Happy Birthday Carla

It’s my mother-in-law’s birthday today. I called her mom, so writing mother-in-law sounds pretty weird. But for your sake, and since you’ve all been so patient while trying to keep up with all my dad’s, brothers, half-brothers, step-half brothers, I’ll just call her by her title.

It’s my mother-in-law’s birthday, her name is Carla. I cannot do justice to the feelings I have of how much I want to pick up the phone, ask her how she’s doing and wait for her to answer with some laughter while she takes a drag off her Misty 120 in between sips of her fountain pop, extra ice. She was a funny, loud, opinionated woman who did everything she could for her kids to the best of her ability and laughed with her whole body. She shook when she laughed. I’ll always have a clear picture of that.

She loved me like her own daughter, even told her son not to fuck it up when she barely knew me. She added my birthstone on her favorite pin she’d wear everyday without second thought, and later was buried with it. I was never put through a test for her love, she gave it right away. That’s who she was.

She was always there for her kids. Proud at even the smallest accomplishments. She put theMan's band sticker on her new beloved Blazer without hesitation. Now theMan gets sick to his stomach that she won’t be here to see her grandkids. I feel like part of my responsibilities of being her daughter-in-law is to make sure my kids know about her and who she was but oh how I wish she was still around to teach them how to play Skip-bo and give them embarrassing stories about their dad.

A funny story...when we were having a big family planning session to figure out how to pull off a Halloween wedding, my mother and step-mother (at the time) were driving me nuts. Pushing their opinions, harassing me about our choices, etc. I finally escaped with Carla so she could smoke some cigs. Carla told me in between drags, “I don’t know what the big fucking deal is...it’s your wedding.”

She mattered.

And god damn it, I miss her.

(Go read theMan’s tribute to her on his myspace.com blog.)