Have I Told You This Already?: Stories I Don't Want to Forget to Remember

by Lauren Graham

Sometimes we polish an experience to make facts line up more closely with feelings or exaggerate moments to make a better dinner party tale. And sometimes, mercifully, details become blurry over time, maybe because the sharp reality is too painful to carry.

I only wondered and worried about how long it was going to take. “Someday” doesn’t like to tell you when it plans to arrive.

And no, I’ve never been a mom, but I have loved a child who lived in my house for a long time who I hope will be a part of the rest of my life and I have loved and felt maternal toward younger friends and my two sisters and my brother, and I love my two nieces and two nephews and the godchild I have known since he was a week old and I love having Thanksgiving at my house with my family and others I think of as family and I have known great love and devotion and I have given advice but also shut up when I thought I was butting in (with my real butt), and I have worried that any number of people liked what I made for dinner, got home okay, got the job they wanted, were happy in their relationships even if I wasn’t totally sure the relationship was best for them, and I have given advice and time and money to these people I love, expecting nothing back, wanting nothing but for them to be happy and healthy and leading a fulfilling life and being a good and kind person. And none of these feelings or actions make me a mom but they are some of what moms feel and do and some moms don’t feel or do some of those things but they are still moms.