A Vignette

The Mommy Feeling, Secret Pork Chops, and Stars

Mommy, with silky black hair as thick as a quilt, as long as Rapunzel's, curled into ringlets that smell like Springtime, so warm and soft to hug when you're crying, and a voice like a songbird. So I'd get the Mommy Feeling whenever she left. Like that one time when she went to Hawaii, I cried for hours and hours, waiting for her, missing her, and so did my brother. She was gone for only a week, but to me it felt like a decade. We both got the Mommy Feeling. It feels bad. You lose track of time, and all you think about is her. Your heart feels like it is torn in two. It hurts that bad.

Whenever she was with me though, she'd always let me help to cook and prepare the secret pork chops. They were secret because only our family knew the recipe. I felt so special making them, dipping them in the egg yolk, adding spice to them, patting bread crumbs onto them, even eating them. They were so good; I had a whole chop every time. And that's a lot of food. Oh yeah, she made other stuff too, but I liked the pork chops best.

My favorite thing in the whole wide world was to look at the stars with Mom. We'd bring out the biggest, fluffiest, and most cuddly blankets. We'd watch the sky with bright eyes, wide open and amazed, darting back and forth. Once, there was a shower of stars. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. They all dripped from the dark blue sky like diamond rain. The comets glittered so bright, we had to shield our eyes. But most of all, I remember O'Brien's Belt. The three lone stars, perfectly placed like someone had just glued them there with Elmer's.