To Borrowed Socks

In the spirit of "keeping it real," as this blog is more for me than for you, Dearest Rubbers of the Oat, I must be true to what is in my heart today.

Call it a blog cleanse.

I woke up this morning, like every other, feeling like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

Went downstairs, sat the chitlins down at the breakfast table, and started making our usual Friday Chocolate Chip Smiley Pancakes.

While in the middle of pouring the batter, an image flashed through my mind. I had been organizing family pictures the previous night and ran across one of my beloved Abuelita drinking a coke. (I won't post it here today because that is mine, all mine.) For some reason, I had forgotten a slight detail about her; it was a look she got when she swallowed the fizzy bubbles. It made her look so alive...so very alive.

It was that gleam in her eyes, a quick synaptic flash through the brain, accompanied with a side of agony, that started the thoughts I usually no longer indulge.

Something told me that I needed to go with it this morning, while my unsuspecting children smacked their syrupy lips and sang happy love songs to me.

The image was of her funeral. I wore my favorite shoes in an attempt to make myself feel better. It started to pour rain. Virginia rain can be so oppressive, but this somehow seemed suiting. God, if there is one, was crying for our loss. My heels dug into the wet dirt. This was it, the moment I had been dreading since she got sick. Since we got her death sentence. The mud started to seep into my shoes, getting between my toes.

The priest did his da da da thing and we bowed our heads out of complete surrender.

No one wanted to leave her there, in that cold, rainy place, covered in the same mud that still stain my shoes today.

Anyways, back to the healing moment: the moment my brain had locked out and never allowed me to fully understand.

We went back to her house and I laid in her bed, trying to feel her presence. I wanted her to put her arms around me, laugh in my ear, cup my face the way she had done so many times before.

My aunt came in and saw my shoes hanging over the side of the bed.

"Carlita! You'll catch your death!"

She started taking my shoes off. All the girls, my dear cousins, her little loved ones now long grown up, sat there helplessly with wet shoes.

"All of you! Take your shoes off! You'll get sick!" and she reached into Abuelita's drawer. She pulled out socks, the fuzzy, soft, warm ones that she loved.

I didn't want her socks. I refused to put them on. In my head, I felt like we should ask her, out of respect, even though I knew my Abuelita would never deny me anything. The blinding pain didn't allow me to put together that she was gone. I would never again ask her for socks, a cup of hot chocolate or advice.

That message arrived to me this morning. I realized that if she still exists, somewhere in the unknown, floating around in the Bulk, she was still trying to give to us, still trying to care for us in her own way.

Socks at the very least.

Socks.

It felt good to let that out.

Also, I wanted to post a suitable song, a song that, incidentally, is one of my favorites by My Little Pony called I Don't Know. The search for the song was long and fruitless. Imeem gave me a 30 second version. No one else has heard of the band. I kept getting links for some very shady shady practices involving the real My Little Pony. I have the download available so if anyone is interested, comment me at the bottom of this post and I will email you a legit version of the song.

So here is what I could muster, some shitty, lame-o homemade music video taped on a phone cam. Please don't watch it. I don't want it to ruin a perfectly good song.

Peace.