Yesterday, walking with the baby near Japantown, and again this evening, because one of my aunts called from Japan, I've been thinking about my mother. A dynamic, fun-loving person who never seemed to lack energy. When I think about her, I see her in motion--cooking furiously in the kitchen; mending something at the sewing machine; laughing in her adorable, raucous way that made everyone around her smile, even if they didn't know what she was laughing about; energetically climbing the stairs at her house, pounding her feet into each step. I never knew, and probably never will know, someone who got as much pleasure out of eating, drinking, sleeping, and hearing a funny story, as my mother did.
When I think about this five-foot-tall human dynamo, who died last year and is watching over my son and me from some lovely place with a very soft bed to lie in and plenty of good food to eat, I wonder how I'll ever measure up as a mother. I'll never have half the energy she did. Sometimes her energy tilted over into something a little more negative. She could be very demanding and overbearing at times. But most of the time, she was a furiously devoted parent. And could be as funny as hell.
She did also tell me, many times, that being a parent involved more work than I could imagine. "Some day you'll know," she often said, her voice taking on a slightly ominous tone. Yes, Mom, I do know, now. It's an incredible amount of work. But every time he smiles, laughs, grabs my hair, talks in his excited, baby-talk way, or stamps his little feet on the floor while I'm holding his arms--he reminds me of you; of you and your amazing, tenacious, enthusiastic grip on life. And I feel a little burst of energy, as well as sadness, just thinking about the two of you, and what it would have been like to see you two together.
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