My mother was a crier.  She cried at everything.  She cried when my baby brother hit the homerun that won the Maple Wood Little League championship, and she cried when I brought her marigolds from the backyard for Mother’s Day.  She cried at commercials, especially that cheesy Lifesaver one where the father and son watch the sun go down and the kid says, “Daddy, do it again.”  As if a parent can be so powerful.

            
            Mom was a joyous crier not a belly aching sobber.  Everything made her love the world just a little harder.  It made you want to be around her, just to try and soak up some of the drops of happy that fell from her eyes.  I once watched her hug our mailman and wet his blue shirt with tears when he delivered a package.  She didn’t even know yet what was inside.  She cried at the potential of the gift. 

            
            Just the first three notes of the National Anthem could do her in and forget about the downtown fireworks on the Fourth of July.  You’d think they were put in the sky just for her.

            
            What made Mom cry most was anything her kids did that made her proud, which was just about everything.  Like running for class president my senior year in high school.  It didn’t matter that I didn’t win, that I lost to a guy named Louis who was known for spying on the volleyball girls in the locker room.  Just the leftover poster in my room, Do The Right Thing: Vote for Allison Bing in hot pink letters on black, made her weep.  “Oh, Ally!  I’m just so proud that you tried!” Mom said, blowing her nose into a faded handkerchief.  She didn’t say quite the same thing after my third divorce but she did cry the day I bought my first house.  All on my own, too.  With my own money. Three blocks down from the house she still lived in, the one I grew up in.  By then Mom was starting to forget stuff and it made me sleep better at night to be closer.  Sometimes she’d mop the floor three times a day because she couldn’t remember that she already had.  She couldn’t remember my birthday either and took to sending me cards on the first of each month, as if I were a mortgage payment.  “I got your card, Mom, and thanks, but it’s not my birthday until March,” I’d remind her when I stopped by after my shift at the hospital for a lemonade.  She forgot the sugar and the tart liquid made me pucker. “Well, honey, it’s someone’s birthday,” she’d say, tears rolling down her craggily cheeks, “let’s celebrate that!  More lemonade?” She stopped mentioning my baby brother altogether. As if he’d never existed in our lives. As if we’d simply lost track of him along the way rather than let the drugs have him.  I guess forgetting how to hurt isn’t so bad after all. 

            
            She cried the hardest I’ve ever seen her the day I took her to the nursing home.  She didn’t remember my name by then.  I could smell that she hadn’t bathed and her hair looked like a robin’s nest. She looked up at that big white house on the hill and thought she’d won some prize. Tears stung at the corner of my eyes, but I didn’t know how to let them go. Mom never even looked back.