layangabi

So... fourteen years ago, my mother was still alive, if barely. I woke up screaming that morning, one of only a few very inexplicable things that's ever happened to me. Just after sundown that Friday night, she was gone. I was watching the special features on The Hour. My dad called me around 9 and said, "Well, it's all over."

I took today off for her yahrzeit. I was going to go to the Garfield Park Conservatory, because she loved those places and would go even in her wheelchair, when she was in rough shape, to the Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus; it's closed today, though. I was maybe going to go to a new-to-me museum as a backup, maybe the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen, but that's closed too. Luckily, it is the most gorgeous day imaginable out there, mild and sunny with not a cloud in the sky. So I don't feel bad that Gingko and I will be chilling at home.

Yesterday, a friend volunteered her husband and kids to help me put some things in my walls. I now have my banjo hanging right where I can see it, thus tempting me to play it more. The ukuleles will join it as soon as I dig up the hangers I got for them a million years and many moves ago. The full-length mirror is off the floor and right where I'll use it, which means I can offload the much bigger leaning mirror that I like but which doesn't fit in my space anymore. Best of all, my bookshelves are up in my green dining room, and I'm going to finally unpack so many of the ceramics and other objects from home to go on display again after being packed up for almost 10 years.

Some other things I will be doing to honor my mom today:

• Listening to a Book-on-Tape while organizing and cleaning


• Playing all of Joni Mitchell's Blue, especially "Little Green"


• Telling myself in her cadence "You look terriffic!"


• Loving on my goofy hound


• Baking from a package, because although she was a phenomenal cook and baker, she wasn't above Jiffy-brand corn muffins first thing in the morning


• Working on a craft, or at the very least admiring the many framed master-level needlepoint pieces I just unboxed recently


• Making a bigot mad by doing the right thing and telling them off for it


• Laughing so much and telling people I love them

Our softball regular season ends tonight with a double header for rain makeups, so I will be out doing sports and then carousing with my team and the rest of the league tonight. But I'll be lighting her candle before I leave. ✶