I sat in my least favorite breakfast restaurant, my legs sticking to the vinyl seats, stirring my already stirred chocolate milk with a spoon. “Now, Laurnie Beth,” my mother starts, “I was thinking about this the other day. You know there’s TWO dates that they print on food, right? There’s TWO.”
I stopped stirring my chocolate milk. “One is the SELL by date, and one is the USE by date. Did you know there’s a difference? There’s a big difference. SELL by is not USE by. You can still eat something after the SELL by date, but if it’s the USE by date, don’t buy it. Or eat it! Don’t eat it! Sometimes those grocery stores are tricky.” I stared at bewilderment at my mother. Not because I was amazed that she wouldn’t think that after eighteen years of life on this planet, I would know the difference between the words “sell” and “use” (well, okay, maybe a little bit of that), but because it was at that point I realized just how worried my mother was about my moving to LA. And how could I blame her? Being the littlest of five kids, my eldest sibling being 20 years my senior, this was going to be just about as big of a change for my mother as it was going to be for me. Come August, I will pack up my closet as well as other select items of great importance (my Sega Genesis, comic books, all of my hair bows, and, of course, my art box), and move myself far, far (alright not THAT far) away to LA. I have wanted to live in Los Angeles for as long as I can remember, and that is finally coming into fruition. And though I am sincerely and substantially stoked about moving, there are, of course, those things which I will be sad to part from. They say home is where the heart is, and I don’t know anybody who has more heart than my parents do.
So, this is what I made my mother, who cares so much about me that she worries about my understanding of grocery shopping terminology. The five little eggs. of course, represent the five little babies she and that darling father of mine raised up. But on each egg, in order to really ensure some sentimental Mother’s Day tears would be shed, I put something to represent a memory from my childhood. Glitter for the gold, sparkly swimsuit I refused to take off for any reason when I was four, pearls for Shabby Hattie- the most darling antique shop anyone ever owned that just so happened to belong to my mother and sister, a bow for the giant pieces of headwear that woman forced me into as a child, Queen Anne’s Lace for our flower-picking walks we would take, and paint chips for how my mother would let me paint all over my bedroom walls as a little one.
I am leaving, and I can’t wait. But I am so thankful for the parents that I have. I am so thankful that I have a mom who worries about me getting “sell by” and “use by” dates mixed up. I am leaving the nest, and I am so very grateful for the wonderful people in my life who encouraged me to go where I want to go and do what I want to do.
Here we go.