My Mother's Love

Green.

I can't explain the exact color but every single hospital in the early eighties had some part of that green.

It was the color of the walls.

It was the color of the vomit bowls.

It was the color of the scrubs that the nurses wore.

To this day... twenty eight years later that color makes me nauseous, slams me back to my eighteen month old self and I feel a weight on my heart.

Eighteen months, my very first memory. It  may seem young but I have been remembering it over and over in my head for years.

 I was hospitalized with croup, not the first time I slept over at the hospital and not the last time either. My poor mother.

I remember lying in a crib. I remember there was a child in a bed crying on my right hand side. I see my mother and she is at the door leaving. I am crying, reaching out to her, needing her.

She had to go. My sisters were at home and she had to be with them, my father had to go to work.

I remember my mother standing in the doorway, and she waved. I remember she was crying.

Every time that memory surfaces it breaks my heart a little. As I grow older I can better understand my mother's complete sadness that she had to leave.

My very first memory- the love of my mother.

This was a prompt from The Lightning and the Lightning-Bug.

Your first memory.