Most mornings, I wake up at quarter to six. I climb out of bed with my cat at my heels.
First, we climb the stairs to our one bathroom. While I pee, she perches on the sink next to me and headbutts me for kisses. I wash my hands, and leave the sink on for an extra minute so she can have a drink.
Then we make our way downstairs where I let the dog out and pack a breakfast and a lunch for Andy. I pack a snack for my daughter K, who prefers school meals, but needs an extra snack to get her through fifth period math. By now, Andy is in the shower, and K is dressed and brushing her hair in the living room or sneaking an extra few minutes worth of a nap. Olivia, my cat, is still by my feet watching me and waiting for me to finish. Soon, Andy and K will head off to school and work, and then I’ll begin getting Bug up for his bus. I’ll help him get dressed, with Olivia’s help of course. Underwear, then socks, then shirt, then pants, then hat. Always that order. No variations. We get dressed before we eat breakfast or brush our teeth. There’s an order to things. A routine that brings comfort and a sense of safety.
These mornings the mood in the air is different. It’s not the usual busy but happy chaos that pervades my home. You can still feel the love enveloping every living thing who comes through those doors, but the air feels heavier. I can feel my mother in every breath. I remember how she was before she got sick, when I was younger. She would wake me up, and make me breakfast. My mama was less organized, so mornings were far more chaotic, but you could feel how much we loved each other.
I remember being upset with her sometimes, we’d get so mad at each other, and I’d leave for school, but I’d still angrily shout “I love you” because it didn’t matter how angry I was, I loved her.
There’s times in my parenting journey where I can feel her like she’s still here with me. It’s the mornings where I get my family ready and off to see the world. It’s the afternoons when I’m cooking dinner and helping with homework. It’s the late nights when I’m singing lullabies to children waking up from bad dreams.
It’s a sense of mourning but also of comfort. I miss her, but it feels like in these moments she’s there anyway, lending me her strength, and whatever it is that makes mothers so magical.
At eight fifteen, Bug leaves for the bus stop. He’s a big kid now and doesn’t want me to come with him. I stand behind my screen door with Olivia and we watch him cross the street to the bus stop. I can feel my mother behind me, she’d be so nervous letting him go by himself, even though I used to walk to school by myself at his age. She was always so ridiculously overprotective of my kids. She was overprotective of myself and my sister too, but more so of my children. It’s hard not to smile thinking about her now, even if it was annoying back then.
When the bus comes, Olivia the cat and I wander back inside to finish our chores. Maybe we’ll knit today, or write, or read a book. She’ll keep me company until the kids come home, this strange cat that hovers like my mother, that comes when she’s called, and acts like my daughter.
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