A Temporary Fix
I stretched the masking tape around the broken wooden table leg. As I did so I recalled my mother always saying, there was never a problem masking tape could not fix. Masking tape now serves a different purpose than when I was younger. Back then it was only a utility, used only to patch; always only to partly fix things. Once my mother and I had to cover the holes of our ragged 2002 convertible top that had holes punched in it, as an act of rebellion by kids in the neighborhood. Masking tape, then served as a remedy to temporarily fix something, never heal, never truly repair.
When my mother died, I brought masking tape to her funeral in hopes that it would somehow fix her broken body and perhaps hold up the withered petals of the arrangements of flowers that laid atop of her coffin. It was an illusion instilled into me by my mother, her engraved teaching. I could still hear her voice shouting for me to bring her masking tape.
In her life, my mother was the kind of woman to stop the car in the middle of the highway, only to pick up the flowers on the side of the road. She
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Her simple solution for fixing any problem. Our house much like my mother was falling apart. I remember one morning walking into my mother's bedroom to find her wrists wrapped in masking tape. She chuckled stating she could find no band-aids in our house.
In my mother's eyes life’s problem were easily solved with simple solutions. She seemed to forget that life itself is not as easily solved nonetheless, fixed. My mother might have been wrong in thinking masking tape could fix everything, but yet she was somehow also right. My mother was a broken soul, but she was wise to know a temporary fix was always better than letting things fall apart. Much like the top of our car, my mother seemed to seek a temporary fix for