RemembeRED: Mother/Daughter Friendship
My mom is my best friend. I know what a treasure it is to have such a fortunate bond. If I needed to prompt myself to tears, I would think about the day she is no longer here with me. My emotions will instantly flush to the surface, seconds later I’ll have to blow my nose. My son asked me once about why people have to die. I guess my instant faraway look in our conversation made him retract saying, “Let’s not worry about that right now.” He was five.
Snapshot
My mom and I see each other often, talk on the phone often and e-mail every day. She even texts. I have been married for 14 years and have been living out of state and away from her for that long. My first duty station with my husband was in Okinawa, Japan.
Mom and I were quiet for days leading up to my departure. The day of, we barely made eye contact. I faced the window and silently cried for the whole flight from Columbia, SC to Atlanta, GA. I knew it was going to be a long time before we would see each other again. We wrote pages of letters and mailed them back and forth.
Sometime in 1998 we both got computers and discovered ICQ chat. We had a scheduled chat time on her Friday night and my Saturday morning. At some point we added a webcam. The connection was terrible with dial-up. We couldn’t talk to each other without a ridiculous delay, so we looked at each other while we chatted on ICQ. We played show and tell. She would hold up Captain Kirk (the dog), daddy would stick his face in the camera and wave hello. I would show her how long my hair was getting or stand up and show her that I was getting hips. She would show me the fabric of a new dress she was making or how nice her fingernails looked.
When we returned home for a visit a year and a half later my tears surfaced for the whole flight from Washington D.C. to Charleston, SC. When the plane pulled into the gate it was after midnight. I could see my parents waving and I burst into tears waving back.
Here’s the thing…I hope we will be two old ladies together, chatting away on whatever the latest technology is.
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This was my first attempt at a writing prompt for Write on Edge Remembe{RED} memoir meme.
The prompt was to:
Explore friendship. Examine your emotional interest in the friendship and the role it plays, or played, in your life. The word limit for this prompt is 400 words. While that may not seem like many words to devote to a friend you’ve known for thirty years, try to provide us with a snapshot that encompasses your feelings about the friendship.