Dear Mom,

I was washing my hands with Softsoap today, and I was crying. I just bought hand soap at Safeway, one of the small bottles that's actually meant for the bathroom sink. I was using a bar of soap before that.

I feel like a small version of a woman when I remember to do the things you always did. At Safeway, where I bought the soap, I laughed when I realized I had made a grocery list, folded it in half and put my clipped coupons in the middle. You always did that, and you kept it in the top of the cart, flipping through the coupons when we'd point at something we wanted.

I don't know if you know this, because we don't talk often, but I walk to school every day. My new place is pretty close to campus. In Oklahoma, we lived close to my first school and, later, the bus stop for the schools. You used to walk with me every morning through elementary school, and I would talk to you nonstop. I didn't talk to people at school, because I was shy and picked-on and kind of sad. But I told you everything in the morning when I was walking and everything on the way home, when I'd see you waiting there, every single day.

There was a day I decided I was too old for you to walk me to school. I don't know how I told you I was embarrassed of you, but I'm sure I did it pretty badly. We were halfway to school, and you just turned around and started walking home, and I wanted my stomach to drop out of my body. It hurt so badly and I was lonely. I called after you that I was sorry, and I wanted you back, but you did not turn around.

I can not begin to imagine the grace of a woman who, from that point on, with no bitterness I ever knew of, began to walk with me only halfway to school. And in the afternoons, you would walk to meet me for the last part of my journey -- the part the kids on the bus would never see. You never showed me how it felt to wait those extra 15 minutes to leave and walk a shorter distance because of my embarrassment.

I was furious at you one morning. It was a quarter for a bag of popcorn on Fridays at school, and you couldn't afford to give it to me. I told you how out of place I was at school and how I had to sit by myself as the whole class went to see the popcorn lady. But Dad didn't have a job then, and you had put off your career to stay home with Michael and me. I was so stupid to mention the popcorn, because you must have been crushed that we sometimes had to go our minister's house on the weekends and pick through the clothes his kids didn't wear anymore. I was talking quarters when you were wearing the minster's wife's dresses to church on Sunday. They were worn, and she didn't have the same body as you.

I am ashamed that my love was ever ashamed. You never complained, and you never cried, and you never looked disappointed. You acted like a queen. I'm ashamed it took me this long to be pierced with remembrances of your constant acts of grace. And I'm ashamed that I started asking you to walk halfway with me, because it seems like I've never let you walk with me since then. I walk most places now, and it gets lonely. I miss telling you about my day. And I'm sorry that somehow our halfway meeting spot has become my new Softsoap, this morning, in my bathroom.

-- Jennie