So there we are, the day before my mother was to head back to Zimbabwe. She looked over at me and said, "I told you that I don't want to die in America." At the time, she was sitting in the passenger seat of the red car you see above; the passenger seat is the side closest to that van's open door. Look closely and you will notice that the car door is a tad askew. It is askew because it is wedged into the side of the red car; you know, the red car my mother was sitting in at the time. It became wedged because the driver double-parked van thought it would be a good idea to open its door into a car as the car passed by. Mother was not hurt and lived to tell the tale - as you can see from the quote above. The car was towed away and embarked on its own separate adventures.
My brother graduated from college, my mother came to visit, for a month, to celebrate the graduation and spend time with her children. My cousin came to New York for a summer internship. It was crazy, it was hectic, it was wonderful! I almost never see my family and to be able to spend time with them and to get a hefty dose of my mother's wisdom was a gift. But that kind of intensity does come with a price. Trying to fit a year's worth of visits into thirty days can be exhausting and a car knock up at the end of it all made it all the more nutty.
That said, it was a June full of love, laughter and great food. Are there words for how difficult it is to say goodbye, knowing that it will be another forever before you get to spend time with your mother?
Then it was home and back to the usual grind. Turns out that the usual lasted only 7 days.
