These are my childhood memories of your Mother….

I met your Mom in middle school, she was my first friend at a new school. I remember sitting down in Mr. Northwood’s homeroom class and she wouldnt stop talking to me. She kept asking me questions and I didnt want to turn around. Everyone knew each other and I was new. I wanted to stick to myself. Well, she was relentless. We ended up on the same bus home, with different stop, but within walking distance from each other.

She love Prince and because of her I know more songs than most people think. She forced me to watch Purple Rain like eight thousand times…not really…but maybe close to a hundred over the course of our friendship. She covered her tiny room with every poster she could fit on the wall. She loved hats and eyeliner and crazy hair like his. She danced and sang every song there was. Some days I thought I would lose my mind if I had to hear one more thing or song from him. And I know there were occasions where her nails were purple and so was her eye shadow. She cried and cried when he died.

She also love Michael Jackson and a boy name Tony from high school sang like him. I think she talked to him for hours just so he would sing for her.

We danced to all the good 80’s music in the living room at the home at the end of the dirt road. Her house was the last one on the road and could be scary at night.

We talked about ghosts and scary stuff.

About a frog in the window which is a joke only we will ever understand.

She would wash green grapes, roll them in sugar and freeze them. They were so good in the summer. We made a lot, A LOT, of macaroni and cheese. And she cooked everything with butter.

She ate instant coffee on occasion, along with a spoon full of creamer and sugar. We were 13 and you do dumb things at 13.

She convinced a group of girls to sleep in the desert in the back of the valley. So in the early evening a bunch of us hauled our stuff out there and spent the night. We walked half way to the front of the valley, we thought we were going to the store and decided half way there to turn around.

She had a donkey named Jessica. We would walk her on a lead and put big clown sunglasses on her. And Bobo and Swanie, pigmy goats. They were so much fun.

She would put curlers in her and when we met at the bus stop she would say that she looked like a poodle.

We smoked cigarettes and drank together, talked on the phone for hours, listened to music and sometimes we would draw.

We went to the Reno Rodeo with her step-dad who was a horse shoer. We stayed all day.

We played in the desert and she would pick things up….snakes and horny toads…she wasnt afraid of anything.

She texted me old pictures of us a couple years ago..I didnt even know she had them. Those were good times.

She made me crazy and I am sure I repaid her. She is fun and funny…I got her on levels where others didnt.

The way she squinted her eyes…she always needed glasses.

Or touched her tongue to her nose…

When we were baptized at 14 in the little Baptist church in the Valley.

And I know that she loves you…more than you can even imagine. She told me how wonderful you are, who looks like her, who acts like her….this makes me laugh and she laughed too. How smart you guys are and how good. How proud she is. She even gave you credit for pulling stuff on her she never would have thought of when we were kids.

The last few days I have listened to the Prince station at work…a song will come on and I will drift to a time and place that I shared with her. I love your Mom, in all her craziness and chaos, it makes her who she is.

I just wanted you to know things about your Mom that we shared throughout the last 36 years.