The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself."

~ Henry Miller

Groggy, thick with sleep, I got up, overtired. The foliage season is so short, there are so few days of this brilliance to appreciate. We were out for so long in the sunshine, blue, gold, red, yellow. Today, in the sunshine, on the deck, we held a family lunch. Perhaps one of our last ones outdoors for the season. Then I went to a True Story Theater performance on the theme of Mothering - Making Visible the Invisible Stories of Mothers. My youngest is a playback theatre actor in the troupe. and my friend, the psychologist Kumkum Malik, introduced the show with her wonderful wisdom about mothering and how “the work” of mother is often undervalued, devalued, and unseen in our culture. My middle daughter came with me, and it was a pretty spectacular personal experience for me to have the opportunity to share a mothering story with one of my daughters sitting beside me in the audience, and the other playing back my story on stage. I told an old story of a challenging mothering experience with the middle daughter. It was poignant, and hilarious. I laughed delightedly as I felt seen and heard and validated both by the actors and the others in the audience. I know my story deeply touched others. And then my middle daughter shared her own feeling response, and that was played back. The story involved a deeply conflicted time when my daughter was young. But we have survived those times, and our laughter at the hilarity of aspects of the story was truly healing. Ironically, as we left and drove home together, my daughter told me two pieces of the story I had left out: one detail I had forgotten, and one detail I had not known. We laughted more. I texted my youngest tonight - at my first chance, and thanked her for her wonderful acting instincts and her spontaneity, and yes, her brilliant insights that deepened and elevated my story to the level of art. I have held this story in a closed fist of my heart. I will never need to tell it again. It’s a small, large story. I needed to tell and transform it.