For My Mother

I’ve taken to reading leisurely by tree light as my family sleeps.

A line I will read one day amidst a pile of frustrating work I don’t want to be doing that just might change the trajectory of my choices.

But tonight, it simply is what I’m doing.

I start here. And then I click link after guided link because clicking on Austin Kleon’s writing rarely leads me astray. Suddenly, I find myself here, & then here. Ope, now I’m over here.

A pattern I’ve found in three dedications now — all completely unrelated topics —

For my mother.

It seems there are many authors who probably aren’t calling their mother as much as they think about calling her yet she is the thread throughout their life anyway.

The foundation I lay for my daughter now might make it into a dedication one day. It won’t even be my name but the rather generic, uncapitalized, word that defines millions of women. But it doesn’t really matter to me what the word is, just that my daughter says it, & the meaning it carries for her.

This is the true work.

Not to be in a dedication one day, oh no. Those are expectations I will not put upon her.

But on the days when I’m receiving pressure from external forces — day job, in-laws expectations, montessori — may I recall that rarely are dedications made to any of those things.

For my mother: the result of a presence not your burden to make others understand. Because they may never. But she will always.