Letter to someone:

The day went ok. No major screw ups. No cases resolved either though. I always feel that there is more I should be doing, but in the end I really can't ever do enough.

I left the pictures out for you to look at. I had mentioned before that they were in the car. I'm sure I do look older than I did in those. None of the ones with me in them are less than a decade old.

Saying you aren't divorced now, is, although technically correct, a bit like having a jury find someone committed a crime, but saying they aren't a criminal because they haven't been sentenced. In our state, an order doesn't become finalized until it has been entered in the clerk's office, a step that may not happen until weeks after a judge has signed it. Then there is a 30 day period in which either party could file an appeal, and a year in which a party could move to vacate.

I'm glad that you liked the story. I'm not certain that I identify with any characters in it. My relationship with my parents is quite different from that of the main characters. My parents did not want me to follow in their footsteps, and there was really no rebellious period that I went through. I read the story when it came out in 1994, which was way before I could have even remotely seen myself in the role of the mother.

I liked the main character. I liked her sense of independence and self respect. Her calmness reminded me of you, and I thought she went through a similar phase that you are now. She chose to reject the "magic" of the personal bond between her mother and herself and find her own way. Yet it was apparent that she didn't hate her mother; she did not hate the society that she came from. It just wasn't the way that she knew she needed to live her life. She told the story looking back as a middle aged woman with a grown daughter and a grown son. She knew the love that a parent has for their child. She grasped the pain that she must have caused her mother. Yet she also knew that she done what she needed to do. As you continue on, don't look back. Just focus on being "aware of the grain of dust beneath the sole of the foot, and the skin of the sole of the foot, and the touch and the scent of the air on the cheek, and the fall and motion of the light across the air, and the color of grass on the high hill across the river, and the thoughts of the body, of the soul, the shimmer and ripple of colors and sounds in the clear darkness of the depths, endlessly moving, endlessly changing, endlessly new."