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Melody's Diary Entries Diary Navigation: Choose A Diary Entry -------------------- Latest Entry: 6/27/00 -------------------- 6/18/00 6/6/00 5/19/00 5/14/00 5/12/00 5/8/00 4/5/00 4/1/00 3/27/00 3/9/00 3/8/00 3/7/00 3/1/00 2/8/00 2/7/00 -------------------- Melody's Introduction

March 8, 2000

Melissa wears lots of disguises. She’s 17. Sometimes she likes to wear dark makeup and all black, complete with long black satin shirt and Dr. Martens. When she comes out wearing her "gothic garb," even my boys run! One wrong look at Melissa on these days can put you at the mercy of her "wrath."

This morning was one of those days. She came out in full "gothic garb," and she needed me to take her places. OK, I’m the Mom and I’m not working right now. I am transitioning between jobs, and the kids think it’s okay to ask me to drive them everywhere. They figure I have all kinds of free time on my hands now.

So, we go to Walgreen’s Drug Store, and Melissa and I argue over makeup. It seems she wants $50 worth of makeup, and can’t understand why this is a problem.

We walked out into the parking lot with Trish, Melissa’s friend, and Trish started telling us how she is moving to Oregon

"Wow," I said, "I wish I could call my mom and ask her if I can come home, just for a while! That’d be cool!"

Here it comes, I thought, the eye rolling from my daughter. But, tears had welled up in her eyes, and the dark makeup began to run as tears rolled down her cheeks. I had forgotten how close Melissa was to my mother, who died two years ago of cancer.

And, those blue eyes look so much like my mother’s and the drama incidents remind me of my mother, and even the eye rolling and the "Mother, you have no taste" remarks.

"Oh, Mom, I miss Grandma too!" And, she grabbed me and we hugged for a long time in the middle of the grocery store parking lot. Trish didn’t know what to do, so she just walked away. We held each other and cried. And, I knew then that Melissa missed my mom as much as I did.