ramblings
for some reason as i walked to school today, the mint i placed in my mouth to freshen my breath brought me back to sitting in the parking lot of my k-8 school/church before saturday evening mass. my mother and i always went to 5pm mass on saturdays instead of the traditional sunday morning service from the time i was in 4th grade or so until the point when we pretty much stopped going. it wasn't abrupt... for awhile we went only once every few weeks. my mother would always express her guilt that the priest must be noticing that we didn't go as much then... then she'd respond to her own anxiety with "well... we could be going to mt. carmel church instead though for all he knows"
before mass she'd always have a cigarette, then apply lipstick, then pop in a mint. then offer me one... one mint that is. the flat kind shaped like blood cells. sometimes, if we arrived too close to the 5pm start time, i'd worry that it would be a break in the hour fast we were supposed make prior to receiving the eucharist. but well... that was always about 4/5 of the way through mass. so somehow it was justified.
i remember one time, my mother mumbling under her breath that her mother would have cringed if she saw her applying lipstick in front of other people. it always and still does make me wonder about that woman i never met... on those rare occasions when i do think about it, i find it troubling that i really never met either of my grandmothers... one do to a quick early death from cancer and one due to neurogenerative disease that prevented her from being her...
my mind drifted the other day to my dad's mother who, although victimized by Alzheimer's by the time i was far along enough in my development to differentiate between self and other, always reminded me that she loved my hair. every time i met her it was like meeting her for the first time, and yet every time her first comment to me remained the same. i always dismissed it mentally and thanked her politely. but now, i think of how she was one of the only people who truly accepted and even loved that simple aesthetic part of me for what it was. it's difficult to explain the full significance of this without further unnecessary ramblings.
on another note... it has come to my attention that there are people in real life who stay secretly in love with other people for decades and never get better. this scares me a whole lot.
and on a final note, black currant black tea is a newfound favorite. mmm
before mass she'd always have a cigarette, then apply lipstick, then pop in a mint. then offer me one... one mint that is. the flat kind shaped like blood cells. sometimes, if we arrived too close to the 5pm start time, i'd worry that it would be a break in the hour fast we were supposed make prior to receiving the eucharist. but well... that was always about 4/5 of the way through mass. so somehow it was justified.
i remember one time, my mother mumbling under her breath that her mother would have cringed if she saw her applying lipstick in front of other people. it always and still does make me wonder about that woman i never met... on those rare occasions when i do think about it, i find it troubling that i really never met either of my grandmothers... one do to a quick early death from cancer and one due to neurogenerative disease that prevented her from being her...
my mind drifted the other day to my dad's mother who, although victimized by Alzheimer's by the time i was far along enough in my development to differentiate between self and other, always reminded me that she loved my hair. every time i met her it was like meeting her for the first time, and yet every time her first comment to me remained the same. i always dismissed it mentally and thanked her politely. but now, i think of how she was one of the only people who truly accepted and even loved that simple aesthetic part of me for what it was. it's difficult to explain the full significance of this without further unnecessary ramblings.
on another note... it has come to my attention that there are people in real life who stay secretly in love with other people for decades and never get better. this scares me a whole lot.
and on a final note, black currant black tea is a newfound favorite. mmm