Finding Mommy

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           Without giving away too much information, plot lines, and inadvertent advertising, I’ll just say that we recently went to see a movie about a little blue fish who has some short term memory problems. She is searching for something, gets sidetracked constantly, and spends a lot of her time swimming around and doing a fish version of tapping on her head trying to remember why she was there and what she was doing.
            My children liked the movie. I liked it even more. There was something speaking to me as we watched it—a lost soul, overcoming the battles of life, perpetually searching for something very important, and ooh! Look! Fluffy sand!
            It was only a few hours after returning home that I was folding laundry and I heard someone yell, “Mom, did you know you heated something in the microwave?”
            Hmm. Did I? I know I was hungry, I thought I remembered something about eating, but I had no idea what it was. Leaving my laundry post I walked over to find a now cold version of once hot reheated Mexican leftovers.
            I guess I forgot.
            “Mom,” they said, “they could have made that movie about you. You’re the fish. They could have called it ‘Finding Mommy.’”
            I surveyed the scene of the house with a fresh eye and a slightly petrified look on my face because in my heart of hearts I knew they were right. There by the coffee pot was an empty cup that I got out, but forgot to fill. A cookbook and shopping list lay open on the kitchen table, started but not complete. Outside, the garden was a soggy mess because I turned on the sprinkler and forgot to turn it off. In the laundry room was a dryer door open and half of the clothes folded in the basket. And in the mirror was a woman who fixed her hair but forgot makeup and now she was hungry because her reheated refried beans had cooled to a gelatinous rock and hadn’t had any coffee and ooh! Look! A Facebook notification from my friend!
            Maybe I am this little blue fish after all.
            But I challenge anyone to find a mom who is as involved with her kids as I am that isn’t just a little bit like this cartoon character.
            I set my cup down to refill but thought I should think about what I should feed the family. Veggies are important, so I turned out the garden sprinkler before I got out the cookbook and shopping list. And if we are going all the way to the big city to get groceries, maybe we’ll see a movie. But the movie started soon, so let’s hurry up! No time to put on make up! And once we were home again, I was hungry and someone was complaining about not having underwear.
            I looked down at my message from my friend and replied, “You should really go see this new movie.”


Originally written 7.3.16

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