In first grade, I made my mother a vase. Crafted with masking tape, shoe polish, and a repurposed glass jar, it was a new item designed to look vintage. With age comes value and significance, but I didn't know that yet.    The teacher guided us in this creation. First, tear off dozens of pieces of one-inch-wide masking tape that feels like paper, but resembles dry sand and smells vaguely of chemicals. Don’t try to make the ends neat, she said, the more jagged the better.  Next, plaster the entire canister with masking tape positioned every which way. We want mess, we want disorganization. Embrace imperfection. Make it complete enough to cover each square millimeter of the glass, overwhelming and canceling out everything it used to be.  Then, dip old rags or torn bits of t-shirts into dark brown Kiwi-brand shoe polish. Use the globs of stain that smells like gasoline and sweet wax to paint over the taped canister. Watch it change from ecru to sienna, from a known thin...

Year before last, on your birthday, I visited a Wind Phone. Do you know about those? Old fashioned handset telephones with curly cords, not connected to any pesky wires, placed in parks or gardens around the world for people to use.   Remember when I was in Dallas and you were in the hospital and I'd call every day to check in, and I kept calling every Sunday after you got home? Remember I always said, "Hi, it's me," and you'd say, "Hel-llo," a song that was a mix between comfortably expected and comical, your voice dropping a few notes between syllables?  Remember my senior year in college when Brandon broke off our engagement four months before the wedding, and I called, wordless, only to sob into the phone, and you sat on the other end of the line for hours listening to me cry, just being together?   Remember that time I called and told you Amy's grandmother died, and you moaned that nobody tells you anything, and I said they might talk to you mor...

I see those parents dropping off their cherished children at college. I see photos of the family minivan - so recently scattered with Cheerios and Happy Meal toys - now filled to the windows with clothes, bedding, and furniture. I see dads manning a push-cart full of belongings up a sidewalk and into a dorm elevator. I see moms helping their children make the twin-sized bed, unfurl the curtains across the window, fold into drawers the clothes that suddenly seem so big and still so small. I see fierce goodbye hugs laced with tears, parents telling children to call home every single day to check in. A complicated potpourri of pride and joy and grief and embarrassment.  And I remember how my going-off-to-college experience looked nothing like that.  As a child of parents who couldn't be relied upon, I mostly did it alone. My dorm, 1998 I suppose I always assumed I'd go to college. I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I'd been told over and over that colleg...

There is no headstone. No rectangular concrete marker with a rounded edge across the top to blunt the grief. No carved heart of incongruously shiny granite, no lichen-embossed urn to hold flowers and remind me of my emptiness. There are no words carved indelibly to remind anyone that she was. My mother wanted to be cremated, and have her ashes scattered in the mountains. She thought funerals were barbaric, all those people hovering over an expensive coffin holding a person who's gone, all that wailing and swaying, all that sadness.  She hated the idea of people coming to sit at a marker to mourn her. Celebrate, she said, because I've gone somewhere better. No use being sad. Perhaps she didn't understand that funerals and graves and headstones aren't for the dead. They're for the living. For the ones left behind who have nothing to hold but air and memories. For the ones who are left with no way to prove their loved one existed except this box she rested in for a whi...

The picture is not of my mother's hand.  It's a stranger's hand, an anonymous woman's palm pressed flat against a sea of grainy white-gray snow.  The fingers are gently stretched straight. Waves of wrinkles rise over knuckles, like maybe the joints feel a little slow and stiff of late. The nails are short and rounded – practical but well kept – and ever so slightly discolored in silent acknowledgement of mature age. Three tendons stand out in ridges on the back of the hand, a testament of strength. Against a background of tawny skin, roadmaps of blue-green veins crisscross, telling of all the places it's been.  The hand is held next to the imprint of a wild animal's foot – bear or wolf, I can't remember – to illustrate the awesome size and impact of nature. But it's not the paw I care about. I've cropped most of the footprint out of the picture like so many forgotten details.  I desperately want to hold that hand.  I want to reach through the...

The weight was almost unmanageable.   When I was young my mother owned a manual typewriter, all metal and heft. It came in a box like a suitcase with a latch and plastic handle, and I was certain it weighed more than I did.  The machine itself was cream and gray with seafoam-green accents straight out of the 1960s. It smelled of ink and machine oil. Trapezoid keytops bore letters in a san-serif font on heavy plastic, and there was no number 1 - my mom explained the lowercase L doubled for the number. The keybasket where all the typebars come together was embossed with the silver words "De Luxe" atop a wash of seafoam.  The keys didn't yield like computer keyboards nowadays - back then if I wanted to communicate I had to put effort behind it, jam my point home with just my index fingers. On that machine my mom taught me my first typed sentence, about the goings-on of a quick red fox and a lazy brown dog.  I didn't have much else to write about in elementary school. I ...

"Do we have to pay for water?" my daughter asked last week as she played with Dolphin Magic Barbie and Jet Ski Stacie in the bath.  She's 7, and still discovering the where's and why's of how things work in our household. Recently we'd told her not to leave the garden hose running, because it wastes both water and money.  I explained that yes, we pay a utility company to send clean water through our pipes and into the tubs, faucets, and hoses.  "If you ever need money to pay for water, you can take some of my money," she offered.  As I looked into the face of this sweet girl I'm raising, I was moved by her open-hearted generosity, unselfishness, and willingness to help. And I knew exactly what not to say.  Barbie's Bathtub Adventures Growing up, my family frequently struggled to pay the bills . I remember around age 8 repeating to my Girl Scouts leader that we had an "outstanding Visa bill" even though I had no idea what that meant....

Sometimes grief grabs you by the heart and squeezes so hard that love comes out.  Five years after moving into this house, I finally painted the master bedroom. Last weekend I was crawling along the floor foot after tedious foot, cutting in where the baseboard meets the wall, splitting the long straight lines of white into two colors - like a before and after - when I stopped for a second to consider the moment.  And I thought,  I wish my mom could see me in this good life.   Tears pricked my eyes and heavy sadness fell on me like a thick blanket. Grief is like that sometimes, sudden and blinding. I wanted to cry. I wanted to lay down right there, brush in hand, and dissolve into sleep. Most of all, I desperately wanted to see my mom and have her see me, so far from where I was when she left.  The windows of the room were open, an unusually warm spring breeze drifting in. My husband was mowing. The man I moved 1200 miles to join, near family I had just met, in ...

I don't have many friends. This isn't a call for help or pity. It's just a fact. A fact that has been true my entire life: I have always struggled to make friends. As a kid I was by myself most of the time at home, living in a series of run-down rural places or small scruffy neighborhoods without other kids my age. In elementary and junior high I had a best friend or two, but that dwindled in high school. I was not a popular teen, even in the smaller universe of band nerds. In fact, it was a little bit of the opposite -- often enduring both the covert and open ridicule that is the hallmark of growing up. I made two or three good friends early in my college career, but we went our separate ways after dorm life. As an upperclassman, I didn't form strong friendships at the student newspaper. On the contrary; one editor printed my name on the back of a T-shirt with "Major Issues" listed as my nickname. In my mid-20's I struggled to find women to fi...

Andy Williams had it all wrong . Thanksgiving is the most wonderful time of the year. Unless you're a turkey. As a poor kid growing up in rural Southeast Texas , Christmas was hard. While my parents fought over the "right" way to string lights on an anemic artificial tree, our seven television stations broadcast non-stop messages of unaffordable presents and unattainable family happiness. Toys R Us burst with more games, more toys, oh boy. Homes dripped with decorations and lights. Everyone was happy and nothing ever went wrong (except for that time Kevin got left home alone). Even the long-distance phone commercials were sappy and soaked with the kind of togetherness my parents -- mostly estranged from their own families in the Midwest -- didn't long for. I couldn't relate to most of what surrounded me. Walking the tightrope that is the poverty line, my family wavered on and off of traditional welfare. The government provided cash benefits back then for ...

She was the strongest person I'll ever know. I don't have appropriate words to describe my mother. It wasn't that she was determined, because that implies an overall plan of action. She just kept going. I wouldn't call it perseverance, because that invokes the idea that eventually she prevailed. She didn't; she just kept going. She was not quite persistent or tenacious, and certainly not resolute or steadfast. She woke up every day and did what had to be done all day long, no matter how difficult or unfair or unpleasant. She was not energetic or particularly positive or even hopeful. She just kept going. When the car broke down on the side of the road, she walked with the groceries in her arms. When the electricity was shut off for a week, she heated my bath water on a Coleman stove in the kitchen and carried it to the tub. When my chronically unemployed father couldn't put food on the table, she visited the local food pantry in the next town as often as t...

The below entry was originally posted on MySpace (remember that?) on January 30, 2008, less than a year after my mother died. I have re-posted it below in honor of my mother's birthday. She would have been 66 today. This month marks 10 years since I last saw her.  This morning Therapist Seth asked me about my mom's heart. Aside from her weakened body, the clothes she wore, the few possessions she owned, and the houses she lived in (or didn't), what was the condition of her heart? She was kind, I said, and empathetic. She would take home any stray animal she found, especially if it were sick or hurt. She would give you some of whatever she had, no matter how little, if it would help. When she ran out of money, she fed her cat crumbled bread. When I needed antidepressants in high school, she had her doctor write a prescription for two pills -- then she took one, and gave me the other -- for years. When my engagement broke off in college, she sat on the phone for hours at a ...

Heading into the parent-teacher meeting, I was nervous. Was pushing for my son to keep Baby Doll with him at preschool a bad choice for his long-term emotional development? Am I fighting for the right decision? And what if my son's preschool teacher drew a hard line and said nobody keeps the comfort item, no way, no how ? What would I do then? I prefer everything to have a clear set of instructions. Unfortunately, parenting doesn't work like that. Without a map or guidelines, or even a glimpse of the bigger picture, we're all just guessing our way through a beautiful and dangerous labyrinth. Worry is my constant accessory, like a leaden heart-shaped pendant on a chain around my neck. All I had to go on here was what I felt, and what my kiddo felt, and some vague sense of moving forward.  Start here. "I can't go on the carpet!" my son told me emphatically. I didn't know what this meant, and the helplessness was agonizing. "Tell me what scar...

In the summer of my seventh year, my family landed in Southeast Texas. We had driven there in a distressingly orange Volvo station wagon with sticky vinyl seats and a "way-back." Inexplicably, my mom called her Betsy For a few years thereafter, each month during summer vacation my brother, my mom, and I would climb into the family car and head to town to go grocery shopping. (At the time, "town" consisted of three stop lights, three fast-food joints (the McDonald's didn't come until 8th grade), and one set of railroad tracks that separated us from the grocery store). It was 98 degrees in the shade and the car's air conditioning hadn't worked since the turn of the decade. Three miles with the windows down can seem like three lifetimes when you're not even 10 years old.

Dear Me, It is May 1998. Right now you are merely 17 but you've survived enough hardship to make you a bona fide adult, if that's how we're counting. Keep going. It will get worse before it gets better, but I promise it will get better. Some day you will soar. In the meantime, I hope you'll suffer me to give you a few bits of advice. It's about your mother. A twisty subject, I know, especially as you are on the cusp of breaking free of this town and the crushing weight of your childhood. But please listen and take these things to heart. I'm going to save you a lot of regret. Record her voice. It doesn't matter what she says -- hello or I'm going outside for a smoke or the quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog . (Remember when she taught you how to peck that phrase on her massive manual typewriter? The keys struck so hard, punctuation scarred the backs of her pages.) Make sure, though, that she says your name. Years from now you'll unde...

I don't think everything happens for a reason. I don't believe events take place when the time is right. I don't see -- or look for -- signs from God, or the universe, or a higher power. Which is what made this particular addition to my family all the more special. It was a random Wednesday in October. Isn't that when signs appear, when you least expect them? At almost 8 1/2 months pregnant with baby #2 , I was enjoying near constant backaches, heartburn after every meal, and the kind of fatigue that leaves you exhausted after unloading the dishwasher. You know, the fun pregnancy stuff. To add insult to discomfort, somewhere during the previous months I had lost my well-honed ability to nap. All of my adult naps up to this point were mere practice for the afternoon rests which I now really, really needed...yet suddenly I could not reach my goal of drifting off to sleep for a few precious minutes of recuperation during the long days. I was tired, I was frustrated, I w...

Three years ago today I found myself sitting in a darkened exam room, clutching an ultrasound image, crying. Crying so hard the ultrasound technician excused herself to "give me a moment." These weren't tears of happiness or relief, but of a disappointment I was unable to contain: I had just been told that I was having a boy. What kind of horrible mother are you?  you're probably thinking. I wondered that too. For three-and-a-half years I had struggled to have a child, and out of that struggle came a miracle. Yet here I was feeling like what I had graciously been given wasn't enough. I didn't just want a baby . I wished for a daughter . I had some reasons for feeling this way, flimsy though they seem now. First, I don't know (or care) much about things little boys are typically interested in -- dinosaurs and dump trucks and sports, bodily emissions and pratfalls and comic books. What would my son and I bond over? How would I ever connect with him? Se...

There is beauty in symmetry. Two halves, equal and opposite, which compose a whole. A balance and proportion that indicates completion. Evidence that there is a deliberateness and orderliness to the world which I find both comforting and awe-inspiring. The human mind reaches for things that make sense. We have sought symmetry since the dawn of time -- it transcends cultures, eras, and trends. The architecture of Egypt's pyramids, Gothic cathedrals, the White House are all based on symmetric design. Leonardo da Vinci's pen-and-ink drawing of the Vitruvian Man is a symbol of the beautiful proportion and symmetry of the human body, and by extension, the universe. Musical compositions, especially classical, are exercises in repeating patterns of melody and form. Sonnets crafted by Shakespeare and E.E. Cummings flow in persistent rhythms and rhymes that reflect upon themselves. Even Mother Nature boasts of the symmetrical: a starfish, a snowflake, a honeycomb, the ratio from the s...

Mother's Day for me is a holiday fraught with conflicting feelings. I never know whether I'm supposed to be (a) mourning the death of my own mother, (b) celebrating happy memories woven through the complex and difficult relationship my mom and I shared, (c) grieving the lack of the typical mother-daughter relationship we never enjoyed, or (d) rejoicing over my own sweet child who is helping me create a new mother-child bond. It's a day I spend flip-flopping between feelings of joy and sadness, fullness and loss. Throw in a healthy dose of sensitivity to women who are grappling with infertility or pregnancy loss -- because I've been in those shoes, too -- and my Mother's Day turns into a hot mess that looks nothing like a Hallmark greeting. *** Mother's Day is hard for me listen: motherless and childless, I am untethered in a world full of strings 5-13-12 *** For the majority of the time I knew her, my mother was fighting physical and mental illness...

Most of my childhood is buried in a landfill somewhere near Houston. This is not a metaphor, but rather the sad outcome of foreclosure proceedings on my family's home when I was 12. When we left the white brick house, we moved into a rickety green wooden rental that slashed our living space in half. We took what we could carry in our vehicle -- mostly the necessities -- and left the rest behind. (When your home is being foreclosed, you generally can't afford a storage building.) But the house, and thereby everything in it, belonged to the bank, so they quietly and efficiently hauled off our belongings to a BFI landfill. Family and wedding photo albums, my mom's wedding dress, most of my and my brother's toys, our bronzed baby shoes that hung on the wall as proof of how far we'd come, a wall full of books, the majority of our family mementos and brick-a-brac. The junk that makes a house a home. I'm telling you this because of an angel named Gloria. Growing up, ...