Let me paint you two scenes side-by-side:
1999:
9-year-old me clutching her skirt at kindergarten orientation.
“Go paint dinosaurs, sweetheart,” she urged, smile wobbling like Jell-O.
I glanced back every 30 seconds. There she stood – sentinel mom by chainlink fence – for three solid hours.
1983:
16-year-old her huddled in a basement, notebook propped on bent knees.
If one day you remember our love…
Air raid sirens wailed. Her pen kept dancing.
Funny how we both measured life in pencil marks on doorframes and air-raid drills. Different wars, same heartbeat.
The Secret Language of Moms
Her notebook wasn’t just poems. It was a survival guide written in girl-code:
- Page 23: Smudged ink where tears hit paper
Let autumn rains pour down on you again
(Turned out to be about Grandpa’s funeral during harvest season) - Page 57: Coffee-ringed corner
Hey, remember when we crashed the school play?
(Confirmed by Uncle Mark: “Your mom? Total theater rebel!”) - Margin Scribbles:
Does he see me? → Ugh, his breath smells like onions → I’ll die alone with cats
(Universal teen girl experience, circa every generation)
War-Torn Lullabies
The ’90s blackouts were our weirdest bonding time. Picture this:
- No electricity
- Bullet holes in the supermarket
- 11-year-old me thinking: This sucks
But Mom? She’d light candles (stolen from church) and sing Bistra voda so loud the neighbors joined in. We’d become this patchwork choir – our building shaking more from laughter than distant artillery.
“Music’s bulletproof,” she’d wink, teaching me harmony while my brother drummed on soup pots.
The Things We Carried
That little red book taught me mothers are Russian nesting dolls:
- The protector who waits by fences
- The dreamer who writes verse in bomb shelters
- The actual human who once got drunk on cherry wine and kissed the wrong boy
When I finally asked about the poem “Oh, you’re crazy! Can’t you see I hate you”, Mom turned tomato-red.
“That’s from when my drama teacher said I’d never play Juliet!” She snorted. “Wrote it during math class. Mr. Petrović thought I was taking notes!”
Your Turn to Dig
Got a parent’s old diary? A box of letters? Here’s your starter kit:
- Play detective:
- Water stains = tears or tea?
- What’s not said? (Mom never wrote about her first kiss…suspicious.)
- Read sideways:
Her “birch tree kisses” poem? Actually about stealing Grandpa’s car. - Connect timelines:
My first heartbreak → Her similar-aged scribbles → Oh! We both drew sad cats in margins!
The Last Page Is Yours
That battered notebook lives on my desk now. Sometimes I add my own notes in purple gel pen:
P.S. Your dental floss bike fix? Legendary.
P.P.S. I finally get why you hid cigarettes in the cookie jar.
Mom left the last five pages blank. Smart woman. Our story’s still being written – one grocery lists, text screenshots, and IKEA assembly manuals at a time.
So here’s my question for you: What ordinary-seeming object in your house might contain secret galaxies? A lunchbox? Birthday card shoebox? Go be an archaeologist of your own life. I’ll bring the metaphorical brush.
