Year 15

It was at her four month pediatrician visit. We were wrapping up and just chatting when he caught me off guard.

"So what does your mom think of her?"

I felt time slow the way it does in movies and my thoughts felt dragged out for the mere seconds it actually was, my face giving off a deer-in-headlights look.

I stammered back, "My mom?"

And he's like, " Yea, your mom," with that tone of "of course I'm talking about your mom. Who else would I be referring to?"

And then I lied. Sort of. Or I answered as if I were talking about my mother-in-law. "Oh, she thinks the world of Sasha." When you've just been caught off guard and aren't prepared and your face has already given off a bewildered look, somehow in the spur of the moment, I just couldn't justify dropping an even larger bomb on him by saying, "My mom died when I was a kid."

He doesn't remember her, but he's met my mom, and somewhere in his head he probably knows it because he knows he was once my pediatrician.

When I get wrapped up in my thoughts, the emotions are different now. Most of the time, I feel a sense of relief and thankfulness that I can do my own thing and my mother isn't going to nit-pick at the way I mother my child. If my daughter eats a leaf or some dust off the floor, I just watch her and shrug it off if it's not dangerous. If a toy falls on the floor (in certain places), I just pick it up and give it back to her - and nobody tells me it's dirty and I shouldn't do that.

But there will always be that hole when I watch her interact with people, even family members, and I'll forever be reminded that my mother is not one of them.