So much past inside my present…

Saturday morning I found myself standing in my kitchen staring at my full cupboards…crying. I had just gone and picked up our weekly online order from Hy-Vee, unloaded and put away all our groceries, and was admiring Maisie’s little neatly organized packages of baby food and our fridge full of fresh veggies when memories of mom’s monthly shopping list, always written in beautiful purple cursive, came flooding over me…

I remember when Bone Thugs ‘1st of tha Month’ first came out I watched as all the white, privileged, middle class kids sporting their Doc Martins, Tommy sweaters, and Lucky Jeans sang along to a song about welfare checks and weed. They thought they were so damn cool, yet…they didn’t have a fucking clue. I was 13 years old, hitting puberty, living in a shitty low-rent apartment on the southside and filled with so much rage at their ignorance and care free attitude toward something that hit so close to home. Had they ever really waited out on their front steps for a welfare check? Or stood in line to get food stamps?! Or even watched their mom blow money on a dime bag while they wondered why they couldn’t have money to go to the movies?! I was sure they hadn’t. Posers.

My mom would start budgeting before the check even arrived for how to cover the upcoming month. Food, utility bills, gas, paper products. I remember even seeing pads on her list and not realizing at the time how crazy that is…having to budget for pads. We would do our monthly shopping in one trip, mom stressing the whole time about how it had to last us a month so not to go eating everything in one week. She would get me a jar of pickles and package of those frozen Toaster Strudels as a treat, warning me again to make them stretch; I’d get all annoyed and say “I knooooooow” and then they’d be gone in two days. I didn’t understand at the time how hard that must have been for her – to have to warn me, for me not to listen, and then to have to deal with me complaining and lecturing for the next 3 weeks about how we didn’t have any food. That’s probably why that dime bag was always in her budget…I bet being a single, poor mother of a know-it-all teenager was stressful.

I had just budgeted for and bought 1 weeks worth of groceries that my mom would have likely had to spread out over a couple weeks. And we actively chose to purchase produce, which is more expensive, in an effort to eat healthier rather than the boxes of mac ‘n cheese, Hamburger and Tuna Helper, or cans of Spaghetti-Os my mom bought that were cheap and would last longer. It was a little overwhelming…the feelings of gratitude and pride, regret and admiration, guilt. The older I get, the more I seem to see my mother as less of ‘mom’ and more of a woman and human being. I was so judgmental and impatient and snotty toward her in those times she fell short. I thought I knew what she should be doing and how she should be doing it. I was constantly comparing her to other parents and our family to other families. I wish I would have hugged her more and snapped less. I wish I would have parented less and been a friend more. I wish I wouldn’t have eaten all those Toaster Strudels in one day and then lashed out at her when they were gone. But then I have moments where I wonder: had I not parented her at times, where would we have been?! Had I not cried and yelled at her about her 3^rd bottle of Purple Passion when we didn’t have gas money…would we have had gas the next week to get to and from school? Memories become blurry and dark…like my eyes and emotions. I’m betting if she were still here my thoughts would be different, but…she’s not, so it’s that old shoulda, coulda, woulda again.

So I stood there in my kitchen staring at my full cupboards crying. I wandered around our cozy home reminding myself of all the amazing things I have to be thankful for…including the two beautiful girls upstairs playing, and my husband working away in his office.  We can go buy Cadence Ego Waffles and not have to lecture her about making it stretch. We can enjoy a beer without worrying if it will fit in our budget, or whether our daughter will worry how that beer will impact her.

I remember watching my mom buy a bag of pot or case of beer and wondering: what is that going to take away from me? Because I knew it would somehow come out of my pocket too or that I would have to care for her in some way. And I remember when it got real bad, and she’d come home strung out on a meth or crack binge wondering if she was going to make it, if we were going to make it? And while it still bothers me and while I still feel justified in some of the times I lost it on her, as an adult now I also understand all her burdens and demons and struggles…and I understand why some struggle so badly with wanting to escape into their addictions. When you’re already battling depression, are a single parent living off a welfare budget, and can’t seem to find a man who won’t beat on or leach off you…I’m betting feeling numb sounds pretty good. Sigh.

It makes me think of that Tupac song “Dear mama” that my brother and I find ourselves choking up over every time it comes on…”and even as a crack fiend, mama, ya always was a black queen, mama.” Because despite all her shit…we loved her so much it hurt, literally; she was our mama. And some don’t get it, and some think it’s weird that a song like that or Bone Thugs would make us all sentimental or have any form of reference for two white kids from the Junction or Southside…but they do. I can relate on so many levels, I sometimes laugh-cry at the irony of it all. Just like filling up my gas tank or seeing a bottle of purple passion in the liquor aisle can always spark the strangest of emotions and memories. This time it was a cupboard full of baby food and drawer full of broccoli…

I will forever be that girl trying to come to terms with her past while reconciling it with the present; one foot on the southside and the other in Falcon Ridge…tearing up over Frozen and Bone Thugs…fresh parsley and ego waffles…reminiscing about my “badass”, beat-up mama making it the whole night in the ER with a crack rock hidden in her lip while also cherishing that time at Camp Sacajawea when Cadence and I took CPR classes and learned how to use a slingshot…it’s weird hahahahaha It’s SO WEIRD! But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I can’t have it any other way. This is Nicole and that’s where I came from and this is where I am now and…it’s brutiful. It makes my heart happy and sad all at once. I’m so thankful….for every last bit of it. Especially my mama…”you are appreciated…don’t you know I love ya sweet lady….place no one above ya.”

Southside suburbia Nicole…it has a nice ring to it.

“So much present, inside my present
Inside my present so, so much past
Inside my present, inside my present
Inside my present so, so”