When I Think Of Her

Every year at this time, I think of her. 


Someone long ago told me, probably whispered to me, that the end of January is her birthday. My mother's birthday. 

Sometimes I stare into the darkness at night, and wonder if she sees the same moon. 

If she is out there, still alive, somewhere. On some porch in some town, looking up too. If she ever lets herself think of giving birth to me in the late 1950s. 

If she remembers something special about me all these years later. 

If she paused, on that winter day while packing her bags, to seal a memory of me in a place she could visit later. If maybe she told me she was sorry for what she had to do. 

I wonder if a six week old baby misses its mother. If it knows the sound of her footsteps, and recognizes the sound of her voice. And somehow never forgets it. 


I wonder if right then, on the day she left, an empty space began to open deep within me. And is the hole I feel to this day.

The days are gray with winter. The tree branches are stark against the sky. I sit inside and listen to the wind howl, causing rustling sounds as they scrape and claw at the windows. 

Sometimes I just feel an urge to walk down a country road. The fields will stretch endlessly on either side. And eventually meet the sky.

Perhaps I will have a goal in mind. It is maybe deep within the recesses of my brain. And just hasn't come out to make itself known yet. 

Maybe one day I will wake up and it will just appear in front of me. Flashing a message in neon light. An answer as plain as the nose on my face.

I will wonder what took it so long to arrive. But feel relief that it has finally shown itself to me.

Sometimes I will sit in a restaurant, and my eyes will connect with a stranger's. I wonder if, in that instant when our eyes are aligned, if they somehow know what is in my head. 


Because it seems from the look on their face that they have felt what I am feeling too.

So there is a week, inevitably, the fourth week of the first month of the new year, when I find myself tearing up for no reason.

 Inexplicably. In strange places. While picking out bananas in the grocery. Or waiting for the traffic light to change. 

Sometimes I turn my head quickly, ashamed of my emotions getting the best of me. And some of what comes from that hole, deep inside of me still, beads up into clear droplets that fall before I can blink them away. 

How to explain to others what I can't even explain to myself? That I somehow miss a person I only knew for six weeks of my life. 

And then of course, the first month of the new year will end. The page on the calendar will be turned over. 


And what was there, stuck in my mind like an endless dream, like an old record player with its needle stuck in place and screeching against the black vinyl, will for the most part evaporate. 


Or at least recede into that place where memories are tucked away. In that safe place that has a somewhat flimsy lock on it.

Gone into hibernation until the calendar is taken down. To be replaced with another. And the hole in my being is an open wound yet again.