To my mother.

August 8, El Cerrito.

Listening to the CD of the Simon and Garfunkel concert in Central Park that my mother brought me from home (showing my age) I long for her.
For the wind on a Pacific beach when I was twenty, for the freedom to be, for roughing it up in Scotland with a backpack at sixteen, for the leaves falling in the garden, for the memories of childhood climbing up tall trees, for her indomitable heart, for the wild energy of New York City at nineteen, for the music, for the fierce wanting to live in the world, in exhilaration, for her strength in letting go of me, for the solidity of her instincts, for the travels with Dylan, for the sunsets on the plains of the Midwest, for fresh snow one morning in Columbia, Missouri, for all the photographs in the world, for all the good and all the bad, all the stumbles of trying, failing, never renouncing - to my mother.