dear mother

What do I think of when I am driving home from work over early morning vistas of golden ochre, naples yellow, french vanilla, burnt caramel- humps of dry tuft, sticks of artemesia, burnt umber; samphire becoming at one with the universe.

I think of her, you, my mother I think of how it aches to miss you to miss you so badly and about how you drove me to ignition on so many occasions how it's all a convolusion the incongruous melange of both reticence and boldness that made so much of you that which is intricately incorporated to the inside mechanism of what makes me do the things that I do. I was a kid so as kids we make mistakes, so many mistakes, so fucked up I wish so much that you could have taken better care of me, made me feel like a girl was just a regular strong and powerful thing but you couldn't, your limitations too strong to fight, and fight I remember in my early teens when you went back to school and on the side lines learnt about Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem and all of that bra burning jazz. How you had no one to rebound with- just silence from your man, where's my dinner and beer woman, words shrouded in more sophisticated middle class talk. It was a liberation for you and you, after such years of female drudgery were so eager to imbibe- finally some real food and clean water. Our nuclear world was still consuming miracle whip though so your struggle was lost to to the ears of what people were chattering about: the weaker sex, the darker mind, the mysterious female- don't try and understand'em-don't trust'em with the pocket book, eh-hehe and on the continuum of cheap formula it goes, not withstanding; ladies first- yea right- how you always made sure everyone else came before you.

scene #3100- hospital take- my father in emergency recovering after morphine overdose that a doctor poorly requested, I am placing your foot in the stirrups of the wheel chair from your car in the parking lot to take you to see him and you wince with pain- I scoot up your skirt to find gigantic ulcerated holes in your calf that you haven't told anyone about- no no it's ok I'll go to the clinic tomorrow it's alright.

It's alright-sure- way back in those conservative suburban years of the late 70's you delicately and clandestinely and in increments, put your excitement of rebirth emancipation back on the shelf and really only took it down again during torrid fights with your husband. Philosophy never shines in battle.

You see, I have to grow up and forgive you-forgive you for teaching me the ways of the second class sex. I have to stop blaming you for my failings and my incongruous melange of both reticence and boldness that makes so much of me- that which directly stems from an intricate osmoses of the inside mechanism of what made you do the things that you did. I wish that I had been braver for you and braver for myself and braver for my daughters. For my daughters and I, I have the time. All the time in the world. I love you and miss you so much.