Catharsis

Yesterday was my mother's birthday. She would have been 65. Yesterday was also the day that I turned in my thesis, much of which is about my mother's death. The day I will defend this thesis is Nov. 3, the day before my mother died seven years ago.

I don't write much about my mom except for the pages upon pages that I write about her nearly every day. That sounds like I'm being smug, but the truth is the more I write about her, the more I feel disconnected to her. My mother has been a character, or more so, an anomaly, for so long, and I, the narrator trying to figure herself out in relation to her mother, that I forget that the real Jessica and the real Sarah weren't some dramedy being played out on the page. I have to write from such a distance that days like yesterday come and go, and for a split second I stop to think "Do I miss her?" and then I shut off. My memory is full of scenes I've written, descriptions that make up my mother's profile--words which serve the greater good of the story I'm trying to tell--that I'm no longer sure what other memories I have of her.

So on this day after her birth, this afterthought of an afterthought, here's something my mother told me over and over again at age 9, age 15 and age 22, something that I didn't include in my thesis. She told me, "All I want for you is to be happy."

I've written lofty statements like "my mother made loneliness seem inevitable" or "to live with her reclusive side, I quickly realized I had to do my own thing," all attempts to explain away my own feelings at a given time. But it's my mother's valued "happiness," the way she cured things with laughter, that has been the real motivator is my life--whether it has taken the form of instant gratification or years of struggle to reach a single moment of pride. I've made mistakes, been slow to learn, acted selfishly, but I've never dwelled in misery. My mother's simple cliche is the greatest influence she's had on me.

Thank you, Mom.

I am.