“Mama took me in her arms and held me tight. Her embrace was hot and she smelled like sweat, dust, and grease, but I wanted her. I wanted to crawl inside her mind to find that place that let her smile and sing through the worst dust storms. If I had to be crazy, I wanted my mama's kind of crazy, because she was never afraid.”

“I like your mama,' Trena tells me. 'She seems like good people.''Smile!' my mom calls to me from across the room, and I look at her and smile. Because she is good people. And she means well, even if she does drive me crazy.”

“I want to take her into my arms and hold her tight. But at the same time, I know that is the exact opposite of what she wants. She wants to be free, and all I want is to hold her tight against me. ~ Elder”

“Mama--Mama--I want so many things... I want so many things that they are driving me kind of crazy...”

“Then I looked right at Mama, for the first time in what seemed like forever, and she wasn't looking at me, but into me. She was pulling me to her with her eyes, like she used to do. All of a sudden I could see the light that was Mama's shining out of her eyes. I couldn't help smiling at it.'Be careful,' my heart warned me.But I was having a hard time remembering that there as anything to be careful about. Because if I just looked at Mama's eyes...I could tell that the part of her I thought had gone away forever was still there and glowing, only from deep down inside her.”

“She nestled me in her arms, keeping me safe, smoothing my black curls with her caress, whispering how beautiful I was getting. The thing that cracked when she died was mended, and we were fine and whole again. And because we were fine and whole, I was safe. She would tell me the old stories, but I could never remember them later except for this ending from my favorite one: The wind blew wild and the wind blew free, but the bear cub was safe in the mouth of the mama-mama bear. That's the way I felt when Mama held me - safe in the mouth of the mama-mama bear. If I had trouble sleeping at night, I remembered the feel of the story - safe in the mouth - and I felt my mother in her pretty yellow dress, and the yellow rose pinned in her dark hair, and her arms around me. Then I could relax and know I was fine. So even though I knew Mama died, I also knew in a way I never tried to explain to anybody that she didn't die, that she couldn't have, not completely, since she came to me with those moonbeam visits. (5)”