Michelle - The Beatles

This song always reminds me of me Ma. One memory in particular is us painting together in her 'artist studio' in the backyard. I like to think of my mom as a controlled free spirit. She is very grounded in her beliefs and sometimes was even stricter than my dad - but in everything else was kind of a go with the flow of her feelings kind of person. My mom and I had a hard time getting along - most of the time she irritated the crap out of me and I'm sure with me rolling my eyes at her all the time - I irritated her too. But my mom really tried to connect with me. She would really look for ways where we could enjoy each others company. She knew I loved watching ice skating on TV so she got tickets for us to go see Christie Yamaguchi perform and we spent the whole day together. It was awesome. Another time was what I mentioned above - painting with her in her studio.

When we lived in the valley we had a huge backyard and the side yard near my parents bedroom was a shed/studio. My mom jumped at the chance to use this space as an artist studio. My mom starting painting when we lived in Kansas and hasn't stopped since. She would paint scenes on canvas, huge saw blades, old milk cans and stuff. She asked me one day if I wanted to come and paint with her. I of course trying to be difficult said, "I don't know how." She just smiled and said, "I will teach you - come on!" She set me up next to her and gave me something to paint - a little gray & pink stuffed animal mouse in an antique silver champagne glass. She taught me not to look at my canvas when drawing - look at the mouse and glass - follow the lines with your eyes and your pencil will draw it. I was blown away that it worked! I looked down at my canvas and saw that I drew a mouse in a glass! Then she set me up with paints and I was good to go!

We sat there painting and listening to music. We listened to mixed tapes my mom had that of course had The Beatles sprinkled in here and there. She would come over and check out my painting ever so often and kept giving me confidence that I was doing good. These were moments for my mom and I to connect and I appreciated so much for her doing that for us. Even though we had some rough points in our relationship these little moments we had always smoothed them over.