That kind of love.

I'm home sick this week. First with my boy, who had inflamed lungs and a stellar case of thick snot. And now I've got the parainfluenza. Cruelly, it mocks the flu, but isn't the real deal. Hardly seems a difference.

And so I'm home with my hair in a bad ponytail, wearing a Y tee shirt and a cardigan with yoga pants, drinking mug after mug of hot tea, emptying box after box of Kleenex tissue.

I've watched episode upon episode of The United States of Tara, streaming onto our new Christmas family present television through the new Christmas family present Wii on Netflix.

My boy is back at school in his standard school attire uniform, missing both top front teeth and looking more adorable than I can stand and I have the nicest damned husband in the world who brought me a steaming container of Tom Yum Goong last night.

And today, I'm crying trying to remember the last "normal" pre dementia conversation I had with my mother and there's so much of life, THIS Life, this sweet messy little one, that is good and right and I'm grateful. And yet, I miss my mother. Terribly. It's not fair.

I may be forty-five years old and a mother and a wife myself, a school teacher, a tax payer, a late night laundry doer. And still, I miss my very own mother. So badly.

I miss her able-bodied, well minded Mother self who taught me pretty much everything, including how to love her because I can't not even when there's something different to hold onto.

I know my brother and my sister, they know that kind of love, too. Our mom is the best mom. Our mom is magic.

Thank you, Mom. for giving us everything.

Our mom IS that kind of love.