My mother was Anita Kathleen McRee Peña.

She was raised on the farm on the Washita County and Beckham County line outside of Elk City. The same farm I was raised on. Daughter of Wanda Gene Towns and Vernon James McRee. Mother of six. She defended her children with rigor and accepted each one as they were.

She died of melanoma in January 2021.

She loved peaches. Lilacs. Vanilla fragrances, from Avon’s Vanilla to the classic Vanilla Fields. The kind of soft, sun-warm scents that don’t try to be anything other than what they are.

I think about that a lot when I’m building fragrances. The ones that stay closest to skin. The ones that don’t ask for attention.

Mother’s Day after a mother is gone is a strange holiday. The card aisle becomes a place to walk past quickly. The day lands differently. I text or call my sisters, but it’s not the same.

Every year, I learn again that grief doesn’t get smaller. You just get bigger around it.

May is also Melanoma Awareness Month. I don’t talk about that much. But I’m talking about it now because she was 63. Because melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer and one of the most preventable. Because the woman who taught me what softness looks like beat it once, only to have it come back during a time when people with pre-existing conditions were afraid to catch Covid, afraid to go back to the hospital, afraid to risk the very care they needed.

If you’ve been putting off a skin check, this is me asking.

Wear sunscreen. Look at your moles. Tell someone you love to do the same.

The brand is named Leland Francis for the men in my family. But everything inside it is for the women. Wanda Gene. María Reyna. Anita. The hands that taught me what gentleness was before I had the language for it.

This Mother’s Day, if your mother is here, hold her. If she isn’t, you’re not alone in the aisle.

Dillon