http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wamc/local-wamc-834487.mp3
Albany, NY – Babies don't come with instruction manuals, and no matter how hard they try, no mother is perfect. But some of them come darned close. My mom was one of those. She was my very best friend for most of my life. She was convinced there was nothing I couldn't do. And despite whatever mistakes she made, she'd set the bar high as I tried to be half as good a mom as she was. My mom died of cancer eight years ago. Until then, I didn't truly understand grief. But that experience has made me part of a universal experience - one that Dmae Roberts expresses beautifully in this essay she calls "Messages."
5:50 Messages
Can we ever understand how tightly our lives are entwined with our parents before they're gone? Rachel Stein explores the aching holes that are left, and the disorientingly strange, yet familiar world that exists after loss.
3:49 Losses Stein
Rachel Stein is a professor at Siena College. She's working on a memoir about family and loss.
Our mothers are our first interpreters of the world...and our first teachers. This month's "She's All That" is a two - fer. Katie Britton gets behind the picture of two women whose relationship is the stuff of legend...a teacher and mentor who opened the world for her student, and a student whose inspiring story is far more complex than Hollywood would have you believe.
6:36 Helen Keller Britton
And finally, a contemplation on mothers, and mothering, from Sabrina Artel and TrailerTalk.
5:58 Mothers Artel
Sabrina Artel's reports from her tag along trailer can be found at sabrinaartel.com