I’ve never seen your mother, but I imagined her in a dream to be nothing like the woman I imagine she is when I’m awake.  In my dream she’s young and artistic, long hair that falls in wisps and commas.  In reality, I think of her as frail, translucent hands like the skin of onions, age spots.  Ready, not to snap, but for bits of her bones to splinter off.  In my dream, because I loved you, I preserved her for you.  She was young and naked; she looked about 40.  She was dead.  I laid her in a claw-foot tub and submerged her in water.  I worried she’d float up.  Once the water covered her completely, I took thick waffle weave blankets, everything white and clean, and enshrined her.  You could no longer see the tub at all, not even the feet of it.  I was proud of my work when I saw you, so proud I almost forgot to offer my condolences.  I figured it went without saying, as so much does between us. 

Then you were going back to boarding school.  They gave you a car called "a pool," and you asked, "so why did you get a town car, and I get a pool?" And I wondered, who’d want to drive, not be driven in, but actually drive a town car?  That’s like getting a Bentley and not having a driver.  What’s the point?  Maybe I need more sleep.