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I talk to my mother just about every day. There were times when I wouldn't admit this because of the stigma of being known as a "momma's boy." It means that you cannot do for yourself, that you always need to be taken care of. That feeling passed a long time ago. One reason is simply because I've gotten older and don't particularly care what people think. I've always been the most independent of all my siblings; suggestions that I need to be taken care of ring pretty hollow. The biggest reason though is that my mother is just a really cool person. She's very easy to talk to, very understanding, has an opinion (whether or not it's right) on most topics, and because she knows me so well we can remember and make connections to the past while having a discussion about some current event.

The crazy thing is, that even though I talk to my mother everyday, sometimes multiple times a day, I ALWAYS have to call her on Sunday. I could have talked to her for 16 hours on Saturday, until 11:59 pm, but she'd still want me to call her on Sunday, no matter the circumstances. I don't mind so much really and I understand that it's a traditional thing, a habit I think she developed with my grandmother. A reminder of sorts, to always keep the person who raised you in your thoughts, to keep your connection with home. Like I've explained before, I'm not a religious person, but Sunday does hold a special place for me both because of the cleaning and because of those Sunday calls.

One, four one four, nine three three, nine seven seven four. My grandmother's phone number, when she lived at her apartment next to Sentry's grocery store. Every Sunday when I was a kid, me, my brother, or my sister would have the honors of calling my grandmother so we could each have our five minute conversations before we handed the phone to my mother, so she could talk for what seemed like hours. I hate to admit it, but I use to dread making those calls. Not because I didn't like my grandmother- I loved her she was a wonderful woman. It's just that, she was old; old and boring. What did we have to talk about? What could she possibly tell me about herself? I would tell her about school, tell her that I was fine, tell her that I loved her before handing the phone to my sister and get back to playing with my Ninja Turtles.

But it was like clockwork most weeks and her number was the first one that I memorized, the only one from childhood that I can still recite. We lived in Milwaukee when I was 4; it was then that I remembered the trips to the grocery store with my brother and Granny to buy a newspaper, a few groceries, and most importantly race car cupcakes with yellow frosting that we got from the bakery where everyone knew Granny's name. We'd take walks, to the colorful park, the type of metallic park that gets rusty and has sharp edges; the kind of park that can't exist anymore out of safety for our vulnerable children. One one particular trip she bought me a Green Bay Packers helmet from a Salvation Army; my head was so small that it covered up my eyes but I wore it all the way home with pride. And the times we stayed home, me and my brother would play on the patio with our Ninja Turtles or those McDonalds toys that looked like different food items but transformed into dinosaurs. I can still distinctly remember the smell of potting soil and the sound of water sloshing in her watering pots and how we use to drop our toy cars down the slits between the wooden planks onto the concrete abyss below never to be seen again. And then we'd pick up my sister from the bus stop.

We lived there in 1990-1991 and when we moved we didn't come back again until 1996. Five years is literally another lifetime for a 5 year old. We'd come back intermittenly from 1996 until my family moved back to Milwaukee in 2000. Flash forward to 2002. I'm 15, I still share a room with my brother, we fight all the time because young male testosterone and a shared space almost never mix. After one particularly egregious fight involving a broken bedroom door, a mother left with a bag of groceries in the front, me being a coward and hopping out of a window, and a sever beatdown at the hands of my mother, me and my brother were sentenced to separation. One week, I was confined to stay with Granny, who by this time had moved into an assisted living complex. Of course I dreaded going over there because there was nothing for me to do but sit, sleep, and read, things I could only do for a few hours. She didn't have cable and I wasn't allowed to walk anywhere. I resigned myself to staying in her bedroom and finishing Catcher in the Rye before I willed myself to sleep while she sat on the couch and read or watched the news. I finished Catcher in the Rye and started to go to sleep. Only I didn't, only I got bored in her room and walked into the living room. I had just started to get into jazz and she had a nice collection of jazz and soul and even a little bit of country. And we started to talk, about Ray Charles and Miles Davis and Al Green and Dolly Parton and what type of music she use to listen to when she was younger and where she had gotten her record collection. And then we talked about baseball, how she use to listen to it on the radio, while my mother and my aunt would sit there bored out of there minds; and about the Milwaukee Braves and the Milwaukee Brewers and the okra bet she and my father had over the 1992 World Series between the Braves and Blue Jays. And then we talked about books, from romance novels to Catcher in the Rye and school and how my mom was when she was a child, how she behaved, what kind of grades she got. We talked until my mother came to pick me up. By that time, the images I had of my grandmother, stoic, predictable, boring, had been washed away one topic at a time- I cherished that moment we shared because we moved a little while after and she died less than one year later.

My brother and I visited her grave today. I miss her more and I'm much sadder than I was when she first died because I think about my kids never knowing her. We bought her flowers, carnations and lillies to replace the dying ones in the pot at her site. We both knelt down to pay our respects, we had a good time talking and laughing about the time we hooked up our PlayStation to her tv and she thought it was going to explode. I kissed my hand and touched her "headstone" before we left and we were off. I grabbed my phone, I have her number in there even though I didn't get my first cellphone until two years after she'd passed away. I just hope whoever inherited that number is worthy recipient.