Dress for Success

Carry paper that can fit in your pocket.

Today I made a connection about the day of the week and one of my mother's weekly activities: Getting ready for church. Now my mother did not just wake up and throw on her clothes. Paralyzed on the left side of her body, dressing took hours, and often she did it by herself after my father died and when my sister was not available and me already living in NYC. So she'd get up about three hours before the morning service. I used to imagine her putting on her stockings, the buttons, zipper in the back of her dress, her slip. My mother loved routine. And she loved God and Jesus.

As I dressed this morning to go to my tutoring job in the Bronx, taking me an hour and a half from Brooklyn, I remembered her in her Sunday morning ritual and so I knew I had to get that down for our memoir. I took my little pocket size notepad and carried it with me, writing down this memory for future writing.  I see it sitting on the coffee table. I need to take it with me and remember it, as I remembered my mother's dressing schedule on a Sunday morning.

I need to be as true to my writing as I am to that memory. And if so, there will be plenty to edit in time to come.