What matters to me most in writing is the voice. It is the ability to hear the person and to feel like you are reading something authentic. Without even knowing someone, an author, it should feel like the story is true and sincere. I feel like I lost my voice last week. I could write on many topics but I don't know how authentic it would be.

I just finished a book by Amy Tan. She is a Chinese American author with many novels; two of them I have read and were both about mother-daughter relationships. I think looking analytically at an immediate relationship has much bias. I don't choose to look at that currently.

My mom's mother once responded to a request of mine in a way that made me think I truly knew her and could see her soul. While seated at the kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon, I asked her, "Can I see your wedding ring?"

As she took it off to let me hold it, she replied, "Do you want it?"

The look on her face, the edge of her voice, showed me that she was unhappy. But what could she do about it? At that time, she was in her 70s, and had been married probably 3 times as long as she had been single in her life. I think she probably did a lot of the same things I do to hide from discontent. She cooked a lot. Had set routines to the week. Tried to please the one person who probably would always be at least a little displeased, her husband.

To go through the details of the rise and fall and freedom from that relationship are painful. As with anything of the generations slowly aging and fading, it involves sickness, neglect, and death. But She came out with a freedom that caused her to have a large amount of fear, I think. Fear of having a vast pool to jump into, and yet such a large space to drown in as well.

At 82, she remarried and is sitting comfortably watching a whole new line up of baseball games and old western movies. It is her comfort that matters, and who are we to judge if it is the softest of leather couches or the hardest futon with little give. For some people it is just the chance to sit down, with someone next to you to hold your hand.

I write this to tell a story. To look at how the traits of our families are etched in our bones, often without a choice. A fear of being alone. Fear of succombing to unhappiness and replacing the bad with good. At 29, I am not 87. Not even close, but there is something in her that I think explains little parts of me.

And if I don't write with my voice, out of fear of the hard conversations and people actually reading me, I'll lose my voice forever. (I'll try and be funny tomorrow; I promise!)