You used to hide our shoes. It was your tried-and-true way of getting your nieces and nephews to sleep over.
“Okay, kids, let’s go home now,” one of your siblings would say at the end of a visit.
“But their shoes are nowhere to be found,” you’d say. “I guess they’ll just have to sleep over!”
Your siblings would chuckle at this hostage-taking and relent. But not my dad. He’d demand the shoes be procured immediately. And what choice did you have but to listen to your older brother?
You had no children of your own, and you spoiled us rotten. Love flowed freely from your heart, knowing no bounds. We saw it in the hours you spent telling us stories, in your home that was always open, in the milk you put out for strays, and in your endless batches of fried potatoes.
They were legendary, those potatoes. I still don’t know why yours always tasted the best. My brother would eat a plateful all by himself, and you’d just laugh and go make more.
You don’t make them anymore.
The last time I saw you was three years ago. You asked me who I was, and when I said my father’s name, you smiled that same loving smile that dazzled me as a child. “Tell your father to come home to his mother,” you said, though my grandmother had passed away ten years prior. “She misses him!” A few minutes later, you asked me again who I was, and the same conversation was repeated.
As I left that day, I wondered about the memories that make us who we are, and about what remains when they are eaten away. And I was overwhelmed by the loss of the woman who used to hide my shoes.
“Okay, kids, let’s go home now,” one of your siblings would say at the end of a visit.
“But their shoes are nowhere to be found,” you’d say. “I guess they’ll just have to sleep over!”
Your siblings would chuckle at this hostage-taking and relent. But not my dad. He’d demand the shoes be procured immediately. And what choice did you have but to listen to your older brother?
You had no children of your own, and you spoiled us rotten. Love flowed freely from your heart, knowing no bounds. We saw it in the hours you spent telling us stories, in your home that was always open, in the milk you put out for strays, and in your endless batches of fried potatoes.
They were legendary, those potatoes. I still don’t know why yours always tasted the best. My brother would eat a plateful all by himself, and you’d just laugh and go make more.
You don’t make them anymore.
The last time I saw you was three years ago. You asked me who I was, and when I said my father’s name, you smiled that same loving smile that dazzled me as a child. “Tell your father to come home to his mother,” you said, though my grandmother had passed away ten years prior. “She misses him!” A few minutes later, you asked me again who I was, and the same conversation was repeated.
As I left that day, I wondered about the memories that make us who we are, and about what remains when they are eaten away. And I was overwhelmed by the loss of the woman who used to hide my shoes.
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