Missing my Mama Pat and in my feelings about it...

I am so happy that the last ten years of Mama's life I was able to have so many planned and unplanned adventures with her.
It has been over a year without her and I have started missing her in a different way.

Mama wasnt the motherly type.  Her pep talks were more for linebackers than ballerinas, but that is why I was built so tough.

But today especially, I missed my mama.
not her fussing me out, but the times she was proud of me when no one was looking.  When ever I was sick she always told me to toughin up

When I was sad about what i didnt have or what we didnt have as a family, she would remind me, " someone has it worse than us"  even standing in food lines.  Or her telling us to clean the house if we were cold in the winter.

She was creative with food, like most mamas of color from poverty.

When I wanted to grow a garden, she let me.  When I wanted to play an instrument, she let me.  IF I could do it on my own, she pretty much let me do it, teaching me autonomy and leadership and I dont think she even knew it.

her parenting methods were unparalleled and so was  her lack of them...

YET still I miss my MAMA.  and being sick, though she wasnt a person to baby me, even as the baby...
though I would grow into adulthood and take care of her...

There is something about being sick every day.  feeling like each day is a struggle to step one foot a head of the other.  a girl misses her mama.

I thank her for her strength and I miss her in my weakness.

So if you are reading, and still have a mama.  store those memories, thoughts, and events.  take lots of pics.  I am so glad I documented everything (like a well trained ethnographer)