There's a saltwater film, on the jar of your ashes. [longest blog of my life]

I woke up yesterday morning to find my mother on the couch crying into a sweatshirt of mine, sobbing something about me going away to college. I sit next to her and quickly realize that there's nothing good about the situation and therefore nothing I can say except, "It's going to be OK" which I know isn't comforting. She just sits there and cries at 10am and I've got everywhere in the world to be but I can't just leave her. Soon enough I tell her to take a breath then take a shower and get ready, it'd make her feel better.

Mom and I are making a collage of pictures of my life for my graduation party tonight. We were looking through an album I got from my dads house, and she remarked that there were lots of pictures of him and I then proceeded to ask if there were pictures of her and I like that, of us doing things together as a child. There aren't, so I said "No". She looked sad, and then said, "Now I see why you cried so much coming home from visiting your dad. You two did things together,huh? You hung out? I don't have memories like that." Yes, my dad is a very good dad. Always has been, at least in my eyes. I lived away from him most of my life and would come to visit in the summer months, and that time was typically all about me. So when I reach back into my childhood and pull out some memories I pull out ones of dad and I in a rowboat in some little pond, him threatening to throw me in. I pull out memories of us eating pounds of Oreos and watching Mrs. Doubtfire. Going to movies and having intense conversations afterwards about what the movie "really meant". Mostly I remember that when I did spend time with my dad, and when we did talk together I felt like all he cared about in that moment was me, and what I had to say. There weren't other things floating around in his mind that seemed more important. I liked that undivided attention. I never got that from my mom, who was always concerned with herself. She's gotten better in recent years but here I am ready to go off to college. So what was I to say when she said, "I wish I had memories like that with you. Now I'll never get that back" ? All I could tell her was that she still had right now...

I love my mother. More than I could ever say to you in words. I know that we all make mistakes. She's grown up a lot in the past four years. Her priorities are in better places now.

I feel bad for her. If she had just opened her eyes, she would have seen a long time ago that the photoalbums were mostly filled with pictures of me and dad. She never cared to look. Or she never thought to look. Even worse.