Five Years a Writer

Amanda, age 1. Anne. Katy, my older sister. We each have a story to tell and, says Anne Lamott of Bird by Bird writing advice fame, we are not responsible for hurt feelings of those who disagree with how we tell it. Nonetheless, I asked my mother recently to read a piece about my father that I plan to submit to an online magazine for a themed issue on fathers. I was relieved when she gave me her blessing on the content and was appreciative of her feedback on the style in which I had written, though I disagreed with her comments on that point. It was a fine moment of respectful difference we shared as writers not as mother and daughter, and I will continue to work on the piece for submission next month. As I am, so is my mother a writer. My mother is a writer and I have become one, too. Either sentence is true, though each tells the story from a slightly different perspective. The result is the same: We are both writers. Would I be a writer if she were not? Would she be writing the fou