Mar 3, 2011 | Random Thoughts
Thank you everyone who has reached out to me recently. I wish I could respond to each comment individually. Your stories range widely, but I am most grateful to you who have taken the time to detail your own experiences and thoughts about motherhood and womanhood and the variety of choices we make. I firmly believe it is important for us to find a place where one size does not have to fit all, and to formulate our families however we need to to make sure the kids are loved, supported, healthy and whole, and that the adults are too.
We are all unique. It’s a big world. And with the reality that half of all marriages in the U.S. end in divorce, in the face of that personal struggle and sadness, we need to be allowed to find the best way forward for all concerned.
When Hiroshima in the Morning first came out, people everywhere gave me their stories, at readings, in taxi cabs. You are still sharing. Thank you.
Dec 6, 2010 | Random Thoughts
When you lose someone, her name is lost too – lost as in floating, with no one to land on, curl up against, declare. Her name is a slip, which you can’t reel back in even if you want to.
A ghost in the room. An orphan.
Nov 21, 2010 | Random Thoughts
My mother, Shirley Anne Rizzuto
April 5, 1942 – November 16, 2010
Memorial service on Sunday, November 28, 2010
Service at 1:30 pm, visitation at 12:30 pm.
Davies Memorial Chapel
Hawaii Preparatory Academy, Waimea, HI
Aloha attire
Nov 5, 2010 | Random Thoughts
For anyone planning to attending the Author Lunch Talk at the Asia Society, I need to reschedule it and make a trip to Hawaii. I am sorry for any inconvenience, and very grateful to the Asia Society for making this possible, and for welcoming me back later.
Jul 27, 2010 | Motherhood in the Media, Random Thoughts
The two things that everyone wants to hear:
You are safe.
I see you.
It comes up in the context of children, in an article on The Huffington Post by Judith Acosta about verbal healing, but it’s what we all want, even when we have grown beyond those fragile, trusting years, even after we have been disappointed in friends, rejected in love, worn out by work, surprised and confused. It is why we marry, why we create community and organize religion. Why we buy things we think we will possess forever; why we think we can own anything.
And it is why, I suspect, we believe the fear-mongers when they say: “You are just like us” (I see you); “Trust us to keep the bad/different guys away from you” (You are safe).
My most vivid memories of my mother, even now that I am one, are of her assuring me that whatever the latest dishonorable, stupid thing I did was, it would pass. I would not have to carry it forever. Stealing candy from a store when I was in grade school. I remember the panic, the sinking in my stomach that I could never make this right, that I could never be worthy of my parents’ love.
You are safe, she said. I see you.
And though that was close to forty years ago, I can still feel that gift she gave me. I can still feel her climbing into my bed to hold me and wipe my mistakes and inadequacies away. To thank her, I often try to give that same sense of safety and being seen to everyone I meet, even if just in a smile. Thank you, Mom.
Can you still feel your mother?
