Love It All

Lavonne Gould- mom, personal superhero, and love of my life- what can I say that would make anyone understand what you have meant to me? Almost everything I learned, that lesson came from you, which is a good thing because dad mostly taught me the things I could get in trouble for. If only I had gotten a mere touch of that even-tempered thing you had going on in spades. That calm demeanor never ceased to amaze me. Only one of your many superpowers.

You put up with so much craziness from me without so much as a batted eyelash. I remember how undaunted you were when you came to talk to me in the shower one night when I was about 8 years old. You pulled back the curtain and I was showering in my swim team suit. 'Why are you wearing that in the shower?' 'I always wear it.' 'What do you mean? You never take it off?' "No, why should I? I'm going swimming again tomorrow.' You gave me an exasperated stare and said, 'just make sure you wash (fingers pointing downwards).' I think your average parent would tell that child she's crazy and to take that thing off right this minute. And they'd be perfectly within their rights. You simply turned it into an embarrassing story you loved regaling about your bizarre child with a bathing suit fetish. Touche, mom.

You shook your head as you took away a bucket I kept in my bedroom when you discovered I was lowering it down to the den window, stealing vodka from the bar, hoisting it back up, and then returning the bottles back to the bar filled with water.

You rolled her eyes and told me to clean this mess up when you found me feebly attempting to grow weed in my bedroom closet. With a regular light bulb and some aluminum foil.

You made my dad call every college in VA and NC until he got me into a school where I could compete on a gymnastics team after Appalachian State canceled the gymnastics program the summer before my freshman year.

After my semester in London, I hitchhiked to Greece and called home to ask about some money you all told me you were sending. Dad, having sent a check to my London address, assumed I had spent the entirety in a week and said he would wire more, but NOT TO CALL AGAIN. So I didn't. Three months later I found out the State Department was, very inadequately in my opinion, searching for me. (Three months? I wasn't exactly hiding.) You demanded dad use his government resources to find me, all the while unbeknownst to you I had been told specifically not to call. I was the one to explain that to you once I did get in touch. I'll bet dad got a verbal ass-whooping that night. He deserved it. See, I did not learn my more upstanding traits from him.

After dad tripped the light fantastic on out of here in 2018, I began my long reign as your servant, short-order cook, and court jester. Ours was a lovely arrangement; I behaved like dad most of the time, and you did what you did best with him, nod your head and ignore what you didn't like. A utopian existence.

The rest of the stories are ours, for the time being. All things being equal, I could do without the unrelenting loneliness I have been feeling the past 24 hours, and the sadness I experience when I want to tell you something clever, as I am wont to do, and you aren't here to appreciate my self-proclaimed brilliance. I was hoping you were going to be a ghost, but you didn't visit me last night so I'm going to go with the assumption you are just taking apparition lessons, like Patrick Swayze in Ghost (have you seen him? Still hot?) and will, at your earliest convenience, pop in to say hello or boo, whatever you preference. I'll keep my fingers crossed. Love you. Always.