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By @Madison
Candace Elaine Noble.
That’s the name written on my birth certificate
A moniker designed by my mother.
The first name belonged to her own mother
The second, her own middle name.
She didn’t have much say in the last part
Forced to use the name she carried herself
Since the man who helped create me
Had decided he wasn’t interested in treating me like family.
In itself, my name is a prophecy written by Vanessa Elaine Noble from her hospital bed
A mother’s wish that her child be blessed with the virtues of the women before her.
She wanted me to share her fiery perseverence
Rise from my ashes should anyone ever burn me down.
To contradict those traits
She wished for me to exhibit the selflessness of my grandmother
Willing to give the shirt off my back and the roof over my head for my loved ones
A serene soul
Who constantly exuded love and kindness.
But that was in the early days.
As I grew up, my mother rarely called me by my given name at all.
She had forgotten all about her meaningful reasoning for my name
Focusing on what she could prove I inherited from her
At such a young age.
One trait I had received from her was an insatiable sweet tooth
Which was part of the reason for the nickname she christened me with.
“Candy,” she’d call me on her good days
Which were bountiful in my earliest memories.
“My little Candace. You might as well be made of sugar, little girl, because you’re sweet as candy.”
She’d pull me into her lap after she said this
Strands of her soft blonde hair tickling my skin as she kissed my cheek
Leaving a perfect pink lipstick stain.
Then she’d dig a Dum-Dum or Tootsie Roll from her pocket
And send me on my merry way.
Though there were many days
That are clouded over by my lack of memory from that time
I know that those are my best memories of her
Occuring some time before a switch flipped
And things went so horribly wrong.
It is these memories that feel both like a punch in the gut and a sliver of hope.
I like to think that she loved me then
That things didn’t just change
Because she decided to stop pretending that she cared.
Yet, it hurts
That she changed when change was still so abstract to me.
Though my mother changed so drastically within a year or two
I was still the little girl I always had been.
In fact
On that fateful day in the grocery store
When she finally fully snapped
I was still fully focused on that sweet tooth of mine
A red lollipop held in my tiny hand
As I trailed behind her
Unaware that I was prancing toward disaster.
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