LARIAT, SURVIVE: MOTHER

George was the protecting evergreen of my formative years… My refuge. Within the occurrences- the shifts in which my momma wasn’t MY. MOMMA. I would run to George, book in little hand, and climb to his height of heights- where the setting sun still shone -to escape. All it would take was a single LOOK from MY momma who so very suddenly was NOT MY momma dearest; Jean. She was something else… MOTHER. Jean had a tendency to alter at no profectical, and perfectly patternless whim. She was unapologetically HERSELF: momma, protector, caregiver, eccentric friend… She was LOVE, its very self- MAGIC. Until…

Suddenly- and, oh, so SUDDENLY -Jean, my momma, was gone. She was replaced by something alien: cold, disconnected, an enemy… danger: MOTHER. I knew then to make my swift retreat, being of no mental or emotional match for MOTHER, ohhh, no, no, NO. She never laid so much as a violent pinky on me as MOTHER OR as my beloved momma. This was a developmental discrepency. So… Knowing not what to do to save myself, my run-to was an Evergreen tree I, for whatEVER reason, dubbed George. I knew MOTHER was currently NOT momma and would not search for me, because she was elsewhere, let alone even climb a tree at that point in ‘her’ life… So I had found comfort in an Evergreen, sunlight, and literary escape. Ah, she- momma -would return, without discernable rhyme or reason. She would just be BACK, as though nothing had ever even happened. I, to this day, can recall the eyes that somehow were quickly not HERS, but were adopted by something else. I, too, fondly- HOWEVER, ENTIRELY BROKEN HEARTEDLY - remember momma: OUR MOMMA- The woman who taught me LOVE and the one who taught me what love is not.