I call her Mar, ma mère, she's Mar-y Ann, but you can call her Mum because invariably everyone does.
Picture her at sixteen in her men's felt hat and long long blonde braids, taking the green wooden motorboat to the end of the lake and singing Neil Young songs at the top of her voice. Was a punk-ass kid. You know how she got that hat? She and her friend hitched to Rochester to play pool at the university student union, and some guy said it looked better on her than on him. Yeah, well, that's the story.
This past summer, she hitched again, this time with her friend Shari: they were hiking the Appalachian Trail and needed a ride into town. So now she's ridden a big rig, raised three kids to adulthood. Swore she'd never get married, dropped out of college, married young. She can't pronounce french and stumbles endearingly when she tries but her cooking is inspiring and nourishing. This sketch perhaps implies she is impetuous. She is not.
Mum is deliberate and generous. Her younger daughter and son wear her thick gold hair. She comes home from walks with pockets and hands full of sticks and rocks and acorns. She worries but i almost feel as if it is the worry of someone assigned the role of a worrier. Played to the hilt. And now what?
Now she is free. She is learning that she loves to travel.