Mom | plaid's Blog

When I think of my mom when I was a kid, I always see the back of her head.  I see her sitting at the big, boxy CCTV that allowed her to read college textbooks.  I remember her learning to use the thing.  In retrospect it's kind of odd.  Granted, she had too much vision to be comfortable reading Braille.  And textbooks on tape (though she had them) had to be a pain in the azz.  But still.  I know how little vision she has.  It ain't much.

So all of my childhood memories of her prominently feature the back of her head while she pores over some textbook. 

"How can you flunk third grade math when your mother aced college Statistics fucking blind?"

Dad yelled that at me.  My grades were terrible.  She got all A's.  It sucks to be a child forced into competition with your own mother.

In a way, the best times with her were in Nebraska.  Before she got the transplant, and then after, when she'd lost her vision but before we moved to Missouri.  Before the transplant she was really sick, but always had time to read to me.  Well, kind of.  She still had to do all the stuff to be a Perfect Pastor's Wife.  So a lot of those memories are of the back of her head, too.  Studying and preparing Sunday School lessons, or preparing for some Bible study.

But after she went blind, after the transplant and after the virus that nearly killed her claimed as it's fee her eyes, there were good times there.  She needed me.  She needed my help because she didn't yet know how to manage blind.

I was six.

And seven.  We moved to Missouri when I was seven.  But she lost her eyesight when I was six.  She couldn't read to me anymore, but I got a little more attention.  A little more affection.  I got to read to her; a nice reversal of roles.

Even after she'd graduated, I saw the back of her head a lot.  Or nothing at all.  She'd got mobility the way some people get religion.  That white cane freed her like nothing else ever could.  She'd walk so fast that the metal tip drew sparks from the pavement.

But I still never saw her.  At home she was too wiped to talk.  Or we'd play cards but the games got so competitive that it wasn't really mom-daughter time.

So yeah.  How pathetic is it that the only time I really had full and complete access to my mother is when she was deathly ill?