Family Resemblances: My Mom, My Friend

She is bundled up in one of her many robes;  this particular one is a bizarre but very thick and soft material and an even stranger color that is a cross between a brown and a tan with a pinkish hue.  She has on her pajamas underneath her comfortably tattered and worn housecoat and I shall let you, my audience, know that the time is a very early 8:00 pm, but that is just the way my mom rolls.  Sitting in the other swively desk chair next to me, her feet, like mine, just a few millimeters from the light-colored hardwood floor, she is perusing the pics on Facebook that we had taken on her birthday and on Christmas Eve.

Her smile, so much like my own, is on constant display as we chit chat while looking at the family snapshots of our recent get-togethers;  her rosy cheeks, jutting out above her gaily exposed teeth, are the same ones that adorn my face whenever I flash my own grin and her dark blue eyes are crinkled at the corners in the same manner mine do. Reminiscing and laughing over these pictures of the times we have just spent together getting all tangled up by playing Twister both at my house and hers and sharing some wonderful food either prepared by my less-than-skilled-chef hands or by her more-than-capable-after-years-of-practice hands, I am reminded of how easy it is to talk to her.  Our Frenglish banter and chatter has always been rather easy to commence when we are together, despite the fact that we sometimes go a few days without having spoken to one another, her life being just as charged and full as mine. 


I, however, have not always been completely truthful when speaking with my mom, especially when I was younger and a little more brazen, but I would more often than not end up confessing my misdemeanors to her or asking for her advice in matters of love and life in general.  Who will really blame me though for my memory slips or omissions, she IS, after all, my mother, and she might not have always agreed with what her apparently innocent daughter had done or experienced. 

On the other other hand, she has always been willing to listen, at times offering unwelcome and unwanted advice or, and this happens much more often, merely proffering an unbiased ear and wide open arms for me to sink into in the most amazing of "calins" given in the world.  Her loving and soothing murmurs of "abeille" and "cherie" when interjecting or showing me that she is following what I am expressing, or her sentences that begin with "sweet" in a rising tone when she is questioning what I am saying or when she is giving me a suggestion of some sort, whether wanted or not, are often sought out; her little affectionate nicknames for me melting into our discussions while I alernately call her "ma" in my Quebecois accent when I am questioning her supposedly sound advice by saying, "Oui, mais ma...",  my "mom" in a softer falling tone when I am trying to convince her about something or, "mother" in a much sterner voice when I absolutely do not agree with what she has said.

In these new adventures of mine, she is my indispensable yet not omnipresent sidekick who is a part of my arsenal against the snares and traps set out and ready to spring whenever I make a wrong move.  I know that I will always be able to count on her comforting hand on my calf as we sit curled up on her brown leather sofa while we discuss whatever situation I have foolishly and wholeheartedly thrown myself into.