One day, about six weeks ago, as I was doing the digging for dollars research, I remembered that box of papers in the basement. I had dragged that thing from Southern California, to Santa Cruz to Asheville, having never having looked at it since.But I kept it, it was all I had of her, besides the bits and bobs living in my house.

I was scratching my head about where I might find some money. I had nary a clue of where to look.

And then I had this brainwave. MY MOTHER! My mother has been dead for over thirty years. But I knew she knew how to handle money. I sat at her feet for many years, learning how to spin straw into gold.

After her suicide I took some paperwork along with a few other things. The paperwork I stashed in a shoe box and put it in her trunk, and brought the other stuff into the house.

I was digging through that box finding scribbled notes that were urdu to me, a little address book filled with her wild, exotic handwriting, the copy of her will, some legal papers and bank stuff. I was dilly dallying away, looking at things ,touching things. She was a glove that I had held in my hand until it had slipped away. I wanted and needed to remember her, her delights, her dreams and yes that little touch of blue. I needed her inside me, I needed her strength and joie de vivre, that special something that came in with her, that scent of Shalimar lived like a cloud of never ending memories for me. I NEEDED MY MOTHER. She was my last refuge and my only hope. So there I stood besotted and mesmerized by what she had meant to me and what she had given me; my art, my humor and my own little touch of joie de vivre. She was there with me in that very moment with her horsey laugh and sparkling green eyes, just standing there, getting the joke.