A friend in Colorado, Lisa Trank, commented on this Facebook status I posted last night that it would make a gorgeous opening for a book:

Went thru Mom's storage unit today, hunting for MRI films from a brain tumor 22 years ago, didn't find any, but did find 2 of Dad's old wool Marine Corp blankets, in pretty good shape considering they lived thru wars both real & metaphorical. They smelled nice. When we were kids, they kept us warm in the back seat of the car when Dad drove us around to look at Christmas lites. Also picnics at the Wilmette Bowl.

Reading Lisa's comment, my heart lifted to think that I could write another book. When I left Colorado to move back to the Chicago area, I did so wondering if I would ever be able to publish another book, and expecting that I couldn't at least for some time. Writing Practically Shameless left me deeply in debt, and paying off that debt has been such a strain financially that it became impossible to continue my Shadow Work practice, which suffered a good deal from the recession. It seemed I needed to find a regular job, and I know exactly how hard it would be to write a book while working at a regular job, because I tried it for years, and there's little energy for the task of creating a book at the end of a work day, as I'm sure many of my writer friends will attest.

But I've got a job now -- taking care of my mother, and being paid for it by her estate -- and it's paying the bills for now, and if I wrote a book it would be about taking care of her.

As I replied to Lisa, I'm often too tired or too full emotionally to have much big-picture perspective on the process of caring for her. But I realized as I wrote that, that I could keep notes toward that end and worry about writing the book later, perhaps after she's gone, assuming I'm still around myself by that time. Her older sister Ginny just turned 97, and Mom is 86, so it could be a while. I'm 58 now, and if Mom lived to 100, I'd be 72 by then.

It comforts me to think I could write here, on this blog about publishing, any thoughts I have toward such a book. And if I get a book written, I will publish it.  I don't know that I would have any lofty goals in doing so, as I did in writing Practically Shameless, when I wanted to teach people a less shame-full way to see themselves and their lives, and to describe what Shadow Work feels like, since it's always so difficult to describe. My goal in this book would mostly be to share what it was like to take care of an elderly mother and what I got from the process. Maybe that's a lofty goal as well.