Speed Bump

I’m with my Mom, sitting next to her in a crowded restaurant, and yet I feel alone. I should be warmed by her proximity, by my ability to put my arm around her shoulder and squeeze her towards me. I can swing my leg three inches to the left and our knees will bump together. But she is light years away. She is the earth and I am the moon. She is a falling star glimpsed out of the corner of my eye; I’m fervently making a wish upon that star, my mother the star. I'm in the middle of my life with an established career, strong marriage, and healthy and active children of my own. But my Mom's dementia has only made me realize how much I still need her. There are so many things I want to tell her, so many lessons she has yet to teach me. I think about my Mom's life and my own, the similarities and differences, the choices we both made. We've always been close, I thought I knew her well. But there are so many things I've never asked her, so much about her I don't k

#TBT to a blog post from a few years ago that still rings true. I write my way through things that are troubling me, to gain perspective, and often because I simply feel compelled to put events into words. Writing is a reverse translation that helps me make sense of the world. I've been going through my old journals lately and I've found a story there I want to tell - a story that is pulling me out of bed and to my laptop every morning. I'm reliving my story as I write and it's wonderful and scary and makes me feel alive. _________________________________________________________________________________ I've kept a journal for as long as I can remember. I started writing down my thoughts from the time I was in grade school and kept journals through my mid-thirties. My writing changed when I started this blog. No one, not even me, would want to read the sort of drivel I wrote in my journal on a daily basis. Nonsense, ramblings, internal drama that I needed to wor