Moments you remember

[_ghost_]

My mom worked the night shift when I was a kid. She did that specifically so she could be home with me during the day while my dad was at work and my older siblings were at school. I don't think I was very aware of that being the reason, though, just that early in the morning my dad would have me up and dressed and I would be sitting in the living room when my mom came home, and she would sometimes bring me a specific pastry from a fast food place near our house. I don't know that they even still sell those. Some days we would run errands together also, and she would usually get me a treat of some kind when we did that, too. We didn't do this as much once I started school. I think the reason I remember it so clearly is because it was a routine thing; she wouldn't do this everyday, but a lot.

I'm not super close with my mom anymore and I usually think of my dad as the one who was there for a lot of the important stuff (school competitions, helping me move out of my dorm at the end of my first year of college, things like that), but when I was really little, my mom was the one who was around and who went out of her way to do special things like that.

[milo]

I have this half memory in my head that comes to me sometimes. It seems obscured, like I can tell certain things about it, but not exactly what it is.

It's see through and blue. My sister and I got one at the same time, hers was red. It's a little plastic thing, maybe in the shape of an animal. There are little bubbles inside from the plastic injection molding when it was made.

When it was given to me, it was really important and meant a lot, even though it was just a small plastic thing. There are feelings of excitement at a new thing but also sadness attached to this memory, and the sense that maybe these little plastic things were given to my sister and I to cheer us up. My parents used to fight a lot when we were little and those sorts of feelings are attached to this memory too.

I can vividly picture the little bubbles inside a blue plastic something, but I can't for the life of me remember what that something was. But sometimes I think of those little blue bubbles and all the mixed feelings they conjure up.