It was three years this summer that my mom passed away. I had a hard time with that. I spent my life talking to my mom almost everyday on the phone. I used to get excited to go over and have coffee with her. When I didn’t see her so much after I moved to the cape, I couldn’t wait to get home to sit with her again. We would sit for hours and just chat and, of course, gossip. Gossip about not only everyone in our family, but people on TV, too. We’d also sit and watch soap operas together and for almost forty years were so engrossed in the lives of our characters.
Today was the memorial service on Y&R for Katherine Chancellor. Jeanne Cooper, who played Katherine for 46 of her 86 years of living was an amazing woman both on and off the set. She was on the set right up until her passing. Her character was the glue that held all the other ones together. As each character went to the podium to reminisce, and the old footage of all those scenes over the last forty years played across the screen, I missed my mom more than ever today. Scenes of her life and mine over 58 years played through my mind. I especially missed that “excitement” that used to feel about going to NY to visit her.
Tonight I’m ending another Dorothea Benton Frank book, Shem Creek. The heroine has a sister and they share that same thing my mom and I used to share – that certain “excitement” about getting together for a gab fest. Tomorrow I’m going to NY for the weekend. My mom isn’t there anymore, but I found myself texting my sister and asking if she was going to be home Friday night. I told her I miss pizza & wine, but what I really meant was I missed sitting and chatting and gossiping with her, just as I used to do with my mom. I texted my husband to ask if he wanted to go over. He answered, “Sure!” I wrote back I told her yes – and added “I’m excited!”
Gradually, over the last three years, ever so slowly without my even knowing it, my sister slipped into that space in my life my mom used to occupy. Real change occurs in increments, day by day. Did you ever decide you were going to change something or do something consciously, only to find you don’t? It’s because real change is never decided. It doesn’t have a schedule or a plan. Real change occurs just like what’s happening outside our window tonight. It’s barely September, but summer has begun to slip. In three weeks it will be fall and we’ll think, where did summer go?
And so, as another day goes by, I’m thankful I have a sister like the heroine in my book, real change is unstoppable, it also keeps us alive and it’s usually for the better, and …I have written.
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