Thankful for Mom's Legacy

Today is the second holiday of cooking nothing. Cept I think I will make something.  Not sure what.  I've been thinking of everything that's happened in the past year.  I'm now going through all my mom's sewing stuff.  Before it was just sorting out according to the projects I knew she was working on.  Now, it's going through the stuff we bought together for different reasons.  Sometimes, we'd buy two or three hanks of one color we liked, with nothing in mind for it, ceptin' to admire the color.  There are plenty of those.  And trying to find her five petal flower pattern.

Lots of times, we'd take the scenic route whilst on our way to you know where over on the Leech Lake Reservation.  We'd stop in out of the way places just to look.  I'd think we were lost, yet Mom always knew where we were.  Least on those roads.  There was a couple times when she had a sort  of puzzled, almost panicked, look and my heart would sink.  Then we'd hit a road or a turn and she'd tell me where to turn.  Comes of the Indian habit of using landmarks, which don't always stay the same  over the years.

I've been looking over my posts on my other blogs and on my second favorite haunt.  I knew I posted a lot of the things we'd do or stuff that happened.  Now, more than ever, I am glad for those posts.  One thing I am truly grateful for is the trip to Vegas we went on with the Elders on the rez.  She really liked being in the Grand Canyon area.  At the time, we'd have the usual butting of heads cause she wanted to do one thing and I wanted to do another.  Our little tiffs that'd been happening ever since I was a child.  Then on the roads, I'd catch a photo shot of her when she wasn't looking.  She didn't like having her picture taken.  Not all Indians do.  I might've mentioned it before on one or the other of my blogs.  Reason: People used to come to the reservation, take pictures and use them to scam money out of people by saying they were raising money for us.  Yeah.  The first time that happened to me, I told her and that was the last time I ever posed for those pics.

Anyhow, on the trip, we stopped in Flagstaff and she was mighty tired.  Then we went out to the reservation to visit with the Elders there.  That sure picked her up.  Sort of like being at home.  Even though it was a long trip, in the dark and think we were a mite lost, and got back late, she had fun.  I came across the gift she was given and remembered the games we'd played whilst there.  She always liked meeting new people, finding out where they were from and what they did.  I'm not as social as she was and she'd get a bit perturbed with me.  Ahh, noow I'm grinning with some of the stuff she'd say.

Ohh, to me, she's always the 36 year old woman I first realized, or rather thought of her as someone other than my mother.  I remember her brushing out my hair and then braiding it.  Yeah, yeah yeah, my eyes were more slanted than usual.  Always wished I had the courage my sister had when she stole my mom's scissors and cut her hair.  What I did was learn to braid my own hair.

She really liked it when "her boys" would come over to help her with one or another of her outdoor projects.  They'd sit around, smoking a cigarette, drinking a cup of coffee and gabbing more than working.  She enjoyed that.

Oh, I think this is long enough.  Will be posting more about her and the legacy she left us.  Thinking that's what I originally had in mind when I started this post.  Didn't really post cause I'm a bit superstitious.  Her health wasn't the best and I didn't want those in the next world thinking I didn't want her here any more.

I've been thinking about grief and the aftermath, the learning to live without a certain person in one's life.  I see a lot of posts over to my second favorite haunt about there being an empty spot, a hole in one's heart.  I've come to the conclusion that I don't have an empty spot cause she's there in my memories, my heart, my sons' faces.  They have quite a bit of her habits.  She's always here.