No, its not a typo. Cutting up pages from magazines, adding bits of handmade paper, throwing in the odd bit of ephemera here and there...and gluing it all down without thought into my journal has become the only way I can name emotions too big for me to look right in the eye. (You can read about my technique, if you call it that,
here.)
The other evening, even two glasses of a very nice beaujolais failed to dissolve the massive emotion that was still pushing out from my brain into my eyes. I was desperate. I surrendered to glue stick and my plastic box of clippings.
And 10 minutes later, this appeared.
The Yiddish alone told me the name of the emotion: I miss my mother. She is here but she is not she any more.
I keep the little Mexican china bowl on her coffee table filled with M & Ms and slip her oatmeal raisin cookies every few minutes. I remind her that I am not just "Mort's daughter," but her daughter, too, and she also had a son. Once. I tell her the weather outside every three minutes.
I love this woman...
But I miss my mother. A lot.
