You were a plant with wooden roots and pale, delicate flowers, and my very first introduction to the concept of a paradox. How could one person be so kind and gentle, yet so incandescently tyrannical all at the same time? We learnt from you in storms and whirlwinds, being swept from one box to another.
Like mice in a cage.
Forever pestered, prodded, taunted, all that hatred was cast upon you from all angles, and it in all its petty ignorance, in all its grandiose splendor, thought that it could destroy you.
But you were a little mouth drowning amongst the bigger branches in this twisted family tree, from birth and in this way I know you better than any of them ever will. The smokers, the leaf-chewers, the butter-churners, the workers, they all had their positions, and any that weren’t filled were expected to be filled by you.
You were a gardener, a baker, a Formula 1 racer, a teacher, a principal, a security guard, a princess, a hotel maid, an illustrator, a singer by running water, an entire endangered species all on your own but most of all,
you are my mother.
