"When you write with people, you realize how amazing they are," I tell Ma, before heading  to Lakeville to do a writing as healing workshop at the local library.

She's sitting at the table in her pjs, checking email, eating nuts. She's only in from LA for a few jampacked days to celebrate my son’s fifth brithday so we catch up at odd times, typically when one of us is heading out the door. "Ya? That's great, hon."

"Amazing," I continue, "you have no way of knowing how incredible people are just by talking with them..." 

"This is true," she says.

"But when you write with them, you see everything. And that's just the people I write with. Do you see what I'm saying? I'm saying everyone is amazing!" 

 "Er..." says Ma. 

We share a laugh over that.  We both know this Ma is the same Ma who cusses at people in the LA traffic, who refers to people as jerks, idiots, and fuckers. Her favorite adjective is stupid. Growing up, "that person ought to be shot," was something me and my brother frequently heard from the backseat of the car. That and, "shut up, kid!" and I don't just mean us. We both know Ma is not exactly a people person.

So why am I telling Ma about my life? Why am I going on and on about what makes me happy? What am I thinking by expecting her to be happy or interested in this in any way? What makes me think that just because I'm all Jew-Bu, she'll abandon Planet Critical and hop on the peacetrain? Shouldn't I know by now what a beautiful set up this is for her? That at any moment she can say, "oh for godsakes, Roxanne. You are so stupid. People aren't amazing. They're stupid. You don't know that because you're stupid."

I feel all the old internal warning signs firing off. Danger! Danger! Shame ahead!

But then she says something that completely blows me away.

"Maybe you should write a book about your students."  

"Yeah," I say, "I think about that..." but the truth is I never really thought about that. I mean, I felt it-thought it, but it didn't crystalize into word form. "But I'm writing a book about you."

"You are? Still? You better not be."

"But I like that idea... a book about my students... Thanks Ma." 

We both know what she wants to say next ("but what about me?"), but I have to go. I have to go write with some people I've never met and realize how amazing they are. I have to go listen to stories and adverbs and descriptions about places I've never seen, people I've never met, foods I've never heard of... And then I get to talk to those same people about how those words, those raw words they just made in the here and now, are the most poetic and healing words there ever were.

Ma doesn’t get this. Likely she won’t. She says she’s afraid to write with me when people ask her why she never drops in on one of my workshops while she’s in town. But I’ll keep asking. In the meantime Ill keep writing about her because, after all, she is my students’ favorite among my repertoire of written LA characters. The funny thing is that the more I write about her, the more I love her.

And this is why I have the best job in the world. I write with people. We sit, we write, we drink coffee, we read to each other. I often liken the experience to wrapping and then unwrapping gifts.* But alas, I am exhausted (Ma tends to do that) and will have to elaborate next time. I didn't even get to the catnip part.

Night night!

 *It is required reading of my students to Cary's (Tennis) column of April 14, 2009 “Need Some Balm for the Soul”, which reiterates and inspires the idea that stories are gifts!