All My Mothers

by Joanna Glen

But love is supposed to be a watering hole, where you come and go by choice, and leave refreshed. That’s what I’m aiming for, anyhow.

‘You don’t get over death,’ I said. ‘You swallow it inside you. And your grief forms a layer of you. Because that’s what we are, layer on layer of experience, like your dad used to explain history, do you remember?’

‘Your dad said all history is personal,’ I said. ‘We are walking histories. And the stuff that happened to us years ago is still inside us. And we choose how much to excavate.’ ‘I like that,’ he said again. Yes, yes, you do like that, I thought because I’m hell-bent on making you like me, and Michael flashed into my mind, all handsome and tidy, and Barnaby Blue’s shirt flapped open at the bottom where there wasn’t a button, showing the top of his boxer shorts, and a line of hair, going down down, Eva, Eva, Eva, I said to myself, stop that at once, you are going down down to a very dangerous place.

radiantly joyful, deeply loving, full of fun.

I want to acknowledge, with gratitude, the many friendships which have deepened and brightened my life.

those who generously shared my past and share my present. As

Eva discovers, friends dance miraculously into our lives, and also out, separated by geography and impossible schedules and work and parenting and general hopelessness (I’m sorry) but they sometimes dance back in too.