Hi! Welcome! Thank you so much for coming!

For those who don’t know me, I’m Kirstin, Paula’s daughter.

The love that my mother and I shared wasn’t built in big moments and dramatic gestures. Of course, she was there for all of those—the graduations, birthdays, and the like.

But the story I am about to tell you, is a roadtrip story. Or, not one, but thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of tiny roadtrips. It’s a story told fifteen minutes at a time.

There is a saying in my family, as a child when I asked “are we there yet” on a car ride, the answer was always “fifteen minutes.” What I didn’t know, is that my parents had determined that fifteen minutes was the perfect amount of time, just short enough that I wouldn’t whine, but not so short that I got antsy. Sometimes those fifteen minutes lasted only five, and more often they lasted thirty minutes or an hour.

Those fifteen minute increments are where our story is set. For the first four years of my life, mom drove me... Read more to Akron to where my babysitter lived near the school she taught at. With rush-hour traffic, the drive is usually closer to thirty minutes. And, once I mastered the power of speech, we talked. On sleepy mornings and busy afternoons, we filled the car with chatter about everything and nothing. I pestered her to make my stuffed animals and dolls talk—I assume this is a weird only child thing—and babbled about my day.

Once I started school, the fifteen minutes got a little shorter, but I’d tell her about my lessons, and she’d tell me about her students and what she was teaching them. At home, there might be arguments about how math and grammar worked. But there was none of that in the car.

Instead there was questions about life and chats about hopes and dreams. Quick trips to the library where we discussed books and our shared love of reading. Runs to the grocery store for ingredients for whatever we were cooking together that night.

Eventually, I stayed home in the mornings and rode the bus to school, and those fifteen minute drives switched from school to ballet and ice skating, Monday night Girl Scouts—where I could always identify my mom in the lobby by sound her keys made when they clicked—and eventually mildly annoyed text messages from the parking lot after marching band. And still, we talked, about friendships and boys, excitements and disappointments, homework and the tests mom needed to grade.

When I was around ten, mom and I drove to Florida —just the two of us. While we had fun visiting Martha and exploring Universal, we also had a blast on the very, very long fifteen minute ride. That’s when we discovered the joy of a well narrated audio book—an unexpectedly devastating novel named after a Jimmy Buffet song, “Changes in Latitude.” After which, we discovered the heartbreak of a poorly narrated audio book whose title I cannot recall.

Once I moved to Champaign for school, the fifteen minutes became phone calls while walking to and from classes. Through sun and snow, we talked about everything.

And when I eventually moved to Fort Wayne, the fifteen minutes became calls on my drive, to work, to run errands. A thousand-thousand phone calls about the ordinary and extrordinary—conversations that became a language of their own —old memes, pet talking to each other, and other nonsense only we understood.

A few weeks ago, I found a letter she had written me for a school project of mine in 1998. In it, she wrote, “I hope you will always want to talk to me and share your hopes and dreams as well as your problems and fears. I will always be there to listen.” And there was no better listener a girl could have asked for and no one I would rather share hopes, dreams, problems or fears with.

My mother loved me in a quiet, steady, selfless, and inexhaustible way—fifteen minutes at a time. Read less

Hi! Welcome! Thank you so much for coming!

For those who don’t know me, I’m Kirstin, Paula’s daughter.

The love that my mother and I shared wasn’t built in big moments and dramatic gestures. Of course, she was there for all of those—the graduations, birthdays, and the like.

But the story I am about to tell you, is a roadtrip story. Or, not one, but thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of tiny roadtrips. It’s a story told fifteen minutes at a time.

There is a saying in my family,... Read more as a child when I asked “are we there yet” on a car ride, the answer was always “fifteen minutes.” What I didn’t know, is that my parents had determined that fifteen minutes was the perfect amount of time, just short enough that I wouldn’t whine, but not so short that I got antsy. Sometimes those fifteen minutes lasted only five, and more often they lasted thirty minutes or an hour.

Those fifteen minute increments are where our story is set. For the first four years of my life, mom drove me to Akron to where my babysitter lived near the school she taught at. With rush-hour traffic, the drive is usually closer to thirty minutes. And, once I mastered the power of speech, we talked. On sleepy mornings and busy afternoons, we filled the car with chatter about everything and nothing. I pestered her to make my stuffed animals and dolls talk—I assume this is a weird only child thing—and babbled about my day.

Once I started school, the fifteen minutes got a little shorter, but I’d tell her about my lessons, and she’d tell me about her students and what she was teaching them. At home, there might be arguments about how math and grammar worked. But there was none of that in the car.

Instead there was questions about life and chats about hopes and dreams. Quick trips to the library where we discussed books and our shared love of reading. Runs to the grocery store for ingredients for whatever we were cooking together that night.

Eventually, I stayed home in the mornings and rode the bus to school, and those fifteen minute drives switched from school to ballet and ice skating, Monday night Girl Scouts—where I could always identify my mom in the lobby by sound her keys made when they clicked—and eventually mildly annoyed text messages from the parking lot after marching band. And still, we talked, about friendships and boys, excitements and disappointments, homework and the tests mom needed to grade.

When I was around ten, mom and I drove to Florida —just the two of us. While we had fun visiting Martha and exploring Universal, we also had a blast on the very, very long fifteen minute ride. That’s when we discovered the joy of a well narrated audio book—an unexpectedly devastating novel named after a Jimmy Buffet song, “Changes in Latitude.” After which, we discovered the heartbreak of a poorly narrated audio book whose title I cannot recall.

Once I moved to Champaign for school, the fifteen minutes became phone calls while walking to and from classes. Through sun and snow, we talked about everything.

And when I eventually moved to Fort Wayne, the fifteen minutes became calls on my drive, to work, to run errands. A thousand-thousand phone calls about the ordinary and extrordinary—conversations that became a language of their own —old memes, pet talking to each other, and other nonsense only we understood.

A few weeks ago, I found a letter she had written me for a school project of mine in 1998. In it, she wrote, “I hope you will always want to talk to me and share your hopes and dreams as well as your problems and fears. I will always be there to listen.” And there was no better listener a girl could have asked for and no one I would rather share hopes, dreams, problems or fears with.

My mother loved me in a quiet, steady, selfless, and inexhaustible way—fifteen minutes at a time. Read less