Guess I'm not the only one with spring fever. Last week I walked into the Naval Academy library and was greeted with tangible evidence of the midshipmen's state of mind:
Look out, Cancun!
I'll be spending my spring break traveling to Boston to collect any remaining belongings from my mother's house before it is sold. I am not looking forward to it. Although it's been three months since her passing, I suspect this first foray back there will be more bitter than sweet. What will it be like to walk into the house that, for the first time in 56 years, does not have my mother in it?
The first year in the death of a mother one is a year of firsts: the first birthday you can't call her to say "happy birthday;" the first birthday she can't call you to say "happy birthday;" the first holiday without her at the table with all of us, shocking my ultra-liberal niece with her generationally-acceptable, now politically-incorrect epithets; the first Mother's Day that will seem meaningless because she's not here. I've gotten through the first two; this weekend's trip will be the next hurdle. If I had a dollar (it hasn't been "a nickel" for some time now...inflation, you know) every time I've thought, "I have to call Mum and tell her about _________" . . .
There is one first in this first year that is coming soon; I can feel it: the first time I don't cathartically blog about my mother. You can share only so much pain before you start annoying people. As the last of the crusty, blackened snow piles melts into the soft earth, so do my dirges. When I leave, for the last time, my own "house at the corner of bitter and sweet," I will spring ahead and hope not to fall back. Plenty of time for that in November.
Cynthia Polansky
"Expect the Unexpected"
http://www.cynthiapolansky.com/
http://www.cynthiapgallagher.com/
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