In the small of my back

I was in my mom's math classes for three years in high school. Algebra. Geometry. Pre-Calculus. I sat in her classroom every day and watched her be a teacher, not my mother (though the lines blurred a bit for me anyway. I grew up in a house where a hasty clean up would merit a, "Yeah, that's about a B+ job"-type response from my mom).

I remember some of the nuances of the way she moved in front of the white board at the head of the class; how she erased the multicolored dry erase marker in big swooshes with her whole arm; the way she would wipe her fingers clean after they got black from writing. I always loved that she used a different colored marker for each problem we worked out on the board.

She rested her left hand in the small of her back as she wrote and erased with her right. For hours it must have sat there, nestled, and I remember thinking about why she did that. Isn't it easier to let it hang loose? I asked her once. I don't remember what she said.

I spent a few hours painting today (actually, I'm in the middle of it now, but I wanted to write this while I was thinking about it). I realized as I was into it about an hour that my left arm was resting in the small of my back, just the way my mother does it. I realized soon thereafter that it's often nestled there for hours as I work. And I'm glad to be like her in another little way. I've heard people lament, "Heaven help me! I'm turning into my mother!" But it never seems like a crisis to me.

Maybe it's because mine is so awesome.