We were having a garage sale at my house, when I was 18 or 19. A very fair, petite woman with dark short hair walked up the driveway to look at things and I saw my dad melt as he looked at her. I asked him, do you know her? He told me that the woman looked strikingly just like my mom did the day he had met her. She was wearing cute capris and sandals, had a fashionable purse and held herself tall although she was very short. I thought it was odd because the woman in our driveway was of Asian descent while my mom is Mexican. I remember watching my dad watch this young woman and realize he had fallen in love with my mom the day he had met her (she was 17 and he was 21 at that time) in part because of the strength she presented in such a small frame.
My mom struggled with her weight through her middle aged years, so it fluctuated quite a bit throughout my childhood but as a young woman she had been tiny. Seeing the woman at the garage sale, I realized how small my mom had been when my dad met her. I grew up always thinking she was beautiful, not ever thinking I looked like her. I certainly wasn't ever petite. While taking care of her this summer, she yelled at me to stop eating or else I'd get fatter -- my weight had been an issue between us while I was growing up. Mother/daughter baggage that I tried not to carry over with my own daughters. Family relationships are so complicated sometimes and yet simple when you just think about the love. My mom loved me so very much. I never knew how much until I gave birth to Erika and then it hit me. I had no idea that love could be so deep or so intense until parenthood. So much of my mom's actions made sense after that and I think that was when we started being better friends. For so long, she was my best friend. Oh boy, am I going to miss her.
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