If quarantine and social distancing happened 10-12 years ago my mom and I would be screwed. It’s not that I was a terrible child but I was a teenage girl with teenage girl tendencies, with lots of dreams, lots of feelings and lots of emotions.
I loved my mom as a kid growing up. She was always encouraging me to try new things like middle school track. She sat through hours and hours of dance classes, softball practice and was a soccer coach at one point. Bless her soul, she even endured the inevitable 6th grade band and listened to me sometimes practice my clarinet in the basement.
In high school we fought and argued and bickered like every mom and daughter does. But it was in high school where i genuinely started to listen to the things my she was telling me. In my high school years, she would tell me every singly day “boo, you have to choose to be happy” and to this day when I am angry at someone, or the weather puts me in a mood or I just wake up on the wrong side of the bed, I hear her voice reminding me that at the end of the day, my happiness is my choice and my choice only. I can choose to mope and be sad at situations, or I can choose to open my eyes and see some sort of positivity and choose to be happy.
In those high school years, some of the best times I had with my mom was shopping on Saturday,s “piddling” through stores, not really with a rime or reason and not spending any money. Those Saturdays were our time, our time to to be girls, our time to be a mom and daughter, our time to laugh if we needed or to or cry if we needed to all while doing so with a diet coke in our hands.
One of the hardest days and one of the most pivotal day in my life happened my senior year of high school, right after I applied to the one and only college that I wanted to go to. My mom was home when I got back from school one day which I thought was weird. When I walked in I knew something was off. It was that day when she broke the news that I had been rejected to college. I felt like a disappointment, I felt stupid, I felt like there was something wrong with me and I didn’t feel enough. It was in that moment that my mom hugged me, let me cry, gave me a cupcake (I don’t know why there were cupcakes, she was probably doing what she does best and baking for someone that day) and told me that I would make it through this one way or the other. And I did. I think I remember that day so vividly because it was the first time in my life that I knew my mom was hurting for me. She didn’t let me cry but she cried with me, she knew I felt broken and she loved me anyway.
Out of all the seasons my mom and I have had I will say that even though we are 1400 miles away I am in my favorite season with her. We text daily and have hour long conversations on Wednesdays that I look forward to every week. I love that we can laugh at inappropriate memes and share margaritas. I know I will always need my mom because who else would let me send a picture of a green spot on my toe and gives me the tough love when I need it? She plays the devils advocate when I don’t want to hear it and she still laughs at all my silly jokes. She has taught me how to love others because she knows I am broken and loves me whole heartedly anyway. She lets me grow, move halfway across the country and reminds me that home is more than a place and there is no one who makes me feel more home than she does.
I love you mom
As always,
Abi
As Always Abi 