Mothers. They are the matriarch’s of the universe, and the name most kids wail when we are in need of a little extra love. The saying usually goes “she’s your mother, you only get one of them.” In my case, I have two. One who has been watching me on the horizon of every sunset for a while now. I was told she had the warmest brown eyes a woman could carry. I see her every day. My Earthly mother, has already been caressed by angel kisses. She’s a fighter, much like ‘her fierce little girl.’ One of my earlier childhood memories seeped into my conscious mind as I sat in my empty house this afternoon. My empty house…the house that echoes painful coughing, the floorboards hollering as the walker is dragged sluggishly across the living room to the bathroom.
When I was a little girl, the living room glistened warmth from the sunlight soaked curtains. We would keep every door and window open, my mother, watching me dance like the wild thing I always have been. Catching the autumn rhythm of the leaves- twirling with them too. Mommy opened up her arms; her blonde hair poured down her neck. “Juuuuuuuuliaaaaa,” she calls me so sweetly. “My little sweet, come here darling.” Like the moon changes forms, I so naturally obeyed my mother’s request. Skipping full force to the oval ocean blue that her eyes glistened to me since the day I was first placed in her arms. I climb to her lap and instantly grab onto her pearl diamond Tiffany necklace my father had gotten for her. It glistened with my mother, not for her. “Julia Katherine, you are beautiful, and you are rare,” she began. Of course, her praising called for my full, young attention span. “You are rare because you see kindness and love in everything around you. You must be kind, but you must be fierce. The world does not inhabit people who often carry the gift you have. Can you do that for me love? Be my fierce little girl, and then one day, become my fierce woman.” I am at this point nuzzled into my mother’s breast. That never fed my tiny body or touched my suckled lips. But never ceased to be home. Where her heart beat the loudest. I look up at her and nod my head yes. She pats my back as she always did. “But who are you kidding, you’ll always be my fierce little girl”.
That evening we watched the sunset and my mother smile at little me, and my mother as well.