The Paper Trail My Mother Left Behind
rock writer | foreign correspondent | suburban columnist
“Without pause, I accepted,” Carrie wrote in 1999. “Not just because I loved him, but because it was so obvious he saw me. He saw the eccentric, flawed, self-conscious, freckle-faced, scatter-brained-but-determined dreamer with a passion for writing – and didn’t flinch.”
Latest Stories
Featured
My mother liked to save things: newspaper clippings; tarnished medals from high school swim meets; letters; golden tendrils from my first haircut. Most importantly, she left a paper trail that snaked through her life, serving as proof that she lived — that her time on earth meant something. More than a decade after she lost her battle to brain cancer, I am mustering up the courage to follow her trail and gain answers to the questions I never thought to ask.
Find.The.Divide.
“Only with my children can I traverse the outer edges of the universe and land feet first on a colored hopscotch square,” she wrote in 1994. “With my children, everything is still on the horizon, even if theirs is farther away than my own. With my children, I have wings and am never earthbound.”