Around this time of year I try to ignore the commercials, the signs in stores, the endless emails from Kodak Gallery telling me that I can get free shipping on my Mother’s Day gifts, and my dad’s pressure to get my stepmom a card (seriously, can’t there just be a stepmother’s day because there really IS a difference). I do this for the simple reason that I don’t want to break down and cry. I do this because I don’t have my mother anymore. But in our materialistic society, the only time you can ignore it is when you have a mother and you take her for granted, like I did for 16 years. This year in November will mark 5 years without her.

Today I’ve been scanning a lot of her old photos to add to Skyefairy gradually over the coming months (69 photos, adding a few at a time sporadically when submissions are slow). I don’t know why but a flashback came to me. I was fifteen and we had just gotten the internet. I found that you could add a profile to your AOL and I was asking her the questions to fill in hers. I came across the “Likes” box. What do you like? Like hobbies and interests? I asked her.

The first thing she said was photography. Really? I asked. Looking at her two huge photo albums full of photos (more than 69; I only scanned my favorites) and the big box of non-albumed photos, it’s suprising that I wouldn’t know that about her. She must have taken pictures constantly in the years before I was born. Now I wonder why she stopped.

Now that she’s gone, I wonder what else I don’t know about her. We never entered that stage in a mother-daughter relationship (that we’d probably be coming to about now) where we share things on a more friend-like basis. I know her as a mother but I don’t know her as a person.

So, this mother’s day, do me a favor and sit down with your mom. Talk. Tell her what your favorite things are, ask her about hers. Ask her what she liked when she was your age, what she wanted to grow up to be. Get to know who she is as a person and cherish her; don’t take her for granted. You never know when you won’t have her anymore.

*Today isn’t Mother’s Day. It’s May 11.