Author | Editor | Freelance
The fridge at Mom’s is full of twenty years of photos. New years eves, babies, picture of me on stoops of houses long gone, braces and baby toes, nieces and nephews and everyone in between. I pawed at a butterfly, the symbol I share with mom for all of those we love who have gone on to other worlds.
“She’s there, you know,” Mom said, and whispers, “Little T.”
She wants to climb the fences. First, it was the skate park. Could she do it? The throws of adrenaline that she must have felt climbing higher and higher, as i pretended not to look on, my heart pounding, the half pipes and rails seeming miles beneath her.
am tuning in to the rhythm of my own creative process. I am learning character from Hemingway and style from Didion, delving into wildness with cheryl strayed and sitting peacefully on the fences of British churchyards with Bill Bryson. I am asking myself the traveller’s questions of Pico Iyer and am suddenly indebted to Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty for their courage and bravery to get up every morning and write.
When I returned home from walking the dog last night, the dusk had turned to dark.
BUT THE THINGS THAT REALLY HELPED ME THROUGH THE GRIEF WEREN’T THINGS. THEY WERE PEOPLE.
I prance around my kitchen, dancing to my loud, wild drum beats. The six year old is at the neighbor’s and the husband’s out for a drink. I inhale deeply, breathing it in. Life.
Two months, when my folks invited us down to Florida for Christmas, Mitchy and I thought – LET’S DO IT. Let’s do DISNEY.
We are proud of her in countless ways: for her thoughtfulness and her gratitude; her organized creativity, her musical intelligence and her determination steering the way.
For the woman that we know she will become.
Mo Duffy Cobb 