I've written it.
Now I just have to see if I'll be able to read it tomorrow.
My mother was a brilliant, wonderful person who enriched the lives of everyone she met. Words can’t express how important she was to me. She gave me a love of reading, the theater and Shakespeare as well as a belief in myself and the confidence to make my own decisions.
She supported my decision to leave Hamilton College and go to Boston; she may not have understood why I wanted to leave the small college for a large university, but she supported me all the same. She even supported me moving to San Francisco, mostly because she knew it was a good place for me to live, but also, I think, because it was somewhere she liked to visit and me living there would give her an excuse to.
She taught me so many things that I’m overwhelmed with wonderful memories.
There is one memory that I’ve been thinking a lot about; the day she began to teach me the art of solving crossword puzzles. We were in the kitchen in Morristown and I had started an easy puzzle. It was then that she introduced me to the secret of the crossword puzzle word, which are four or five letter words that recur in puzzles. No one really uses these words, except as answers in puzzles, but knowing that the “stick in the fridge” is oleo, a mine entrance is an adit and the difference between the naiads and dryads can help solve a puzzle. I felt as though I’d been let in on a secret, began doing as many puzzles as possible and have never looked back. Like mom, I enjoy the challenge and satisfaction of completing a difficult puzzle, even if it takes a couple of hours, or even days. Doing a crossword puzzle was and is something I share with my mother and I believe it will keep me close to her forever.
So whether I’m reading the new Jasper Fforde book, reading or seeing anything by Shakespeare, or completing the Saturday Times crossword puzzle, I’ll remember my mom because “the one’s we love never really leave us, they’re in our hearts forever”
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