Do you read here? I used to look at the analytics and wonder. For the most part I could pinpoint who/where people were, but there’d occasionally be a random city and I’d wonder who managed to stumble across this hideyhole.

And if you did, if one of those Philadelphia readers was you, then you know some things about me. That I’m alive, doing stuff. Does what you’ve read here jive with your memories of me, do you recognize that young Marissa as just older now but still fundamentally the same? I don’t know if I am. Do I seem like your daughter? Do you ever talk about me, and if you do what do you say?

Can you really know anything from a handful of sporadic posts?

And would I recognize you, I wonder. It aches to know for certain, now, that there are people who do, that so many people know the mother I haven’t had, so many people have memories and conversations and information about what you’re like and the things you love. All things I wonder, often. I think of you, all the time.