Planting Dandelions

Missing her.

The day my mother left to go to law school in Nova Scotia, I didn’t know how to feel or act. I was fifteen years old, and I was being allowed to stay in our family home with my father, at my own insistence. I had gotten my way, but it wasn’t my way at all. My way would have been for my parents to have lived together happily ever after until I grew up and moved onto my own happily ever after. But that wasn’t in anyone’s hands to give.

It was the end of summer. I went up to my room, sat on the floor with my back against my dresser, and turned on my alarm clock FM radio. The Beach Boys came on.

I…I love the colorful clothes she wears

And the way the sunlight plays upon her hair.

I…I hear the sound of a gentle word

On the wind that lifts her perfume through the air.

I closed my eyes, and missed my mother.

I didn’t know how to say goodbye to her then.

I never do.