Four Years

Today is four years since my mom died. I was thinking about it this afternoon as I drove back from the store, picking up a container of buttermilk for dinner. I was thinking about her as I walked back from picking fresh kale from the garden.

I made fried green tomatoes for dinner tonight, and I remember when that book came out (Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe), my mother was all about the fried green tomatoes. She wanted to cook them for all of us, even though she wouldn't eat them.

My mother cooked a lot of food she didn't eat. She cooked for my sister and I, for our dad, even though she refused to eat any of it because she thought she was allergic to everything. How cruelly ironic it was when she was finally admitted to the hospital those last three weeks of her life and she was eating sweet potatoes with maple syrup and hamburgers.

And then I was thinking about the passing of time. Four years since she's been gone seems like an awfully long time on one hand. Four years since our last conversation. Four years since her last email or phone call.

On the other hand, four years isn't really that long, in the scheme of things. Colden is four.

I suppose tonight after Colden goes to sleep, I'll continue to work on my Battle of the Beadsmith piece (with the ever-looming deadline) and watch Twister, the movie I watched over and over again on the night she died.

And I'll continue to think about her, and hope that she would have been proud of me and my family.