For over two years now, I've been spending every Tuesday afternoon/evening visiting with my 95 year old mother, the woman who started me on my writing journey.  We have a complicated relationship, as she does with all her children.  As the last of her eight children, I have a unique perspective but not a special one.  In the beginning of this phase of our relationship, I focused on asking her about the life she and my dad lived with my older siblings.  I've heard some of those stories but not a lot, really, and it's bittersweet for me.  It both strengthens my connection to our family and reveals it's fault lines - I was simply not a part of so much of it.   

We also talked about many other things, and my favorite discussions revolved around religion, human nature and, of course, the craft of writing ...the same things we talked about when I was a teenager and she and I lived alone without any of my other siblings.  More recently, her short term memory has faltered and she might ask me thirty times during the course of my visit what day it is.  But her long term memory is stronger, which brings me comfort, somehow.  She can still tell her story ...and everything is a story - especially the lives we've led.