I am, oddly, thinking…

I am, oddly, thinking about Lisette Bross's lovely mother today. She passed away many years ago; a great loss. I had a particularly rough patch in college when I didn't feel like I could talk to my own mother -- Lisette's mother stepped in and acted like a mother to me. I didn't really need her help, in the end, but just the kindness of the offer -- twenty years later, it still resonates.

It is so difficult, trying to be a good mother all the time. I wouldn't really want to have grown up in a tiny village -- I think they can be tremendously conservative, even suffocating in their conformity. But it would've been nice, in many ways, to have more aunties and uncles and kindly neighbors intertwined in my life. Sometimes I think we could all use a little more gentle parenting, for ourselves, for our children.