The Goodbye Gift

I never lived far from My Mam, not until I left Texas to move to New York.  Even when I returned to America for college, I was only separated from my parents for seven months before they had moved back to the States and, indeed, the same town in Texas where I was living.  In fact, when they arrived in Texas, they stayed with me in my very first, ever, bachelor pad - it was a one-room apartment in which were living Me Mother and Father, my two brothers, and me.  Oy.  It was a lot.  But, soon enough, they had a home of their own that would be the family homestead until, well, until this very day.

When I went to my next learning institution, it was only an hour or so away.

When I moved to Dallas, I was only an hour away.

When it came time to move to New York, I would have to say goodbye to my Mother and Father.  I would have to say goodbye to my Mama.  I would have to say goodbye to my best friend, since birth.  It hurt so much that it was like dying inside.

My husband knows how much I love him.  Me Father knows how much I love him.  They know they are valued.  They know they are important.  They know about the bond between me and Me Mother.

The day I had to leave for New York, I had my ten-foot U-Haul packed and ready to go.  I said goodbye to my Daddy and my baby brother, then I drove into Fort Worth to Mama’s office to say goodbye.  She met me out front, while I parked the truck at the curb and jumped out to say goodbye.  In tears, we held each other for what would be the last time, for a long time.  She took my face in her hands and kissed my lips.  I was never a lip kisser - I always felt like I was invading someone’s space and privacy, if I kissed their lips.  This was the tenderest, purest, most loving kiss a person could ever know.  It taught me that it is possible to kiss a person’s lips without threat, with nothing but love.  It was one of the greatest moments of my life because it was true love and true learning from the woman who introduced me to both.

From time to time I get out the going away present Mama gave me when I left her and Me Father and Texas to try things on my own.  I look at the book she gave me and I read the letter she wrote me, and I remember that moment on the sidewalk in downtown Fort Worth.

And I weep.  I weep for what has been lost, I weep for what once was, and I weep for the joy and the life that my Mother has given me.