dreams from my mother

with a birthday on such a day, she usually gets the short shrift—the heavily red-and-green-tinged festivities, drawn out another day (at no additional cost to the user). we always do try to differentiate. the main thing is, though: if someone has to call this a birth-day, nin is the ideal candidate. she longs for grey hair and for this, her 50th full year. she could be anywhere in the world and, in a sense, is; as such, she will never be "settled." but she teaches middle school and loves it—so those "se-" (for example, "sensible") sorts of thing don't often creep up the list. her three children make only degrees of sense, and rarely simultaneously. she makes do—and wholly believes that precisely that which she holds, in the end, is everything best.

having a third of her unquencheable optimism, her good humour, her never-drained supply of articulable solutions ("options") would put one in an admirable position from which to address the world and its inhabitants.

it delights me to watch my mother enjoying people, so visibly and verbally: her sisters, her father, my father. we observe a masterful artist and, as her medium, are in a unique position to benefit from the molding as much as she. for this, we stand, reverent and proximate, hoping that she knows we love her, though our edge-wise ones never reach the descriptive fervour of the original words to which they respond.