Happy Memories

Here are two I remembered the other day:

One:

I forgot why, but my brother, mother, and I were running toward the doorway. We lived on the second floor of an apartment building. We were in a happy mood, laughing. We all wanted to be the first out. I was young then, not yet a teen. Well, we all hit the doorway at the same time and got stuck. I remember the force of them on either side hitting the doorway lifted me off the ground and I was kind of dangling there between them. We laughed about it, and somehow got ourselves unstuck. But it is just funny to think that we actually got stuck in a doorway.

Two:

Standing before my mother before even hitting age eleven, I was sick of her already. Every day was a trial and here was the final insult. Despite hearing from doctors the terrors that milk can cause my delicate system, she has taken my hand and filled it with whipped cream insisting I eat and enjoy it like she and my brother. I stare at the hand covered in rapidly deflating aerosoled milk product and then turn to my mother. Finally, I do it. I raise my hand and push the whipped cream into my mother’s face. I feel my greasy palm as it slides from her eye and brushes against her smooth ski slope of a nose.

“Ah! My eye was open!” she screams. But then she begins to laugh. I begin to laugh. My brother takes what’s left in his hand, warm whipped cream and saliva, and pushes it into my hair. I yelp and grab the can, spraying it at him, covering his worn G.I Joe khaki green shirt. My mom has washed out her eye, the rim red, as she grabs me. For a moment there’s tension. When not turning the television channel fast enough gives rise to a hanger across the back, I know that whipped cream in the eye must mean an even harsher punishment.

Silently, my mother takes the canister from my hand and sprays a huge mound into hers. I watch it cover her life line, her health line. The mound of soft cream towers above her slightly curled and calloused fingers. My brother watches with a wary smile and whipped cream dripping down his chest. Then she rubs the whipped cream on my shirt. I feel her palm press into my chest and stop for a moment above my heart. I feel her pulse and the cool of the cream penetrate my thin clothes. When she lets go, my brother and I chase each other around the house, my mother trailing behind, until the canister is empty.

Image from http://commons.wikimedia.org by Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez