I've been so tired, Mom...

I lean over to rest my head on my mother's shoulder. She is driving the car and I am in the passenger seat. Just like when I was little. Although I am a grown woman she wants me to tell her about it. So I do.

I am startled awake by a car horn blowing outside. My mother has been dead for fourteen years. 

 I have never rested my head on my mother's shoulder.

It is only a dream. 

I have many memories of my mother. She is not smiling in any of them. She scowled in photographs and in real life. It was hard to make her happy.

But oh, how I wanted to.

My mother's sister was a beautiful woman with green eyes and deep dimples. She smiled often. And always at me. It was one thing my mother and I had in common: We both adored Aunt G.

I used to think I'd been born to the wrong sister. I was meant to be the daughter of the smiling one. But somehow the Universe got it mixed up and  I was born to the sad one.

Aunt G loved to hear me talk. We'd sit on her bed and I'd tell her stories about school and who my friends were that year. In her bedroom there were pictures of me on her wall next to her real children. As though we were siblings instead of cousins.

When she went downstairs to the kitchen I would slide open the closet doors and bury my face in her fur coats. I inhaled the smell of White Shoulders and peppermint, committing it to memory.

Aunt G took me downtown for lunch when I visited. I thought her city was wonderful and exotic. The shops were beautiful and the policemen rode horses.  We sat on chairs that spun around and I ordered the same thing every time. A grilled cheese and bacon sandwich.

She told me if I stopped biting my nails the next time I came to visit she would buy me a present. Every year she would make the same offer.

When I was ten I spent the summer at her house. It was the summer my mother was wrangling with the courts over divorce papers and child support. My aunt eagerly took me in.  There were so many things to love about spending time with Aunt G.  I didn't know what I liked more, the little pink boxes of baked goods she bought from the patisserie, or saying the word patisserie.

One night I woke in a panic. My aunt brought me a cup of tea and sat on my bed.  I hoped it was the tea with the free porcelain figure in the box. I collected them each time I visited. She said I could look in the box in the morning. I sipped my tea and turned on the lamp.  I picked up my book "The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew."  Reading about happy families and well loved children was my favorite way to fall asleep.

My aunt kissed my forehead and told me to have sweet dreams.

I closed my eyes and dreamed of my head on my mother's shoulder.