This is the first in a series of my mothers writings.
I have a box of her notebooks.
Many of which filled,
some only a page, a note, an idea jotted down.
Here I will be cataloguing her stories.
Sharing her words,
in a way that she never got around to while she was here.
Perhaps having the thought,
"if I only had the proper workspace,
or time maybe then, I will be a writer."
The truth is she always was.
She was always writing.
As a small group of friends and family gathered in the pavilion at Otsiningo Park,
that first week of June last year, I promised to get her published.
And even still I don't quite know how to start to share her works.
So I will do what I can. Here I will catalogue, those notebooks, those stories, her scraps of paper. And continue the conversation.
A lot of the time when she was here she would share her writings with me.
Rich, Raw, and Vulnerable.
Sometimes even too delicate to hear.
I felt her pain, I sensed her depth; for my mother never half felt something.
She was all in. Always present, even most times, feeling too much.
I have been hesitant. Tired. Waiting for the right time, to feel ok again to see her depth. To hear her voice thru her words. For a while it had been too hard even to see her lovely handwriting. And yet, here she is, and always has been-everywhere.
When I opened her typewriting, still on the wheel her words.
In the top drawer of my dresser, her words, in the glove box of her car, her beautiful words. Eventually I rearranged my workspace, made my scanner more accessible,
pulled the box of her writings out of the closet. No longer sidelining the sadness this box may hold. Both hers and mine. I opened a folder, no destination in site, and the first page I pull..."Stand up, lost sailor!"
Fitting Mom, Thank You
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