MOCCASINS

It was three months to the day of my mother's death. The leaves were turning and the temperature fluctuated between a comfortable fifty degrees and a spring-like seventy from one day to the other. My mother would have loved the lack of humid weather. We shared love for the clarity of September through November skies with their cotton-like clouds on a background of deep baby blue sky.

I mindlessly threw on a pair of light wear-around-the-house pants, a long-sleeved polo shirt and went outside. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and looked at the blue sky, breathed in the air at the edge of crisp and thought of her. "You would have liked the weather today, Mom," I said, looking up hoping to see beyond the sky to the heavens. I could feel the lump in my throat and my eyes well up into a pool of tears.

There had been many great moments we'd had with my mother. Family photos I pulled out of tin cans found in the attic of my parents home confirmed that. They finally had their own home. We were apartment dwellers from the Bronx originally, landing in Queens about three years into their marriage. They had made a monumental decision to move to New Jersey into their own home from their small apartment at the seasoned age of sixty-something. It was a brave move for my very convervative father who always leaned toward the side of caution. There is something about age sometimes however, that allows you to throw caution to the wind.

Through the misunderstood territory known as chemical imbalance my mother's and my relationship began to deteriorate like a sudden summer storm. First there came the drop in temperature, then the winds and then sharp shards of lightning, followed by the big bang and rumble of thunder between us. That was her way of dealing with anger, mine was to pine away and lose all sense of self-worth. I desperately sought her approval and attention but is was hard to find. It was hidden somewhere between her past and my future. Then she got sick, very sick with emphysema and cancer. Those cigarettes were her drug to staying calm back in the day before antidepressants became the rage and not your temperment.

The more hurt I felt from the backlash of her mental state and her moods the more my own stability became challenged and incresed the wedge between us. We were always there for each other but the anger and walking on egg shells conversations were like a river rapid to be crossed. She died this past August.

In the aftermath I don't think my father would have been able to function if he kept my mother's things, like clothes, perfumes, bags and all in her closet. There was a wonderfully feminine scent permeating through the house. My sister obliged him by divvying up and donating everything for him. I got most of her clothes and shoes because we were closest in size.

Leaving those thoughts behind, I returned to my enjoyment of the autumn season moving in and decided to take a walk around the neighborhood. I thought it might fill the void this larger than life woman had left behind. Her death, for whatever reason, made everything around me look and feel different. Had she taken some of the world with her, or had she taken some of me with her? The weight of years of verbal battle and misplaced anger that she generated was gone the instant she took her last breath. The pain I endured from it felt insignificant now and knowing we had some of the same chemical challenges with moods, insecurity and a desire to have love expressed to us as opposed to having it be understood gave me a feeling of camaraderie instead of feeling like we were at war with each other.

A calm came over me as I turned to walk back home. We were more alike than I cared to admit and all the years of trying to be anything but her melted away. As I climbed up the front steps to my house I looked down to see I had on a pair of her Moccasins. I wondered if I had just walked a mile in her shoes. She would have liked that, too...loved it really. She was the queen of cliches.