“You have to take care of your skin,” My mother would caution, massaging scented lotion into her heels and between perfectly pedicured toes. “Especially your hands, feet, and elbows– You only get one set of each and that’s where age shows first”. We called it ‘mommy smell’, and I have hundreds of memories bearing witness to this ritual, chatting on her bed while she took her own advice. Now, at thirty-seven, my dermatologist asks me for skincare tips, and I find myself ever-grateful for how deeply my mother instilled this lesson.

She left right before Thanksgiving, in the middle of the night, with her best friend at the time, a woman we had sheltered from an abusive husband, and only a few months shy of her twentieth wedding anniversary with my father.

In my memory, my mother is beautiful in a Snow White sort of way: fair skinned, lightly freckled, and raven haired, with chocolate eyes that pull you in upon meeting. Her laugh is easy and infectious, her vivaciousness undeniable, and her snarky sense of humor makes it difficult to stay angry when you are inevitably stung by her inability to self-censor.

As a child, my relationship with my mother never approached what anyone would call normal, and it fractured further as I grew to resemble my father. The thing about people who feel things intensely is that they can be as cruel as they are kind.

As my responsibilities grew with age, it became increasingly difficult to know which version of my mother would emerge from her bedroom each day– or when. Even now, I don’t think anyone who lived with us in that house knew there was a space between the door jamb and the wall of the master bedroom. I kept it filled with folded strips of paper for privacy’s sake, but never permanently, because– before text messaging– it was the only way I could check on her when morning waxed into afternoon before she appeared. It was through this secret portal that my hopeful image of her peacefully sleeping off the wine was often crushed, when instead I found her vague form huddled on the bed-- wracked with silent sobs.

In a way her departure was a relief. Caring for the household while my father worked overtime included homeschooling two siblings, besides myself, and working part time, this was quite a lot for a seventeen year old. No longer having to concern myself with the additional responsibilities of being an emotional support to my mother, and a shield to my siblings on her bad days, only lightened my load.

Looking back with fresh eyes, it’s strange to realize that I am older than she was when she left; yet I feel younger now than I did then, and wonder if she does, too. She had been all of nineteen herself when I was born, and the struggle to reconcile her sexual identity within the patriarchal confines of a traditional marriage, family, and religion must have been eating her alive. Hearing my sister talk about her today makes me think my mother and I might be friends, if only my blunt questions hadn’t met the sharp cruelty of her defensiveness in the weeks after she left. My sister tells me our mother lives in the Pacific Northwest with her marine biologist wife. “She gardens, she quilts, she hikes.” She says mom’s hair is long and white. “I think she looks great, she took great care of her skin,” At this we both laugh, and I know we are reliving the same moments.