I woke up early this morning (5am) and sobbed through the last few chapters of Ya-Ya Sisterhood. I love this book! It has really made me think about things that have been at the surface of my mind that I have pushed back for years. What is it about mom's and daughters that can rip out your heart at the same time that it soothes your soul? How can you love someone and hate them at the same time? What unforgivable sins am I committing now that my daughters will hold against me for the rest of their lives, or should I say my life?

Reading this book takes me back to last summer when my mom's sisters made a visit. That was the first and only time I had spent with all of them together with me as an adult and for some strange reason I had never felt more like a child. Many nights were spent until the wee hours of the morning drinking beer as I listened to them spin the tales of the past. Listening as their spanish tumbled over their english as they took me back to the past. Watching them cry over the mental and physical abuse (dare I use that word?) that they lived through growing up in a dysfunctional family with a cold mother and an abusive father. They laughed over the memories even as the tears still ran down their face. Comparing my childhood to theirs I was blessed but how many years from now will I sit at a table with my own children sharing a beer as I cry over the sorrows of my childhood? Do we cry because the past is so terrible, or is it because no matter how terrible the past is we still yearn for our childhood. The one that we lived through and the one that never was.

I wish to share childhood memories with my own sister but she has no memory of our childhood. Was it really so bad that she blocked it out? Was it so unimportant to her that she no longer wishes to remember? I wish we could compare notes, do you remember hiding in the closet while our parents fought? Do you remember me promising to take you away from all of the fighting and drinking? Do you remember me trying to cover your face with a pillow because your snoring was so loud I couldn't hear every cruel and bitter word that was hurled between our parents and I just knew that if I missed a sentence, if I didn't hear everything going on something bad would happen. Something worse than laying on the cold floor, curled up next to my door as I heard the sound of my mom's head knocking against the thin plywood wall of the cramped trailer we lived in as dad hit her. Did you sleep so sound because you knew that the nights were for our mother's torture just as the days were for ours?

As an adult I can reason out the lashes of the belt against my body as a way for a tired, confused and hurt woman to have some control in her life. I can hear the bitter words and know they weren't really directed at me but more towards her own broken soul. As a child there was no understanding as to what I had done so horribly wrong to deserve the feel of the lash as the leather belt stung across my legs, the feel of the buckle meeting the middle of my back. My mom and I have talked about the past in guarded conversations, we have come to an understanding. We love each other more than life itself, we have shared things that I could never put down on paper, they are held secret in my heart sometimes bringing me to tears sometimes making me wish for just a moment I could be the adult, I could be the one to comfort my mom as I was never comforted. I have gone through my life holding secrets close, never wanting to deal with the pain they would cause.

As I read this book it brought them all crashing down on me as my life intertwined with Vivi's and Sidda's. My family might have been eating enchilada's instead of crawfish but the story is the same. The hurt is the same just as the joy is the same. I have realized that there are things I may never understand, questions that may never be answered. I want to go to this movie with my sister and my mom, I went to sit in the dark with tears streaming down my face as I watch my life on the screen. I want to sit next to my sister as she cries for the memories she no longer carries with her and most of all I want to sit next to my mother as she cries for the past, not for my lost childhood but rather for her own because no matter what I had to go through I know that I have a mom and a dad who love me more than anything in the world and that is more than my mom will ever be able to say. As a mom I have made mistakes, just as all mom's have made mistakes, but I hope that when the time comes, that when my own daughters are mommy's they will look back to the past with a grain of salt and know that I did the best I could as a mom and as a person. I hope the Ya-Ya blood in my veins passes down to them binding them close to me even as they wish to break away.

On my wedding day I will be surrounded by my family, the people I love the most who have the power to hurt me the most, I will be starting a new chapter in my life but I will never forget the old one. Someday I will take it out and share it with my grandchildren, I will show them the person I was and hopefully be able to live with the person I grow to be. Isn't that all any of us can ask for?