Three is my favorite number.

When I was a little girl the first number I learned was 3, a symbol of maternal expedience, the number that provided a direct line to Grandmommy's house (pronounced Grandmummy) a la speed dial. When my mother wasn't doting over me she was dialing 3, instigating hours-long conversations, sometimes as many as five a day. They usually concerned riveting minute-by-minute updates, "Laura and I went for a walk when she got home from school," "Tom just bought a new train set and now he's going bowling," "Laura insists on getting an iguana." I sat in my wicker swing listening, night after night with my nose in a book and my ears keenly elsewhere. The conversations were mundane, unremarkable, yet somehow I was drawn in. The business and banter of the two women whom I admired most in the world, my mind racing at the importance of everyday trivialities. On occasion I was directed to run upstairs and dial 3 in mom's bedroom, then lay on the bed and yell down when Grandmommy answered. Like Alice to a tea party, I never denied my invitation to join. On these affairs I rarely spoke after greeting Grandmommy. Instead I would lay back on the bed and close my eyes, resting the brown rotary phone on the comforter beside me, or sometimes on my chest. I listened intently to the space between their words. Volumes of unvaried gossip passed through my ears, my attention fixated on giggles, sighs, inflections of sympathy or comprehension, pauses that allowed both women to reflect. That space, a limbo between kinship and friendship, to learn about each other as women, as confidants, as pals.

Those phone calls, little episodes of my mother being mothered. Still calling on her mother's wisdom and repose despite being a woman of 40 with a husband and daughter herself. And I, privy to her grapplings with adulthood, with motherhood. Many times over I imagined my adult self in the middle of some domestic chore, Mother cradled between my shoulder and ear. I would lose myself fantasizing the things I might learn about Mother when I grew up, what mysteries of my own childhood might be elucidated. In my eight year old reverie there was no question of how these conversations would transpire, we always dialed 3.

As a little girl I had no way of predicting how many times in life I would feel compelled to retreat to the phone. I also had no way of predicting that to be an impossibility.

Yesterday would have been my mother's 63rd birthday. There would not have been cake, or most likely even a dinner. Mom was thoroughly uncomfortable with being the center of a fuss. The date would have passed just as quietly as it did without her here, but I am certain there would have been many conversations to fill the occasion. What took place instead were secret meetings inside my heart, moments of internal dialogue in which I channeled just the sound of her voice, and sat with it. Oddly enough, the same beautiful instances of laughter, consultation, and reflection occur there as they do over wires.

We celebrated.