Watch out, this might get mushy-slash-sad. Mush on.

Okay, so all the other holidays that have passed since I started blogging, I have let go. I didn’t blog about Easter, or President’s Day or whatever other ones we’ve had (you can tell I’ve kept track). But I do want to blog about Mother’s Day.

I have mixed feelings about Mother’s Day, which you may or may not have guessed already. I started 100 Miles on Mother’s Day two years ago. Some years I’ve had the Kid for the weekend, some years I’ve had to go pick him up in the morning and return him at night. Some years I get a call from my Mom, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I call her. Sometimes I have dinner with my grandparents. Sometimes I actually have someone special to share the day with, if only for a little while.

Last year, the Kid and I went “to that store where they serve breakfast” (a restaurant near my old apartment) and had brunch with No N. The year before, I picked the Kid up and drove him back in the evening, and spent the rest of the night writing and crying, alternatively.

This year seems to be shaping up a little better. I already have plans to hang out with No N, Pope, and Meeps, and my grandparents invited me to a dinner in the evening. I haven’t heard from my mom yet, but I guess the weekend isn’t over.

Holidays like this just make me wish a lot.

I wish that I could write about how my mom is my best friend, and how much I love her and how she’s always been there for me, and how I respect and admire her, and how I want to be just like her when I grow up. I wish that I had memories of my mom and I eating lunch together at some cafe somewhere, laughing and talking and sharing girly-type confidences in the sunshine, smoking cigarettes and chatting over cappuccino. I wish I had memories about how she saw me when I got back from ShitFuckTown and hugged me breathless and promised to keep me safe. I wish that these things didn’t hurt so much.

I wish that I still had someone to kiss me awake on a day like today, wishing me a happy day with maybe breakfast waiting, some flowers perhaps, maybe a walk in the park or a neck rub or something. I wish that it wasn’t so hard to say “I love you” or to depend on someone else to always be there, to trust that they actually will. I wish that I still had my son in my life every day and every evening and that things could have worked out differently.

On days like today, I wish a lot of things.

And then, at the end of a day like today, as I’m getting ready for bed, I will remember how my son made me a little plastic flower in a little plastic cup with drawings on it, and spent fifteen minutes describing the colors to me, in detail. I will remember the excitement on his face and the way his eyes shone at me as I was opening it and making much of the stapled paper bag it was wrapped in. I will remember how the other day he tiptoed into my bedroom, when I was barely awake, and snuggled the covers up closer to my chin, kissed me on the cheek, and tiptoed back out. I will remember what it felt like, that first time I ever held him in my arms and saw his face, and called myself, for the first time, “Mommy”. I will remember how many people, even ones I’ve never met, took time out of their days to send me a note or a comment or a phone call to say, “Happy Mother’s Day”.

I will remember. Things are the way they are because I had to go through them in order to get here. And here, all things considered, is really not such a bad place after all. I’ll remember. It’s just right now, I just kinda wish.

Okay, mush out. That is all.