Day 75.1: Touching Personal Essay!

[sunshowerdandelion]

I really enjoyed reading Victor Lodato's My Mother, the Gambler. I've read previously that gambling narratives are about the highs and the lows, and that telling the really abject lows is part of the addiction, with people wearing their worst stories like campaign medals. I'm glad this piece in delving into the highs and lows didn't lose sight of the fundamental humanity of the mother. I don't think it reads as an addiction piece - I think it definitely reads as a care piece. The family in it is strained and splinters but doesn't seem to completely break. There's a fuzziness in it that I love, the way there aren't answers, the way gestures are returned to and reinterpreted decades after their happening. And that last part! The prose is amazing throughout, but that last part,

Lately, I can see my mother clearly. I can see her sitting at the kitchen table with her shining tower of hair, playing cards or placing bets. Despite all the darkness and loss that was to come, I can glimpse the romance behind her schemes. And so I often think of my own work as a bet I’m placing for her.

Let’s do it, Mom. Let’s win.

Oh my goodness, my heart.