y mother sings to the dog. My mother calls wallets “walnuts.” My mother loves terracotta flowers, and classical music, and owns a million chubby little pitchers. My mother takes walks every night around the lake by her house, and for years after she moved here, she would remark, every time she passed the rippling water, how much she loved the view. My mother is easy to please. For a long time she was easy to anger. I like to think I inherited both of those qualities, along with smiling eyes, and her love of conversation, and her stout little Irish peasant build. My mother will never read this, because she doesn’t like computers, but if she did, she would smile and tell me, “Have I told you you’re my favorite writer?” to which I would say, once again, “Gaw, mom, stop it.”