I have been in a sort of purgatory since I left Chicago after our memorial for my mom.  I spent a week in San Francisco getting tested and papers and permits and green codes…14 days alone in a very horrible hotel (but a very nice prison)…one week at home with my dog and my love, Steve…got a bacterial infection in my intestines, went to the hospital, fever spiked at 102, but six negative Covid tests…

I finally felt my equilibrium returning to a new normal this week when I went back to work for my first day, and realized I feel my mother’s presence in myself most when I am teaching my students.  All the joy it gave her, the philosophy, the art, the outlet, the passion, the peace, the confidence, the courage, the risk, the reward, the scream and the silence of being a teacher in a classroom, in my childhood bedroom, in a café, on a sidewalk, a long drive, a walk in the wilds, or even shopping at the supermarket…she gave me these gifts, and they will never leave me.

I find ’her’ everywhere lately, and I know she was always there, always with me…I can read the graffiti of grief as it sprays across me all day long every day…there isn’t any me without her, yet here I am; me, without her…

I have always missed her, for seven years living in China, I have missed her every day…

Love has many unexplored depths…