It is amazing to me how deeply kindness affects me these days. In my youth, I thought nothing of it and as a matter of fact was almost drawn to the opposite, but it’s as if age makes you more vulnerable, more raw, and kindness is the balm that provides a protective layer against the insult of life. Yesterday, I was on the phone with my mom, who had fallen up the stairs and she was crying. Not so much from the pain of having twisted her ankle, but from the embarrassment that a neighbor might have seen her and perceived a weak old lady unable to manage stairs. My mothers exo-layer has always been fragile. She cares deeply how she is perceived, which is why she holes up in her apartment fearing contact with the outside world. I remember many years ago, an ex called my mother white trash, it cut me like a knife and I ran to the bathroom and sat on the toilet sobbing. It wasn’t that I gave a rat’s ass what he thought of my family – it was that my mother would have dropped dead on the spot if she had heard it – she would have been mortified to be perceived this way. I’m like an elephant, I remember insults and tenderness as if they just happened. Yesterday, when mom called me upset, I was Skype’ing with Tatjana and she said tell your mother I will bring her chocolate Turkish frogs and who knows what will happen when she eats those. I told mom, and suddenly the cloud lifted and she laughed and laughed. That moment is now indelible, my mother’s sudden laughter, T’s kindness.