April 16th always sneaks up on me. By then, the Christmas season has long since passed as well as the icky feelings that go hand-in-hand with the holidays. By mid-April, I am fooled into thinking that the next major holiday is Memorial Day, but April 16th always comes around and knocks me on my ass. This year was no different and I mostly suffered in solitude, so no one had to know. April 30th conveniently fell on another day where it was easy for me to hide, but it is impossible to escape the ubiquity of the second Sunday of May. So what is it about this string of dates? Why do they make me take a "personal" day to abandon most of society? I attribute my sentimentality to my dad, who becomes weepy and emotional when watching commercials with babies and who cried through my entire wedding. I blame my propensity to hide on losing my mom almost nine years ago.
Spring time is never fun. Allergy season is in full swing and I usually end up filling my class schedule with impossibly hard physics classes that leave me deeply confused, rather than intellectually enlightened. On April 16th, my mom's birthday passed; she would have been 57. On the 30th, my parents should have been celebrating their 27th wedding anniversary. And right now, I should be browsing Amazon for a belated Mothers' Day gift and writing a note to myself to call home, but instead I'm writing a blog entry about why spring time basically sucks. I find, though, that the "best" is yet to come.
In June of 2000, Fathers' Day fell on June 18th. I recall this Fathers' Day well because my brothers and I had managed to save almost 50 bucks between the three of us, which was a feat at 14, 11, and 9. We decided to get my dad a gift certificate to Jack's Waterfront, a family favorite and the eventual site of my rehearsal dinner. I almost didn't have my share of the gift money, though, because I almost bought a Hummel figurine,which was pretty pricey, as a sort of bribe to my mom to come home because a few weeks in the hospital had been enough and it was time for her to come home. I never ended up buying the figurine because it became abundantly clear that this time was different and she wasn't coming home and in the early hours of June 18, 2000 my mom died. So now, every Fathers' Day and June 18th, I quietly mourn her passing and wonder what it would be like to have a mom again.
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