Summer Memory

My kids have been waking up the earliest in their entire life this summer. Most of it is due to waking up for school a few days a week, and part of it is just changing habits. So this week, on a non-school day, they woke up early and I took them to the nearby playground at 8:30 in the morning. For summer, this is great. We get an early start, it's not crowded, and we avoid some of the heat of the sun. 

I don't ever regret having two kids. Was it hard at first? Most definitely. Having a newborn at home during the rise of Covid and not having anyone help us, and both of us returning to work (from home) after six weeks was brutal. I don't remember how I managed to find time to cook. We did not clean the house for months at a time. But we survived. 

Nowadays I'm quite grateful I have two children. They play together, they help each other, they comfort each other, and they also cause each other some emotional distress at times. But for the most part, it's wonderful having two children. And watching them play on the playground together while I sit on a bench off to the side in the shade is quite nice, even if it only lasts for about five minutes. 

However, what I didn't expect while sitting on that bench was to be filled with a memory from over 20 years ago. Suddenly, I remembered a day when my mom, my brother, and I walked down the street to the nearby elementary school and played on the playground in the back of the school. 

My brother and I were walking on the structures and my mom was standing off to the side watching us. At some point, one or both of us asked her to join us and play. I remember her being reluctant to come up to the structure with us, but eventually, she did come up and go down the slide at least once. She had to be extra careful because she had a catheter attached to her left lung and a chest shunt by her collarbone. 

That's one of the last positive memories I remember sharing with my mother as everything else revolved around medical procedures or piano pressures. And watching my own two children play on the playground on a Tuesday morning managed to resurface this long lost memory. 

This is what grief looks like after two decades. It doesn't hinder my daily life, but it still peeks out occasionally alongside layers of new experiences and life, enough to make me break down, if just for five minutes. 

Happy Birthday, Mommy.