I was looking out the window today at the tops of several trees with bare limbs silhouetted against the winter sky. It took me back forty years to one winter day when I made a visit to the college where my mother taught. We were walking together after her class and I pointed to a stand of trees off in the distance. “Those bare limbs looked like filigree against the pale blue winter sky,” I said. My mother put her arm around my shoulders. “You’re going to be a wonderful writer one of these days because you love the beauty of language.”

I miss my mother and her way of spontaneously acknowledging something she saw as special about me. What a gift to have had a parent with such sensitivity and kindness.