a writer?

I'm at my laptop out to breakfast in a hip neighborhood coffee shop. I feel like Sara Jessica Parker, feigning thoughtfulness, staring into the middle distance, typing suspended, as she comes up with another pun.

While laboring with my second child a nurse asked if I was a writer. Apparently, I expressed the feeling of each contraction so exquisitely, it begged the question. Huh. I have been known to blather on. I was voted Most Annoying for my 8th grade superlative. Ouch. I'm over it, clearly.

I do tend to turn things over...and over and over and over and sometimes out loud. I crave detail. It's true. I feel the need to defend myself with that statement. Why is that? What's wrong with wanting to know more? Fill in the edges--give us some color. Expand damn it! My husband is one of those people. You know them. They come back from a meeting/day/fill in the blank and EVEN WHEN PRESSED by a wife in wait with rapt attention, has "nothing much" (NOTHING!) to say.

Really?

Then BAM! Four days later when you're super into a new novel/show/sleep/fill in the blank they start in about THAT day. You know, from FOUR days earlier. The one where "nothing much" happened. Now you're ready to chat? Drop a little 2 hour story in my lap.

REALLY!

Enough of my pet-peeves. Even I'm getting bored. The question I mean to answer is WHY ME? Why do I crave detail--need to know more just to see it in my mind? Just a bit more from every angle just to understand. Why do I want to understand? Why do I care what tone the barista used when asking, "foam or no foam? ".

I'm going to sound super cliched here, but it all goes back to my mother. Just before my 5th birthday she had an aneurism. She survived but not as my mother. My mom died that day and in her place sprung a perpetually younger sibling (say, 9ish) with developmental delays and traumatic brain injury. More on that another time. Needless to say, I don't remember much before the age of 5 or 6. Which astounds me, now. It wasn't until I had children and realized just how much happens in those precious years. My father never spoke of my mother. Ever. My grandparents could have filled me in some, but it didn't occur to me to even ask until there was no one left to answer. My grandmother, Junita, died in her nursing room bed after many years of gradually and then swiftly forgetting her whole life. I clung to her stiff, unresponsive hand. I was scared to touch her, though she was once the only voice that comforted me. So changed now. Stolen. Missing. Replaced.

I think my wanting to fill in the details--the blanks, is because I feel like I have something missing. And I do.

I wonder if this craving will  ever be satiated? I will never know my early years according to my mother. I thought that sentence would continue. But my heart feels struck. I don't have any more questions right now. No more stories to tell. Right now I'm struggling for air.

 Just Breathe. In and out. Add hope this passes.