I went through my mom's baby book today. A seven-year college attendant,  notorious party animal, dedicated house wife... Her life, I wish I knew it more clearly than I do now. All I have to go by are finely-aged film-taken photographs, now decades or more old. The stories I won't be told in comparison to the slight, vague versions she mentioned before... The difference in what I understand and what I don't understand is incredible.

It's hard for me to describe the strange fixation I know have on the progression of my mother's life. Without an ability to question her, I wonder how she tackled the uncomfortable uncertainty that often tainted the portrait of a future. Mostly what I do know, is that she was very happy. She was more pleased with her home and her family than she ever would have been with a college degree and a high-paying job. She never wanted things like terribly expensive cars, just sometimes nice... newish ones, the few we purchased were meant to last. She appreciated the usefulness of everything until it was no longer usable,  she perfectly understood the unimportance of money. I remember being young on a car ride to school, and her softly trying to explain the absence of normality in life. I had always thought there was a border that made something normal, or not normal before then. And normal was of course how I saw the world. She felt it was important for me to understand that this ideal is physically nonexistent, and you know why? "You do what you have to do in life to get by, baby. Stay sweet."

If I could grow into her bones and become everything she was, I would. But this is of course... never an option. So I do what I have to do to get by, look at my photographs... remember the rough laugh.