This blog, in a desperate attempt to be more positive, should feature more voicemails from my mother. She has an extremely important job of helping people in trouble and in desperate situations fix their lives; I won’t go into detail except to say I am in awe of what she does each day, at how she helps people who often have no one to turn to. My own troubles are not so scary and life-threatening. Yet she always has time to help me, even if it’s to tell me a certain thing I need to hear at the exact right moment when I need to hear it. Here, for example, her latest voicemail message:

Hey, Nova. It’s your mama. Did you know that Madeleine L’Engle had twenty-six—twenty-six!—rejections of A Wrinkle in Time before she found somebody to publish it? My god, it takes such endurance and perseverance to keep going, but it’s really worth it. And your mama believes in you, and I know that one day it’s all going to happen for you too, because you are wonderful and you’re a wonderful writer, you really are. I love you, honey. Love you, love you. Talk to you soon. Bye.

I don’t expect to have children, but if in some alternate universe I were to become a mother, she is the kind of mother I’d strive to be.