Just the three of us...
I just saw this one Hetalia fanart where China was cleaning out Hong Kong and Korea's ears with those wooden sticks with the fuzzy stuff on the end. And it triggered a memory of the time when it was just the three of us--my mom, my little sis, and me--and how my little sister and I would lay our heads in her lap just like the way the artist drew Hong Kong and China. I remember how she would say, "If it hurts, tell me." She would always be careful not to cause pain. But whenever it was my turn, I'd always flinch and cry out, "It hurts!" even when it didn't. And afterward, my ears would always feel refreshed (but a little itchy from being poked around). I wonder when we stopped doing that. Probably after I left to live with my dad. But for some reason the memory of these "ear cleaning sessions" seem just like yesterday. I don't know why, but they just do. I haven't thought about it in a long time, but I have some really good memories of that time, when it was just us three.
We would go TCBY or some other ice cream place and she'd buy us ice cream cones (pretty big ones, too) after we finished grocery shopping. And when we shopped anywhere, any place, I remember my mom constantly telling us, "Don't touch anything." Which made me want to touch something just to refute her. Especially the meat. Oh man. The meat section was so much fun when I was a kid--I was always poking, prodding, and pinching the meat from outside of their cellophane wrapping because they all felt so cold and mushy. It was practically asking to be groped. And then, of course, my mom would get mad at me. So I'd do it when I thought she wasn't looking.
We'd always check out books and DVDs from the local library and usually my sister and I would watch it together without her--but once, when my sister and I wrote down the lyrics to the ending song of this one Pokemon movie (the Jirachi one), and we tried to sing it together despite how high-pitched the song was, I remember she heard us and began to sing it with us. Or maybe I'm just imagining that one. But I'm fifty percent sure that happened. I remember she also used to sing in the car a Korean version of the "do re mi" scale. I remember thinking about how loud and resonant her voice was. Not exactly pretty, but pleasant in an opera-ish way.
And I can't remember anything much of the life the three of us shared other than that--the life we shared before my mother remarried and before I moved out to live with my dad. It's a sad thing, I believe, for a mother to lose her child. Which is what has happened to her, not only in the physical sense, but mentally as well. I left her. And it was my own choice. And now, after all these years, we've both realized (actually we've both known this for quite some time) that, as mother and daughter, we have nothing in common. Other than my little sister. Which is so very sad.
I love my mother--I always will. And she loves me. But that will never be enough to fill this chasm between us, will it?