I'm 35 now, which is a year older than my mother ever was. This marker is important to me and much contemplated—so much so that writing it down now seems to me to be more of a tip for others than a recording for myself.

As part of my birthday festivities, I wanted to visit my mom's grave and mark this threshold in some physical way. It has been several years since I visited, perhaps as many as four or five years. So, here I am this lovely summer day. I had a difficult time finding the grave. I expected that the paint would be more visible, but much of the paint has eroded along with the minutia that constitutes the concrete. Some blue swirls still glow, though. Seeing them, I am surprised to learn that some kind of self-surpassing has occurred. I look at that fading paint and find mystery in who I was that I am not any more, and I marvel at the courage—the initiative—it took to come here with paint and dare to own this slab. How wonderful that I did that!

I remember how painful it was with the relationship ending and discovering in earnest the loss of a mother. It's strange now that the loss exists mostly as a neutral condition of life and a personal characteristic to build from rather than a wound that exerts subtle influence that I try to pretend is not there or try to run from. So much of the pain has moved through.

Today I am here at this grave and I don't feel the same connection I did then. I see her name and it is my name, but it is not me. I feel sad that my family did not provide descriptors on the small plaque by which passersby could glean some small idea of who she was to us, to me, but I no longer feel that this is any kind of failure. It's just a symptom of the collective family condition of which my mother was a part and from which she did not have adequate time to individuate.

If the task of children is to surpass their parents, then I have already done that in the most fundamental way and I have only to continue.

For all of my life I have longed for my family to step up and provide me with the stability she took with her. I may have even longed for this in some subtle way as late as yesterday. But the strength of that signal weakens as I travel deeper into unknown space. I continue on from where she was and where they are and where I was, and I am entirely on my own. My fate apart is my vessel. Although that has always been the reality, I have not seen it that way and I have not felt as comfortable with the task, once I had realized what it was, as I do now. This is a change and it is a good change.

In some ways, I feel strongest when I am separated from all the anchors allotted to me—I feel this most strongly when I travel. I think there is guidance in this feeling that I can draw upon in whatever path. The key is solid confidence in self-sufficiency and self-integrity, which is a little garden to constantly tend. Otherwise, I feel helpless, and that is when I seek the impossible support of others.

I can be whatever I want.

Sadness comes now when I visit my hometown and see the development that consumes the geography of my youth. All of our usual places—the feed store, the butcher, the strawberry farms, our own farm—are under destruction to be replaced by big boxes. There will be no record of our family's livelihood. This is how generations are recorded over. Palimpsesting is the source of progress, but witnessing this transmogrification makes me want to never return. In this case, I'd rather have the clarity of my memory over the ambiguity of progress.