brother; proud I was. He was 33. He yelled at me as if I had committed a crime, trying to stuff my womanhood back down into a black box. It was too much for him to bear seeing his baby sister grow up too fast.

I ran out of the house and up to my grandmother's house to my mother's side and told her what I had done and explained about my brother's reaction.

All I remember is the loving smile that spread upon her face and made it glow, as she lay in bed, reaching her hand out to bring me closer. This moment seemed to make the pain go away. I had never seen her look as radiant and peaceful as in that hour.

It wasn't until my adult-self had the opportunity to look back. I imagined that she somehow knew her girl would be all right without her mother; that in a way, she was at peace knowing she would not be here to watch her girl blossom into a woman.

That look–the love and tenderness in her eyes–is one of my fondest memories of mother and daughter communicating, not through words, but pure emotion, through the windows of our souls, as she lay on her deathbed.

I cannot be certain of the exact timing, but her cancer did worsen; she had given in to it. I believe she was ready to take leave, to end her pain and suffering.

She had to be taken to the hospital soon after that day. I had seen her in the days after with an unfamiliar and painful look in her eyes, and I don't think she wanted me to see her–but this other peaceful look, it brought balance and far outshines the pain in my memory.

I remember being in my brother's room, watching television late at night while he was talking to someone in the other room. When the phone rang, right as I heard my brother pick it up, I knew. She had died.

I know she continues to smile down upon me; and she was right–that look in her eyes, the way I read it now–she knew her girl would be fine.

Inside the Void

There is a void inside of me that I cannot fill—and just as soon as those words escape, the ache lessens. I’m a seeker without a clear direction, not having found her way in this world. At most times content, satisfied, knowing there is more—there always is—knowing that on one hand she’d like to have her dream job; on the other hand she doesn’t know what that is.

She recognizes—now from a great distance—that her mother showed these same tendencies. Pouring themselves into each other? Pouring into something, fitting all of their desires and interests together like a great moving puzzle that is never complete—that eludes the present moment.

There is a hunger that ebbs and flows through tidal cycles, pulls the soul along, laying a path of bright stars and spinning planets. Hers is a path about wholeness, about bridging time, connecting stars, finding their center within the great chasm; and in that center is a mother and daughter—two selves connecting through time and space into a galaxy of—