looks just like the sun

26Jan07

My mom found this blog.

Ooooh, momma.

It’s my own stupid fault. I linked her to the entry about my dental adventures, largely in celebration of the fact that they are finally over – my permanent crown is now in place and I no longer look like a crackwhore. I wanted to share the surreal nature of that whole experience with her, and I didn’t think there was anything in that particular entry that was too incriminating. I had blind faith in her technophobia; I thought she’d never figure out how the site worked, that she’d never find the other entries.

And you know, I wasn’t wrong. SHE didn’t. But she apparently showed the goddamn post to someone else, and that overly helpful human linked her to the main blog page. Luckily (THANK YOU, POWERS THAT BE), she didn’t go into the archives, where the entry she must never see now lives. I don’t think she found the podcasts either. Dodged a bullet there.

I was talking on the phone with her when she revealed that she had read the five posts I made between Jan 1st and Jan 16th. She seemed particularly mystified by my obsession with ninjas and moats. “Why,” she asked me, “would you write something like that?”

Oooooooooooh, momma.

Deep down, despite all the crazy, my mom is a true intellectual. She has a deep love and respect for words, language, literature — she absolutely reveres the act of writing. I tried to explain that this place is just where I dump the detritus that builds up in my brain, that I’m goofing off, that I don’t actually think this is the path to producing great literature. I asked her to please not read this anymore, because the thought of her concern makes me uncomfortable. She said okay. And I know she’ll keep her promise, that she’ll never read anything on this site ever again, because that’s the kind of person she is.

The next day, she emailed me an essay by William Saroyan, one of her favorite authors. I know she probably hasn’t looked at it in over a decade, that she simply remembered it in this, her daughter’s time of need. She tracked down the book, sat down at her computer, and typed it out, word for word, into the body of an email and sent it to me, with no hello or goodbye or anything. Because that’s how she is. It’s a bit long but worth reading, if you have the time. Click here: “Why I Write,” by William Saroyan.

My mom, she’s a wiley one. Anyone who knows anything about me will be able to see the obvious parallels: the loss of my dad and my irrational fear of forgetting moments/things that have been said. It’s why I save every IM conversation, even the useless ones; it’s why I write down funny things friends say on scraps of paper that end up floating around my room for months on end, until they get sucked into the vortex where lone socks go to die.

And honestly, I want to write, too.

It’s just that usually, I want to write about ninjas and moats and Kiefer Sutherland.

Oooooooooooooooh, momma.

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