10:27PM: mom’s head poked cheerfully into hallway, said ‘can i say i’ve liked your writing since you were a little girl?’ i waved dismissively but not unsociably and said ‘just say whatever you want, just, whatever is good.’

10:29PM: jogged to kitchen in ‘sprinkling’ manner. drank big swig of liquid antacid. said ‘you’re the best mom’ in a voice that sounded less childlike in my head. brought can of steaz energy drink to my room. something about now feels like christmas. can hear papers rustling. mom just entered, smiling, said ‘this is a draft, this is a draft, i wrote it as a letter, it’s not perfect,’ handed me a paper. her handwriting was on both sides. i said ‘this is perfect, thank you.’ mom said ‘i think i may have said two or three things two or three times’ and left without looking back. i stood and tripped over basket of pencils, then caught up to hug her before she was gone. she is wearing a green bathrobe. feeling something indescribable about ending up in mom, getting born by mom, knowing mom all of this time.

10:37PM: read ‘megan has shown a touching, intelligent sense of the absurd and at the same time, the real—sometimes sad, sometimes funny, sometimes purely existential experience of being human.’ read ‘fearless.’ walked to mom’s room. on the bed dad was leaning diagonally towards a recumbent mom, looking at her kindle. they were under the covers and smiling. dad had a towel on his head. said goodnight, hugged them, started walking back to my room. in the doorway i said ‘it’s nice to know you guys are around,’ knowing this was not what i wanted to say, not knowing what i wanted to say, but that i wanted to say something.

March 18, 2013

MARCH 18, 2013

12:58AM: used only the word ‘approach,’ i think, from mom’s fake tao letter. dad walked out to hallway while brushing his teeth. a friend of a friend of his lived in rockaway park, near my potential future address, in the only house on the block undamaged by hurricane sandy. he asked if my building was by the bay or the ocean. doing something with my arms, i said ‘there’s one on each side, like, it’s five blocks wide, about five blocks.’ he repeated ‘five blocks’ and my arm motion, displaying the non-judgmentally proud face behind g.p.s. direction. the bathroom door opened after an amount of time i was retroactively embarrassed for having considered myself alone. for some reason suspected dad felt obligated to talk as he stood in the hall, describing a kind of therapy where the main thing is you scream in a room. he repeated ‘the release technique’ several times, with hair fluffily protruding in all directions, as if electrically charged.