Thirty-six is quickly creeping up on me. I am nearly more than half way through my 30s: a whole chapter of my life that my mother has missed. It feels hard. I had spent most of my 20s doing what I assume most twenty-year olds do. I was self-absorbed. I lived entirely for myself. I worked, I studied. I wandered the streets of NYC looking for myself and for someone who was going to help me make sense of it all. Amazingly, this completely inefficient process yielded success. By the end of my 20s I had found such a partner. Through it all, my mother was always just a phone call away. Whether my schedule varied or not, she would always know exactly when to call. It was as if she had lojacked me. The moment I stepped into my apartment she was there, on the other end. Tell me about your day, tell me about you. But her picture of me ended there. She knew me only as that person: as the young woman, newly married. She left in the first couple of months that I became a mother. She saw me lite