Memories in the Making

By:Mary A.

There's a picture of my mother on my craft table, taken when she was a young mother of twenty-one. She's standing in the yard, a white-bonneted baby in her arms, caught in the midst of laughter.

The baby is me.

I never saw the picture until after my mother had died. It was in an album I found in her closet while going through the things she left behind.

My mother left behind a lot of things: her collection of miniature Christmas houses, a vast library of cookbooks in German and English, nearly two hundred cake pans, and enough yarn to crochet an afghan for every man, woman, and child in all fifty states. And photographs, boxes and albums full of photographs, many of them bearing her careful, round handwriting on the backs or along the white-bordered edges. "Mommy feeds me," is the caption of one, my face smeared with what looks like chocolate pudding. "Easter 1971," says another.

There's so much missing from those pictures. I'll never know what my mom was laughing at when our picture was taken that sunny day in 1971, or whether that was chocolate pudding or something else smeared on my face.

But, someday, my children and grandchildren will look through my scrapbooks and read about the day I dyed my son's hair blue or my husband's surprise thirtieth birthday party.

And they'll read about the person who's inspired me most: my mother, who was my best friend.

Tomorrow at dMarie Daily: Memories of the Heart, by Kathy G.