Heaven is a memory…have a bit of it and give it here on earth.

I realized this recently, remembering my mother whom I often didn't get along with. At that moment, I understood something about her: that realization was heaven. Had I asked her more questions when she was alive, I might have known her better and loved her more. Who hasn't regretted not having asked more of their loved ones? Yet, I can honor her now in my writing—a gift to her, to myself and to my children.

Mahjong
"One to nine with five odd honors." Laura showed her winning tiles atop her red plastic rack. The other three women held a moment of silence around the green felt card table. Then my mother said, "It's a beautiful hand, my favorite." Lydia Bliss took a sip of her iced tea; Ann lit a cigarette. Irene counted and recorded scores and they threw in their hands, long red nails clicking against and turning over the ivory tiles, crashing them together, over and over like waves crunching out a sea of rocks.

"Ssh! Don't wake baby Carol!" who was sleeping on her parent's thick double bed all the way down the hall. No one was even allowed to flush the toilet. I could feel my mother smile as she looked down at me on my bye-baby blankie between my face and the wooden floor.

The clacking of the mahjong tiles softened to a chattering as the eight hands began to build the four ivory walls. I turned to the waft of Lydia's stockinged soles as she wiggled her big feet like unschooled fish. I touched the crooked seam that angled up the back of my mother's leg. She kept her small proud feet in her brown leather flats, one crossing the other.

My mother was an artist who rarely drew. Of all the mahjong hands, 'one to nine with five odd honors' atop the rack most pleased my mother's eye: the line of ivory tiles engraved with blue Chinese characters, one to nine, culminating in a bouquet of five odd honors. The honor tiles were images of white, red or green dragons and/or the east, west, north or south winds. That hand, her delight in that image was her art, now my bit of heaven.