She Taught Me How to Love

This week's Mama Kat's Writers Workshop writing prompt that I chose was 2) 10 Things my mother taught me.

My mom and I were extremely close. Sometimes I have trouble breathing because I miss her so much. She and my father were taken too soon from this life and I certainly was not finished learning from either of them. Well, are we ever really finished learning from our parents?

Back on my mom's birthday in November, I wrote the following piece and I think it fits perfectly with this week's writing assignment. There may not be 10 exact things that my mother taught me but honestly, I wouldn't be able to pick just 10 things she taught me.


Today would have been my mom's 62nd birthday. My mom, Kathi, was my favorite person in the whole world. If you have been reading my blog for awhile, then I'm sure you know that I talk about her a lot. For those new followers, let me just tell you that my mom was my best friend. It's incredibly difficult going through life without her and I honestly don't know how I've gotten this far without my mom.

I know a lot of daughters don't feel this way about their moms so I know that my relationship with my mom was rare. I wish that I had really sat her down and told her how much that meant to me. For some reason, we didn't have too many serious conversations. I still would like to think that she knew how I felt. I could tell her anything. Seriously, anything. She never judged and never criticized. She just got it. I always felt comfortable divulging intimate details about my personal life to her, well, of course not e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.

I've been keeping a journal since my parents died. Lately, I haven't really been writing in it like I should. Well, the week they died, my sister and I made two lists of things that made us think of our mom and dad.

Here is what was on our mom's list: bubble baths, The Temptations, anything easy listening, Twizzlers, scrapbooking, Singapore Slips, beach novels that she would never remember reading but really did, trips to a Tucson, AZ salon(Gadabout), Monopoly (she collected different editions from all over the world), daily trivia, stencil letters, awful singing but she still had fun, Christmas ornaments (we had one from every country we had ever been to on our Christmas tree), she wanted to be a translator for the UN, colorful and sometimes cheap jewelry, diet cherry coke, her amazing chocolate chip cookies, party mix, the best lasagna ever, getting sucked into any and every TV show that I made her watch with me, hugs, painful goodbyes always made her cry, Clementine(a stuffed monkey from Build a Bear), wandering in grocery stores and Target forever, magazines, comfort food, very smart, held hands during takeoff, loved children, reading aloud, movies, teaching stores, colorful pens, surprise presents, happy tears, big red apples, nose kisses, she dyed her hair since I can remember, always willing to do anything to help someone out and she has the power to make you feel like everything was going to be ok. Of course, there's so much more, but that's my list so far.

❤ Above everything else, I learned how to love from my mom. ❤