winter solstice, there is a moment where the whole earth shifts, the planet turning its North Pole back toward the sun. We cannot feel this, but many of the biggest changes—in nature, in life—go unnoticed. They happen without the moment ever being named.

And perhaps that’s the real meaning of prayer. Not the prayer of asking-for, but the prayer of surrendering-to. Of speaking your wants and needs to the universe, just to know them clearer yourself.

She’s talking and talking and I’m trying to listen to the song. I pause it, thinking she’ll notice that I’m pausing because I want to hear it and don’t want to simultaneously listen to a story. She doesn’t notice.

What if I got what I wanted, and Mom renounced her evangelical interpretation of the Bible? What if she said, “I’ve been deceived,” and woke up into the mystic confusion of a world without God? Would I be happy? I would be sad. My mother’s certainty is her strength. To see her weak and confused would devastate me. There is a reason existential

That is a normal occurrence, but it is intriguing to see her get ready for bed in front of me. The removing of makeup. Washing the face. Taking vitamins. I don’t know what to make of it, but it feels consequential, to see her like this.

We’re both returning to the site of something that shifted our lives. The end of her great adventure. The beginning of mine.

Or she’ll just listen a little too closely, analyzing, and I won’t be able to think clearly, both listening and also listening for her.

I think about my good liberal values, my analytical mind, my New York Times subscription…and I think about my mom handing that man two dollars. And the likelihood that she will pray for him tonight.

“Mom, that man was obsessed with you.” “Oh hush. No he wasn’t.” “He was flirting with you! He saw you and couldn’t handle himself. He was following you around the gas station.” “He was? Well…” We say nothing more about it. I pull the car from the gas station and I can feel her glowing beside me, her mind turning over with nice feelings.