An Ode to my Mother, Horses, and James Taylor

So, I have now come to the point in the night where I saw the academy awards and I drank maybe 8 glasses of wine, and I cried when James Taylor sang, and I didn't feel bad for it since I have heard him since I was minus 9 months old, in the womb, my mother holding her belly up to stereo speakers as she cried "yes I'm fine any time she's around me now", and ever since the doctors brought me to her in the hospital, and she looked at me, drugged up and beautiful, and said "I have found my soul mate", I can never quite divorce myself from that, and am always slightly thinking, "if you don't understand me, I have no need for you--I have found my soul mate" even though that soul mate may be my mother, and that makes me less than something, but I still can't help it, despite myself. I have jumped off cliffs, I have eaten from garbage cans, I have slept with strangers, but I have always loved my mother the most. My mother will always be that woman with the giant hair, constantly ridding a brown horse across the Indian reservation, always trading silver and late night conversations to do the best thing possible, somewhere in Montana or the most familiar northwest, asking for clever catch phrases and folk songs and pieces of turquoise. She will always be the thing that reminds me of my first swear word, and all my best smells, and giant chairs, and my cousin's first room before he died, and the edge of the sea before I understood what the shore really was, and staying in the car when it took you through other people's cities, and the beauty of a bottle of nail polish when you use it for your feet, and my great desire for pink and purple Popsicles & K-Mart toys, and my great distaste for raw fish--and she doesn't even have to do anything, she just has to exist. She is there every time I make a bad joke in public and no one laughs, she is there when I don't know what decision to make so I don't do anything at all, she is there when James Taylor plays at the Academy Awards and I am crying on Gekko's futon all by myself wondering how it is all happening to begin with. But, I know. My emotional unit (thanks, mom, I cry over every cartoon, I'm real popular with friends). She's the only one who never tells me I'm wrong. She's the only one who applauds every time I make a finger painting of an Italian man stringing spaghetti together. She's the only one who will wake up the next morning and tell me she still means everything she said. And, maybe I am being a little over-zealous. Maybe I am speaking too fairly of her. But if you ever knew her, you would know it all to be true. She is just that little wonder, constantly dancing, and riding horses, and turning around to you to tell you you'll hold on in the end even when you think your horse is getting away from you. The metaphor of my mother and horses can go on forever.

I love you, mommy.
"I've seen fire & I've seen rain, I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end, I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, but I always thought I would see you again".