60

If you have ever been on a plane you understand how the air circulates and how your brain circulates all the same. You become polluted. Off-key. Even that window is restricting. One time I was crying while simultaneously writing my mother a note for her sixtieth.

Her hair had become something special. Mother's haircut routine seemed steady. I always made it a point to tell her how great it looked. Certainly when she combed her hair before mass.

When the family gathered on that inlet in South Georgia she asked me where her present was. She knew nothing of the letter I had attempted to prepare. It just laid awkwardly between some form of a secret and my memory of how it felt to write her those thoughts. She eventually told me all she could have wanted for her celebration was for us to be together.

I brought her on the beach for a morning sunrise. It was a rainy, cloudy day and the sun barely said anything. She loved it in a motherly way.