The Unexpected Aches

The face I saw in the mirror this morning...

The gorgeous punch in the gut reminder...

"Some days the memories still knock the wind out of me..." --the Mad Hatter's Tea Party

The sky is grey, a fine mist falling in the soft, sleepy morning and making the start of my Saturday a watercolor wash of dripping color. As I pull myself together to face the day, the artist in me reaches for my mother, who was far more talented than I could ever hope to be, although I continue the endeavor of honing those artistic skills she slipped into my DNA. The bright light from my make-up mirror reveals a face so similar to hers, and yet there are lines there (well hello there crows feet, you bastards)...from age and laughter and sorrow, lines she never got to experience. She would have hated growing old, hated it with a passion. And even though she'd have hated it, I really needed her to do it anyway. I have things to tell her, things I discuss with her that remain merely a frustrating, one-sided conversation inside my head.

It's odd, the times she appears so strongly in my thoughts (like this morning), speaking to me in my mind as if she's always there, some lovely whispering moment away on the other side of time. Sometimes thoughts of her hit me like a Ninja kick to the solar plexus, whole other times she pops in from some random point in an ordinary day. For example, my daughters recently took a trip to NYC to celebrate the birthday of my oldest, and my little one sent me a picture of herself all dressed up and out on the town. What she didn't know, what I didn't say is that seeing her there was like some beautiful punch in the gut, seeing her beautiful happy face and sense of style so similar to my mother's it took my breath away and made me ache for the woman who gave me life. I feared if I told her that, it would put a dark cloud over her joyous time with her sister, and I didn't want to be the one to take that exquisite smile off her face.

I am struck by the ways in which other people's lights shape my life on so many levels. And while my mother's is at the forefront today, those thoughts give way to others who have done the same, come and gone leaving their fingerprints on who I am. Some of those encounters invariably invoke these unexpected aches, often aches I don't even know how to identify, much less verbalize. It feels as if I carry the ghosts of countless people who've stirred to life powerful emotions from the murky depths of that place often referred to as ones' "soul". When I think of these people, I mentally divide them into categories...those who see a beautiful flower and pick it, those who crush the flower in their hand or beneath their feet, and those who cultivate and appreciate it in all its splendor. Somewhere in my mind I hear my mother say, "How could you ever think you were ugly? You are the daughter of a beauty queen. Literally." And I want to explain to her that even a lovely exterior can hide a core full of vile and rot, but I know that conversation would be a fruitless endeavor, because like my Aunt Mattie, she was one of the few people I know who could find beauty even in the ugly, damaged spaces. It is a skill set I am working to master without being shattered in the process.

Sometimes the Universe sends you a song that exactly describes how you're feeling inside (I love it when this happens, even if it hurts like hell). The words, the melody hit the precise "YOU" note that resonates in your bones, in your cells, down deep below even that molecular construct. The song below, that is the most recent gift to me from the Universe and God does it sum up what my clumsy words have tried to convey.