Do As I Say, Not As I Do

While I say that my mother's life hasn't been a breezy, happy walk in the park, I have some memories that randomly pop into my head and make me laugh hysterically. One of the most consistent themes is my mom's numerous failed attempts to train me out of my own nature, with occasionally hilarious results. For example I am, and always have been, a bit of a softy. I take up crazy causes and occasionally try to remove water from the ocean, one thimble at a time. This is a trait I have undeniably inherited from my mom. Since she couldn't fight her own nature, she occasionally thought she'd fight mine. Let me share a couple of my favorite memories:

We were stuck in traffic in Tehran on the way to my grandmother's house one afternoon and as would typically happen, a beggar came and tapped on the window. I rolled the window down and said hi, which he ignored and started his litany of problems: his pregnant wife, hungry kids, sick mother...I was already digging through my backpack for money. Just as I found a couple of coins (the equivalent of about 50 cents), my mom grabbed my wrist and chastised me, "Don't give him money! He's probably a drug addict. He's just going to buy drugs!" She continued lecturing me, and didn't notice that the beggar had moved to her side of the car and was tapping at her window, his hand held out and repeating his story. She didn't skip a beat. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a bunch of bills (about $15) and handed the money to him, and promised to bring clothes for his girls if he was around there later in the week. I stared at her in disbelief as she rolled up her window.

"What?! I can't let him go home empty handed. But you shouldn't be so gullible, you need to toughen up!"

I'm sorry to say, that hasn't really happened.

We went to Mashhad my senior year of high school, to worship at the shrine of Imam Reza. For my non-vacationing family, this was actually a big deal to get out of the house. For me it was a bit of a downer that I wouldn't see the memorials to Ferdousi and Khayam; and I'd have to make due with making a direct appeal to religious figures to help me get into college. Imam Reza's shrine is always busy and full of people who have come from around the country to pray at the shrine of the only Imam buried in Iran. The highly ornate, mausoleum is so densely packed, you can't move; rather you are like a leaf riding the wave. You start at the outer part of the room, are pushed forward, briefly touch the enshrined tomb, and are eventually pushed out in the sea of humanity. It's claustrophobic, overwhelming and confusing. Especially if you lose sight of the person you came in with. After all, that many women in black chadors kind of blend into one indistinguishable ocean. So when I found myself pushed out of the mausoleum, I sat myself down on the marble floor facing the room I just exited and continued to pray for a college education as I waited for my mom. I was having a pretty decent heart to heart with Imam Reza and God about my wishlist when I realized a pretty big commotion a little bit to the left of me.

A crowd of about 10-15 people had surrounded a wailing woman, offering comfort in hushed tones and promising to help her. Out of sheer curiosity, I walked over and heard her crying, "My baby! I lost my baby! Someone, please bring her back to me! She's all I have in this world." For a brief second, I felt so bad for this black clad woman, I wanted to join in and promise to help her find her child. But that passed quickly.

"Sister, what does she look like? What was she wearing? How tall is she?" An older looking cleric was standing beside her, trying to extract as much information as possible. To his credit, he was already motioning to organize people to help find her poor child.

"She was wearing a black chador--just like this one. She has big green eyes, with little specks in them. She's about my height, but thinner than me..." The whole crowd just stopped. Up to that point, they thought this woman had lost a baby/infant/toddler; not a person her own size. A few laughed and started to walk away. The cleric smiled and said, "I'm sure your daughter is very smart and will meet you at the hotel. Would you like us to call and see if she's already there?"

And before my mom could tell the world how innocent and incapable I was of finding my way anywhere, I called out, "Mom! Let's go.", which turned a few heads when uttered in English in an Iranian house of worship. I will say that the cleric was a much better person than me for not bursting out laughing at the bi-lingual 'baby' that had found its mother.

The first few minutes of our walk back to the hotel was passed in complete silent. She finally turned to me and said, "Young lady, getting that kind of attention is wrong! You can't be melodramatic and hysterical all the time. Think and then..." Unfortunately, I couldn't hear anything else she said after that; I was laughing too hard.

To this day, I have no idea how that was going to be a lesson for me. I just know she wanted me to be better and more successful than she was. I love that about her.

She Missed The Joy

As I watch my new-mom friends and those on their way to parenthood, I am struck by what my mother missed. The excitement I see around me is a stark contrast to mother's experience. And that makes me so sad, knowing she missed the joy.

In a way, joy evaded her. From the moment she realized she was pregnant with me, she started praying sincerely and fervently. All she wanted was a daughter. A girl she could teach what she hadn't been taught; a girl who would be all that she thought was good; a girl who would fulfill all of the dreams she couldn't fulfill. She prayed for a second chance. And technically, she got what she prayed for: a big headed, bald girl. I cannot say I was her dreams come true. That would be the underlying theme of our relationship; her larger than life dreams that came crashing into the reality of my mediocrity. Almost all of her energy was spent helping me be perfect.

A few years later, she gave birth to my brother in a foreign land, far from her husband and family. That he was on the brink of death for seven years robbed her of youth and joy long before she approached thirty. It never occurred to her to enjoy the moments of triumph, the quiet times where death didn't loom over our home or the small accomplishments that brought my brother closer to real life. To her, motherhood meant fear and anxiety--and she embraced her destiny whole heartedly. She was sure she would be rewarded with tranquility. Someday.

When my youngest brother was born, he was healthy, cute and dazzling. In our own ways, we all thought of him as the ray of light that would chase away the darkness that had entered our lives in Iowa. The problem with darkness is that it can be so dense, it can actually drown out the light. By then, anxiety and sorrow were my mom's closest, oldest companions and the possibility of anything else was inconceivable. She denied the joy that she no longer recognized, and was sure the right time would come. Someday.

Over the years, she kept pushing us to achieve what she could not. She sacrificed everything for us to have the education she never had, the marriage(s) that she dreamed of and the life she was denied. Unfortunately, 'pushing' means there is resistance. At some point, despite her best efforts, our dreams diverged casting each of us in different directions. On the rare occasion that she got what she prayed for, she didn't get the chance to enjoy it. She didn't attend any of my graduations (I have had a few), she was not by my side when I got married and she has no idea what my (few) strengths are. I technically fulfilled her dreams, but she still didn't get to enjoy any of my (minor) achievements. She is used to this disappointment, and still hopes she will get what she wished for. Someday.

And yet.

No matter how many times she is disappointed, misled, betrayed or hurt, she continues to love. She loves with a strength and persistence that overwhelms me. She may love in spite of her self, but she continues to love. And hope. This is what she has given me, her only daughter: great expectations, anxiety and an almost obstinate love. We know that the rewards will come. Someday...

The Box

I must have been either ten or eleven. We had just moved into an enormous house. At least, it seemed enormous to me at the time. I drive past it on occasion now (it is no longer ours), and it doesn't seem so big anymore: just your average, suburban home. But I grew up in a little apartment above my father's dry goods store... so an actual house was something utterly alien to me. Yes, there was both an upstairs and a downstairs... but the downstairs was our living room and kitchen, not two rooms with registers and shelves and long rolls of fabric stretching out to infinity.

I read a lot back then, more than I do now. I had more time. These days, I'm occupied with school, work, friends, and occasionally family. I make time to read, but it's never quite enough. But when I was ten or eleven, I had all the time in the world. New house, new school, no friends. I didn't really try to make any friends, and I was a pretty dull new face... so nobody really approached me, either. I was fine with that at first. I didn't need other people, after all. I had my own thoughts, and others' words, and that was good enough.

That line of thinking didn't last me long. I became starved for attention, but I never, ever wanted to risk making a fool out of myself by reaching out at school. So what did I do instead? Why, what any lonely eleven-year-old will do when forced with this kind of dilemma: I grabbed a book, hid in my parents' closet, and waited for someone to realize I was missing. Then, from my handy hiding spot, I could listen to their despair, and just when they got ready to call the police, I would pop out from within: "It took you three hours to realize I was missing? REALLY? Three hours? Wow."

That's not exactly what actually happened. Instead, I spent about fifteen minutes reading in the confines of the closet before growing bored and deciding to search through my surroundings instead. Mostly clothes, and a few of my mom's romance novels (I always peeked into them because I knew they had these racy sex scenes, but I never could bring myself to read any of it until quite a few years later). But then... oh... what's this? I had stumbled upon what appeared to be a treasure trove: a box! But not just any box... this box was hidden away, pushed all the way back against the wall on the very top shelf. I only just managed to reach it by pushing together piles of clothing and climbing on top. As soon as I reached the box, all the clothing fell apart from underneath me and I came tumbling down, box clutched in grubby little hands. I dusted myself off and set down to open it, but... of course... it was locked.

I didn't wait for anyone to think I was missing. After fumbling with the locked box for a while, I gave up on opening it and left the closet, ready to return to the rest of my life. My mother was having coffee with a friend, and I wandered in and out of the kitchen, hazily commenting on my absence and trying to embarrass my mother in front of her friend. It didn't work, and that was that for a while.

I would often return to that box throughout the following months. It never occurred to me to try and pick the lock, and at one point I got so curious that I dragged it out right in front of my mom and simply demanded to know what was inside. She resolutely refused, and all I could get out of her was a bemused smile and the confirmation that I would never, ever get to see what was inside that box. So, I decided to give up. The mystery would remain unsolved forever - or so I thought.

At least a year after my initial discovery of the box (and perhaps longer... I can't be too sure about the time line), I was looking for something in my mother's closet. An old coat, maybe. In any case, I couldn't find the coat, but I did end up running into the mystery box again. I didn't think too much about it at first, until I noticed that something was actually poking out of it! That's right, the corner of what appeared to be a photograph was sticking out through the cracks in between the lid and the rest of the box. Apparently, someone had been a little hasty last time they took a peek, and then there I was, finally able to catch a glimpse of the elusive contents!

I sat down and placed the box in front of me. I would take my time. I had waited this long, I could extend this moment for as long as I liked. I would soon realize... well, here: I pulled the photograph out, and was horrified to see that it was my mother. But it wasn't the mother I knew. In this picture, she was much younger... laying in a bed... stark naked. Oh Christ. Oh Christ. I shoved the picture back into the box, as far as I could make it go, I tossed the box away haphazardly, I sprinted out of that closet (coat completely forgotten), and ran up to my bedroom to process this. My mother? Naked? What?

I still haven't told her that I figured out what was in that box. I'm afraid she might try and treat this as an opportunity to bond, and tell me about what else might be in that box. I love my mother dearly, but I have no desire to know anything at all about the events that led up to a photograph of her in a compromising position. I get it, you know, we are all sexual beings... my mother has every right to a sexual life... but hey, some things are just better left undiscussed, and the sex lives of our parents is most definitely always one of those aforementioned things.

My Mother, My Friend

My mom and I had what I would call your average mother/daughter relationship when I was growing up. We never had the screaming and slamming doors fights that I occasionally witnessed between some of my friends and their mothers nor did we have the close "sit down with a cup of tea and chat" mother-daughter bond that I knew could exist. We had our disagreements but they were typically short-lived. For the most part we got along although I rarely shared with her when it came to boys, peer pressure, sex and the like. It wasn't that she was oblivious to my teenage world, it was more that she let my sister and me be independent but if we screwed up (and we certainly did) then she got involved. I sometimes wanted to tell her about my crush on a certain boy or the fight I had with a girlfriend but mostly she wanted to hear about my schoolwork or my dance classes so the rest I divulged to my older sister who I relied on heavily to commiserate with over teenage girl things. The one time that I can recall discussing my personal life with mom was senior year of high school when I was spending a lot of time alone, as it seemed my friends had decided to exclude me for some unknown reason. She wanted to know why I was sitting at home on Friday night, why I didn't call Aimee or Jen or Kristin so I filled her in. Her response, stated in a much more "momly" way of course, was basically "fuck 'em". It was probably the first time I felt that she understood my life.

We could only take each other in small doses, putting some distance between my mom and me from time to time was essential. Once I went away to college, we seemed to enjoy our time together more but by the end of a weekend visit we would start snapping at each other and I knew it was time to be on my way. I realize now that it was probably because we were much more similar than I was willing to admit. I knew I could never move back in with my parents after college the way my sister did to save money and pay off bills. Instead, my sister and I got an apartment together and I immediately started making plans to move to New York. I knew I would miss my family when I moved but I figured it wouldn't affect my mom any differently than when I left for college. There was no resistance from her when I announced my move, no "my baby is leaving" sentiment. The move itself went smoothly, save for a massive thunderstorm that rolled in while we were unloading the U-Haul, but as my parents climbed in their car to make the drive back to Pennsylvania my mom looked at me and simply said "I'm really gonna miss you." It was the first time she had ever said anything so poignant and the tears rolled down my face as I watched them drive away.

That was a changing day in my relationship with my mom and I looked forward to the visits she made, day trips either with my dad for sightseeing or with my sister so she could take us shopping. I was slowly seeing her has more than just my mother who would get angry when I got a B- in algebra II or left my shoes on the steps instead of taking them to my room. I saw that we could get along, maybe not in the same way as other mothers and daughters, but we definitely could. So when I decided to take a surf trip to Mexico for my 28th birthday I invited her to come with me. And she accepted. Just me and mom, and we had so much fun. Everyone in the surf group thought she was adorable and told me over and over how great she was. And I agreed. Sure, she drove me nuts a few times (whose mother doesn't?) but those instances paled in comparison to the surfing, horseback riding and margarita drinking. She told me again and again how impressed she was by my surfing ability and I could tell that she really meant it. But no one was more impressed than me. I was impressed that this woman, at 57 years old, hopped on a surfboard with no hesitation, did early morning yoga every day and giggled over the cute guy with the puppy that I befriended one evening. I was impressed that we finally had become friends.

(My mom, surfing Sayulita, Mexico, January 2005)

Reborn

The infant stirs, not yet awake but partially aware. It dreams lush dreams of ancient seas and warm sun, of creatures great and small, of plants and insects and other things for which it does not yet have a name. Its eyes flutter under translucent lids, preparing for their time to open. Occasionally it feels warm on the inside as well as out, and this is love, though it does not yet know that word. A high lyrical voice sings numerous lullabies in many languages as it slumbers. This is Mother, though the voice is all it knows of the idea of parentage. At somewhat regular intervals the voice, now harsh and loud, proclaims, “NEW SECTOR CLEAN -- CONTAMINANT LEVELS REDUCED.” The infant feels fear when it hears Mother speak in this way, though fear is nothing more than the rush of adrenaline that courses through its veins; it does not yet know the name of the emotion. Again Mother speaks, now flat and even, speaking of food and nutrients. The infant does not know these ideas, only that when Mother speaks this way it feels contented and at peace.

In time, the child dreams of science and religion, music and literature, war and poverty and disease, all the things that make its kind wonderful and base. It sees images of men and women in white coats, urgently working together deep underground. It sees them pressing buttons and speaking to Mother, telling her she is their only hope. She sings to them as the poison they swallow takes hold, and sends her first children to clean them and inter them when they are finally and forever asleep. The child dreams of great cylindrical machines flying through the air, and of flashes bright as the sun, and towering dome-capped clouds. It sees men and women staggering and falling, burns and wounds covering their fragile flesh. It sees what Mother sees, great swathes of land full of fire and sickness and horror as its kind struggles to survive. And it feels Mother’s pain as the world turns black, cold and silent.

But then it watches as Mother watches, as ages pass and the land becomes green again. And suddenly it feels fear when it hears Mother’s loud voice again, this time saying, “SURFACE LEVEL CLEAN – BEGIN NEW EDEN SEQUENCE.” It feels her joy and hears her song as she releases her pets all over the world in pairs, and celebrates with her as the pairs become more. It watches as she samples water and proclaims it clean, as she samples fruit and declares it edible, as she watches her pets’ offspring and sees no mutations or sickness. And when Mother is satisfied, she speaks softly to the child, telling him to come forth and claim what she’s prepared for him.

So the child is released in a torrent of fluids and tubes, in a wave of fear and new sensations. Mother’s first children clean and swaddle the child while Mother sings of discovery and hope and new life. Mother helps the child, who she now calls Adam, learn to walk and talk and write and sing and embrace the world she has kept safe for him. Mother watches and teaches as Adam becomes a man, and her pride is as limitless as the stars.

And one day Mother tells Adam that her time is short, that the tasks set before her have been accomplished save one. Mother tells Adam of other humans the world over, kept safe and taught in the same way as Adam, ready to be loosed on this pristine new world to form it in the image given them by Mother. She tells him of love to come, and discoveries to make his heart sing, and reminds him of the lessons of peace and respect she has taught him. And she sings him one last lullaby as the doors open onto the new world, as her last thoughts end and she bids him farewell.

And Adam weeps with both joy and sorrow, for his beloved Mother is no more, but the world has been reborn with her passing.

The Missing Reel

I know it should go without saying, but my mom fucking rocked. She was my compass, my financial advisor, my life coach, and my road dog. She was the only one who understood how vitally important it was to be among the first to see a new movie on its release date. Catching midnight shows were commonplace and didn't seem to faze her in the least. We both new when “New Movie Tuesday” rolled around, what was being released, and that one of us would come home with a new DVD in hand that night. This was our thing.

She even went so far as to get a part time job at a movie theatre when she needed extra money. She worked there for years, and it goes without saying that I never knew the price of a movie ticket for a good long time. Friday nights would find my brother and me catching the newest summer blockbuster, or spring dud. The other theatre employees new us by name, or simply as “Irma's boys”. Half the time we didn't even need a ticket; we simply walked up to the ticket taker, greeted them with a nod, and went on in. I'm sure this must have looked odd to the poor saps paying their seven dollars to see Jason X (which was $6.99 too much for that uber-bomb, by the way) watching these two kids skate on by like dignitaries with diplomatic immunity. Many were the times that I would simply go to the mall just to say hi to her, talking to her through the loudspeaker, seeing her there in her black and purple theatre uniform, with a black knit sweater on to block the chill of the box office. I miss her so much. I remember her stories about turning kids away from R rated movies for not being old enough, of the other employees she did and didn't like, and of calling me and asking if I wanted to come see a movie with her on her lunch break. I remember one year when she talked the theatre manager into letting me take home a life sized cardboard stand up of Darth Maul. For years I kept that up in my room, a silent reminder of a missing reel in my life. For a year or so after her passing, my brother and I would still visit the theatre she worked at, with some of the older employees still recognizing us and letting us slip in. Soon the old guard passed, and we had to start paying to recapture the past. Eventually we would have to make do with simply passing by the box office on trips to the mall, silently reliving those moments.

Now, every time I walk into a movie theatre and the smell of popcorn and movie posters washes over me, I think of her. Whenever a new movie comes out on DVD, I remember the phone calls to her to let her know what came out that day, and the excited drive to Circuit City or Target to pick it up. I remember the quick critiques we would share after watching them, and the pride at which I would look at our growing movie collection.

This was our thing.

Architecture of a Skeleton

My boyfriend has died. I am just barely nineteen, he was in the middle of being eighteen, we were deeply in love, I thought he was the one... and all of a sudden, he just vanished. His body is still here, decomposing under the cold, dark Earth... but his soul and his livelihood are lost to the winds.

In the weeks after, I spent many lonely nights huddled in our garage that has always been decked out in living-room fashion (big-screen TV, couches... you name it, we've got it) smoking tear-stained cigarettes and pouring my guts out to my dear mother.

"You'll get through this, honey."
"We're all here for you, darling."
"I love you, try to keep your head up, dear."
"I know this is the worst thing that could have happened, but life will eventually get better, sweetheart."

You know, all the requisite things you have to be told when you've experienced loss. Nobody really knows what to say, and you don't really know what to say back to them either, so mostly everyone resorts to the standard clichés that promote hope and strength. But that's mostly everyone - and it's certainly not your own mother. While she did say to me, at one point or another, all the variants of the above statements, on one particularly grueling night she opened herself up to me in a way that she never had before. She wore her heart square on her sleeve, and for a few minutes of our time, I watched that beautiful heart I hadn't yet seen furiously pumping blood, sad in its own timed little way, but truly and purely alive.

"I just can't believe this, Mom. He was the one, he was supposed to be my future, I had the highest hopes for us, and now it's all gone. It's fucked. He's gone, it's all gone, it's just fucked."

"You can't think like that right now. I know he was your boyfriend and you loved him, but you can't predict that he would have definitively been your future. I had this boyfriend once..."

"Mom, I really don't think I want to hear about this boyfriend of yours right about now."

"No, I need to tell you about this. I thought my future was right in front of me, too, and it turns out that it wasn't."

"Look, Mom. I know you guys broke up because he left you for another woman. This is different. A break-up is one thing, a death is another."

"No. Listen. If you listen to me for one time in your life, let this be it."

"Okay, fine. Go on."

"There's more to this story than I've ever told anyone else, including your father. My parents know, but nobody else in the world does. He did leave me for another woman, yes. That was upsetting enough. But at the time, I was pregnant. We were supposed to get married, and I was pregnant. The situation sort of forced me into an abortion. I did not want to raise a child on my own. I did not want my child to grow up without his father. But I have to believe everything happens for a reason, and I did meet your father, and we had you and your brother, and I couldn't be happier with what I have been given."

I was shocked. Throughout the years I've become somewhat desensitized to drama, as I believe most of us have (in large part due to the scandal-obsessed media), but never had there been any real drama present in my family. Skeletons in the closet? I thought for sure we were bone-free. And yet there I sat, soaked in a year's worth of salty tears, listening to my mother tell me her deepest secret. It was unbelievable, but I knew it was true. My broken heart felt for her, and for the child she had to give up, and all the regret she must have felt, surely still feels, and as she kept talking, my heart kept breaking.

A few weeks later, in an effort to prove to her my willingness to be open with one another, I pressed her for more details. I sat in a chair on the balcony, smoking a cigarette, and she joined me, smoking her own cigarette. As we sat there together, she told me more about this man who gave her and their unborn child up in order to be with some woman that has probably since left him.

"I don't even remember how we met. Well, no. Now I remember. It was New Year's Eve, and we were at a party, and somebody introduced us. He was sitting on a chair, and I sat down on the floor next to him. You know how I sit now, next to Dad? Just like that. I think he hugged me; that's how it all started. We dated for 4 years, but your grandma never liked him; he was so... well, for example, I would have to call five times in order to get him to spend time with me, it was like pulling teeth.

We were dating for about two years when his mom developed brain cancer. One day, he called me and told me his mom wanted to see me. She started hallucinating, she thought her son had killed me and thrown me in the river, so she wanted to make sure I was still alive. That was probably the hardest day of my life, it was winter and I had to take a bus, and my legs were so heavy I could barely even make it to the bus stop. I finally made it to the house, and she saw me, and she was okay. Soon after, she died. She left behind my boyfriend, his brother, and their father. Now, since the only woman in the family had died, his father thought it would be good for us to get married. He was in college, and he didn't want to get married before he finished college. His excuse was that he wanted to be able to give me something in life. That was a bunch of bullshit.

We both worked at the same bus station his father managed. One day, this girl came in, she was hired for the summer. She was a very pretty, Marilyn Monroe type: blonde, big boobs. He started spending time with her while we were still together... I had suspicions that he was cheating, but I didn't want to believe it. By this time, I was pregnant. I was throwing up constantly. I lost so much weight. I wasn't eating because of the relationship stress, and I was throwing up because I was pregnant. One day, I went to his house and his dad was there. My boyfriend had gone out, without telling anybody where he was going. He actually just went down to the store, but I thought he was going to go and hook up with that girl, so I left his house and I walked to the bus station where we worked to see if he was there with her. He wasn't, so I went home. That night, he called me and told me everything he had done... it was obvious, he never had wanted to marry me.

The last day that I ever saw him, I went to his house and his dad was there again. His dad started talking to him about us and he just put a pillow over his ears because he didn't want to listen that badly. At that point, I knew it was really over for good. His father offered me the money for an abortion. When I left the house, his dad came with me to the bus stop, and he told me, 'You know what? There is better luck waiting for you somewhere else. That's why you guys aren't getting married and why you're not in our family.' They all knew me, and they all loved me, and there I was, standing at the bus stop on that lonely summer night, waiting for the last time.

I have not seen him since. I often wonder how he looks now, or if he has children with someone else. One of my relatives told me he had a nervous breakdown. I don't know if she was lying to me to make me feel better or if that really happened. For a month, about a month and a half, I used to go out to all the places we frequented, hoping to see him. I wrote him many unsent letters. Then I met your father, three weeks later we got married, and that was it.”

My mother: the most lovely, kind, and patient woman I have ever met, with all this pain and heartbreak in her past of a magnitude that I could not have imagined. I always knew there was something hiding back there in the depths of the closet, a little skeleton she chose to keep to herself. Never could I have imagined that her lonely little skeleton would turn out to be child-sized.

May Theme: Mom's the Word

It's fairly predictable to dedicate May's theme to Mothers, but I didn't just choose it because of Mother's Day. May's theme is mostly inspired by a number of my friends who are either on the cusp of motherhood or have recently welcomed new members to their families. All this excitement made me think of my mother, grandmothers and great-grandmothers. I can say without exaggeration that I am not the most 'interesting' woman in my family. I'm sure everyone has funny, thoughtful, moving or nostalgic stories about their mother or their experiences as a mother. So that's our theme for May. (You can guess what July's theme is going to be).

The same rules apply to the stories. Write and post as many stories as you would like. I did have a wonderful story submitted to me in April, which I unfortunately couldn't post because of the length (and I never heard back with permission to post it in sections). If you want to write a long story, I suggest writing it in parts (I, II, III) so readers don't have to scroll too much.

I look forward to everyone's stories!

Thank you to everyone who voted on June's theme. We have a winner, "Oh The Places I Have Been."