I thought I'd have it figured it all out by now. Ah, the naïveté of youth. At least I'm old enough to know I'll never have it all figured out, and be okay with that.

What's the divide between youth and age? When does one transmute to the other?

I think my mother was young until she surrendered. I'm not sure when exactly that was: sometime between when I was in high school and when I came back, briefly, from college. At some point, her dreams became memories, and after a while she was nothing but memories. In 1999, the transformation was complete, and she became a memory.

She would have been 90 years old today.

My own birthday is coming up next month. I'm not ready to surrender, not yet. Thanks in part to the memory of my mother, I still have dreams - and it's not too late to let them come true.