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02.24.05 - 8:25 pm I have a tendency to look at the sky when I climb the forty stairs from the street to my front door. Sometimes it's to check the weather, sometimes I hear a bird or an airplane, sometimes it's to put my focus on anything but the pain that practice has caused; whatever the reason, my eyes always fixate above me. In the past three days I've noticed something in the darkness that drew my mind away and caused me to think. Orion, a winter constellation, is coming from the south and working its way up over our heads as I write. The hunter's easily distinguishable belt was something that my mom pointed out to me when I was little. Well, I suppose, not too little. My mom was the national sales representative for a large paper company from my birth until I was 11. I contend that I was brought up European because of the nine aupairs that we had. She finally replaced her replacement for a mom when I was in sixth grade. This is when I consider my family life to have started. I finally had a mom at age 11. She brought then everything that she hadn't been able to share with me during my elementary school years. Something that I remember the most, and that I know will stick with me for at least a few years in the future, is Orion. Two seasons have constellations that evoke some sort of memory for me. The Big Dipper in summertime brings me back to Namanu, a summer camp by the Sandy River that I went to every August. I remember cold nights, waterfalls, summer flings, and the symbol of all symbols, the stargazer. They've replaced it now, but the one I experienced as a camper was the same that my mom played on when she went to Camp Namanu as a Camp Fire girl. I would walk across the field after campfire, marveling at the ability of the stars to glow so brightly in the sky, wishing that the city sky could share with everyone else the wonder of the night without any artificial illumination. The second constellation, of course, is Orion. To me, Orion makes me think of cold winter nights in the hot tub with the entire family. My dad, lounging on the far side, my brother in the middle, and my mom and I on the jets of the most northern face. Those nights, drenched in a pool of warmth yet surrounded by winter, were some of the quietest my family has ever shared. We knew that the silence was worth hearing, and looking over the river to the lights of Oaks Park and the East Side was more telling than any words that we could have said. On nights when we did talk, it was a pleasant conversation, not the accusatory and disagreeable statements we make today. My mom would point out Orion every night until my brother or I were able to find it first. I get the feeling now that she might have only chose this one because it was the only one she knew, not that it had some intricate meaning to her. Whatever the case, it is one of the few post-retirement positive memories that I am able to relate and that I know will remain with me for a while. I guess that it is kind of odd that I feel this way seven years after she worked her last months, and just five days before she is going back to work again. Carie comes out of retirement March 1st. Naturally, life will be different, and I am extremely open to this change; however, her employment at this time in my life signals to me a further distancing: a lack of a mother and return to being eight, nine, ten years old. This time, I am my own aupair. This time, I have to point Orion out myself, and she wont be there to congratulate me. Is that cliche? My mom is cliche. And no matter how much I fight it, I am my mother's daughter. On the drive home I was thinking that I might write something about how much I admire my dad and want to be like him.
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