Buying Time

This is Unfolding Inheritance, a column by Kristen Gentry exploring mother-daughter relationships, the impact of parental addiction, and the journey of finding and loving yourself through it all. * I love to shop. I get it from my mama. So much of my childhood was me and Mama at the mall, wrapped in the warm, chocolate chip smell of Great American Cookies and the chemical clean of the fountain’s chlorine. With the citrus froth of Orange Julius on my tongue, I watched the endless bubble of stumpy white geysers and gathered calm in the sound of the water’s gentle slap as it returned to the clear, shallow pool. I asked Mama for coins so I could throw them into the water to join other nickels, dimes, and pennies, shimmering on the fountain’s turquoise-painted bottom like fish scales. I wanted to make a wish.  I was always making wishes, but as an adult, I can’t imagine what I would have wished for then. I was already with my favorite person doing what we loved to do. …