The overlap of love

“Mom? I miss Baci. I wish she didn’t die.”
Kids say the darnedest things. 
In the dark, kneeling against my son’s bed, I feel the prick of hot tears and a jolt of breathlessness. My brain, a spinning rolodex of things to say, is at a loss for words. 
“Me too, sweets. Me, too,” I manage to choke out.
“Can we make a Baci doll? She was the nicest person I ever saw.”
Floodgates. 
For me, becoming a parent truly helped heal the gash in my heart made when my mum left this earth. Curiously, it reconnected me to her; experiencing what she experienced felt like walking in her footsteps. I understood, finally, the saying, “You’ll understand when you have kids.” The immediate love I felt for my son, the protectiveness, the absolute mama bear I-would-do-anything-for-you feeling - I know she felt that for me. I lived it as a recipient, and to be on the other side of that as the giver deepened my relationship with her despite being universes away. For someone who constantly put her children first, I know now, on a parental level, that her decision to “be done” was probably one of the first things she had done solely for self in decades. Her children were grown up enough. She could let go. 
“Mom, do you miss your mom?” My son asked, voice quivering. 
This bedtime conversation is really throwing some unexpected punches. 
“Always, sweets.”
I talk about my mum to my son often. She’s a regular part of conversation, whether it’s me saying, “Your Baci would think you’re SO cool,” or “That was your Baci’s favorite color.” There’s a picture of her nestled inside the bottom corner of a framed family photo hanging in his room. We’ve watched home movies of her so he can hear her voice. Her absence is tangible, but so is her spirit. Her love.
To hear him say, “She was the nicest person I ever saw,” is so innocent, so sweet, so devastating. Hell yeah, sweets, she WAS the nicest person ever. She was SO FUCKING COOL. I know, without a doubt, that she would be enamored with him. With his cheeks that are an exact match for mine when I was a young child. With his silly, excitable, finding-wonder-in-everything self. His love for 70s rock music. She’d be hysterically laughing at his disdain for potatoes. It’s these - the ultra-specific scenarios - that I miss her most. The inside jokes of a family, the experiences that continue family lore. 
Continuing the conversation about her will float her, and her magnanimous love, from one generation to the next. In the way I know my Dziadziu from a story mum would repeat to me - how he saved his cartons of milk given to him during his hospital admission for mum who was pregnant with me so I’d grow - illustrate his character. He died before I was born, a fact I somehow never made the connection with until I was pregnant realizing she and I both experienced a parent never meeting our children. My son will know stories of how she would drive an hour-and-a-half for a year to pick me up from college each weekend because I missed home; how the nickname she gave me as a baby is similar to his own; how the lullaby I hum for him is something she sang because her mom sang; how she was a tomboy who could fix anything and hated the feeling of nail polish on her fingers but she loved getting dressed up; how all of my friends - gal pals and guy friends - adored her, truly; how she was always thinking of her children -continually reaching out and sending mail and leaving notes for us to find; a woman whose mantra was “never quit.” This amalgamation of anecdotes will paint the beautiful, loving, strong picture of her for my son. Make her tangible, a person he feels like he knew. 
To recognize things today I know she would love or find funny, to still have that childish instinct when something goes awry to figuratively reach for her, to see my digital heart rate on my watch steady when I smell her perfume I’ve saved, to be independent and secure and know I can do anything is a testament to how deep, how profound her love was and the secure attachment she fostered since birth. To be loved by a mother in the way I was, I know now more than ever, is SO rare, so special. No one will ever love me in that same way. A mother’s love, particularly from mine, is a different plane. I will love my son the same. And together in that overlap is where I find comfort. There, in love, he does’t have to miss his Baci. And neither do I.