The Tiny Space I Can Control

I’m beginning to understand why my mother spent so much time pulling weeds.

She pulled weeds in the noonday summer sun. She wore shorts and an elastic halter top, her clip-on sunglasses and sometimes a visor, not always. She waited for it to be hot. It had to be broiling. That’s when she ventured out, sat on our concrete driveway and inched herself down one side and then the other. It was the weeds that grew between the edge of the lawn and the driveway that were her focus.

And she really did focus. Thinking back, she almost seemed hypnotized by the task of pulling the weeds as if pulling weeds was a place she was going rather than a task she was doing.

It took her all afternoon to pull the weeds. And then, I suppose, she had to wait for them to grow back.

For a long…