100 Days

Today is a weird milestone. 

It's gray, cold, and rainy outside.  It's cold enough to feel it in my bones today.  I watch my preschooler go out the door in his brand new Columbia fleece jacket.  Instinctively, as the wind blew gusting in, I pulled his hood up cover his head.  He looked back at me and stuck his tongue out at me, as he waddled menacingly backwards away from me like an oversized baby penguin. 

I have a flashback. I'm not sure that it's even a real one.  But I'm seeing myself at his age. I'm waddling around in a fresh layer of snow in a thick pink coat in front of our new house.  My mom is near by, her brow furrowed in a lukewarm disapproval.  I can't read exactly what she's thinking. She's probably thinking I'm gonna get pneumonia again that winter, prancing around in the snow like that (I did, but it had nothing to do with the snow, I promise). She's probably thinking how beautiful it was outside.  She's probably thinking about what her mom, who grew up in tropical Southern China, would have thought about the wintery blizzard, had she been there and alive at the time.

I'm brought back to present time.  It's 100 days today.  My mom's 100-day death anniversary. It's a weird milestone.  I call it a milestone, because honestly, I don't know what else to call it.  When she was alive, she always used to point out, that people go and honor their deceased family members at the 100 day milestone. 

100 days without her. 

I think hard about what that means. And feel hot tears well up in my eyes as I realize that it's been 100 days that I've been a mother without her.

I get these flashbacks a lot lately.  Like I mentioned, I'm not even sure that they are real memories.  But somehow, I find that this is how I connect with my mom. I have these crazy moments in parenting - like the sacred minutes I hide in my downstairs bathroom to eliminate alone, and I find myself laughing, wondering if my mom ever hid from me like this as a kid.  Or I'll find myself soothing my toddler in the middle of the night, wondering if, 30 years ago, I ever let my mom sit down in her rocking chair to soothe me - or if I was just like my little monsters and desired to be carried and rocked like a human rocking chair. 

Tonight, we ate a dinner in honor of her.  Boiled chicken and Chinese veggie delight.  It was a simple dinner, just the way that she would have liked it. My toddler and I prayed to Jesus about her, asking him to help us be strong and live lives that she would be proud of.  I hope she could hear us up in Heaven.