Cinnamon and Sprinkles

It’s been over two and a half years since the car collision that killed my mom. Since then, I’ve moved away from home, started a job that’s now ending in just 4 months. As of yet, I don’t have another one.

I’m pretty sure it’s all the uncertainty about where I’m going from here that’s kept her on my mind so heavily these past months. Don’t get me wrong--there’s not a day since her death that I don’t think about her, at least in passing. I used to think that would stop, eventually. I used to want it to. But I’m sort of inured to it now. I think of my mom, I miss her, it hurts, I move on. It’s just a part of life.

Lately though, it’s been more. I don’t just miss her in passing, I miss her. It aches, like the first holidays I went through after her death. I feel like I’d do almost anything to talk to her. She was my best friend, the person I talked to most, about everything. She was my guide. She had so much empathy, so much understanding, so much love.

I wish she could give me advice now. I want to tell her: Mom, I’m scared. I don’t know where I’m going or what’s going to happen to me. I’m scared to have children in this country. What if they get sick, or I do? Mom, what if I can’t make it? What if all the things I’ve done and all the good I’ve been isn’t enough?

My mom was not into bullshit. She was an ocean of empathy, but she didn’t lie. I don’t know everything she’d say to me, when I said these things to her. She’d be scared, too. She’d be worried for me. She’d believe in me, so deeply and strongly that I had to listen. 

But I do know that she’d tell me that I could always come home. I do know that I’d be like so totally annoyed in some ways, because even she couldn’t give me what I want--answers, direction, surety. 

From the biography of the elusive Miss Jean Louis comes this excerpt from the chapter “MJL at College”:

After completing her secondary studies, Miss Jean Louis matriculated at Superaliments College, one of the world’s most welcoming women’s colleges.  She majored in Organization and received a special certificate in People Wrangling, while also completing a minor in Mysteriousosity, a little-known art practiced by few even in MJL’s college days and which truly captured her heart.  Today, she remains one of the foremost experts on the subject.  During her summers, Miss Jean Louis worked in the lab of Dr. Dobutsu, the most successful animal species hybridizationist of his time.  Under his tutelage, MJL learned many of the finest techniques for making new creatures that combine only the best traits of their parent species (only two animals at a time, always read them a bed time story, don’t feed them after midnight, etc.).  

At Superaliments, MJL was known for being unknown but also, somehow, everywhere at once.  In her freshman year, the campus awoke one morning to find the school’s quad painted rainbow.  Everyone was sure they saw MJL carrying out the deed, but no one could really be sure. She was never officially questioned, as she only responded to campus security’s inquiries with 140-character missives, mailed wrapped in newspaper. Similar events continued throughout her undergraduate career—was MJL responsible for the great kindness kaboodle giveaway?  The broccoli bikini contest?  The rescue-a-molting-bird campaign?  No one knew then, and today, we can only speculate.