So I  went down to the laundry room after taking out a small plastic grocery bag of recycling under a full moon behind whispy sheep clouds,  and just sort of sadly taking out the load of dark laundry from the washer, placing each item into the dryer after giving them a light shake before tossing them into the side loading drum.  My mother had called, after a number of earlier calls on my day off.  It's nighttime, about almost 9, and she tells me, I just read a very good book, a very well written one, by a younger person.

I had brought up a copy for her shelves, and maybe one for the local bookstore, when last I visited, so I could guess what she was talking about.  I was sort of waking from up from a nap, looking at my iPhone again, at Facebook as if something were about to happen on it.

She sounded good.  More lucid and directly present than before earlier in the day, and she sounded happy with the discovery.  "You are a writer.  You're a very good writer.  Just, I don't know, the little touches... We'll talk about it."

Yeah, we'll have some time when we drive down...  You're book is excellent too, mom, the writing...

Oh, not as good as yours...

And I felt happy, in, as Hemingway says, a simple way.

Its a really good book, she says.  Too bad work got in the way.

Yeah.


Later, I dreamed we were up on the old road.  The old road sloping down to the neighbors, then sloping further than that.  I was walking down with my mom, only to find that the neighbors were have a fancy party sort of visit going on.  And then later my father is walking up the road, in his style.  He is old in the dream.  He takes a nap, almost there in the road, such is aging.  I want to take a picture of him.


Inconvenient, my father says, in his quiet way, about the book not ever getting any attention.  Later in life, he could be stern.