A Memory of My Mother

  I cannot tell the exact date of this event. It comes to me as a dream or a fragment of a dream. I cannot even  tell you if it happened before Dad died or after. He is not a part of it and everything but this dislocated fragment is surrounded in a kind of fog.

You had come to say goodbye at the bus station. I was frankly overwhelmed that you had made such an effort for me. Climbing onto the nearly empty Trail ways bus, I stare down at you. You are smoking a cigarette, one hand on your hip. Your usual pose. The mousy color of your hair. The strap of your bra is showing, I notice. Your oversized hips and your oversized glasses. You are looking up at me and I am waving back at you. Though I am less than a yard away,  you cannot see me. The reflective windows make it impossible for you to anything more than glare and abstraction. Still, you are studying the bus carefully while I am waving, ever more frantically.  The bus pulls away and you hesitantly hold up your hand and wave to the place you think I might be.