Member-only story
I’m trying to find my mother.
Long dead, she hangs around, hung up —
like the spinning gear on my laptop
looking for the data.
This must be what she felt like
when, in one of the first big memory fails,
she called me from Reno in a panic.
“I don’t know where I am,” she said.
I was in Seattle. We played twenty questions.
Throw a dart on the map. That’s where she could be.
With intuitive GPS work and help from
the police, I finally got her home
safe. But I haven’t really found her yet.
Once, during a visit, I caught her
sitting up in bed, plush pillows at her back,
calmly reading my journal.
“Mom! What are you doing? That’s my journal!”
Her answer, a mix of hurt and astonishment,
“I’m nowhere in here.”
We were extremely close her and me
while I was growing up. (Really?) We were.
But who was I close to, then, if when she died
