Last spring when the scent of lilacs followed me from the backyard into my kitchen, I thought of my mother’s distant cousin and her daughters, who, like my lilacs, visited yearly when the earth warmed and the days grew longer. I pictured us all in idyllic memories of jump rope games and playing with dolls. But, except for MaryAnn, the littlest daughter, I could not remember their names.
A few years ago, I could have called my mother. She would have teased me for my forgetfulness, asked what I was making for dinner (there was never a phone conversation where we didn’t talk about food) and repeated her mother-to-daughter mantra, “When are you coming over?” We would have shared stories of those long-ago days before hanging-up and re-joining our lives. But my mother has passed on and while the images of our family lingers-the details are lost. I write One more thing before I go, my living record for my son, in hope that one day, when he has a question I can no longer answer, it can be found in this blog.
In the month that celebrates fathers, my son became a father for the second time. The blue-eyed baby that nestled in my arms in what feels like a year or two ago, is all grown-up with blue-eyed babies of his own. While birth is always a miracle, the birth of David’s daughters is the most miraculous because during his senior year at college, David was supposed to die.
Read MoreI’m the author of Bird and Fish, its sequel; Sea and Sky and my latest novel; Alice Again. I wasn’t always a writer. I started out much the same as other women; moving along from baby to girl, woman to wife and mother, teacher to restless. Restless is the best ally a writer can have. It made me leave a super career with a steady pay-check to settle into a solitary regimen of breathing life into a handful of ideas. I’ve never been happier.
