Drawing My Mother by Jesse Lee Kercheval

Drawing My Mother by Jesse Lee Kercheval

My mother’s been dead since 1982, two thirds of my life. Today, I am perched on a stool at a table in the Comics Room at the University of Wisconsin–Madison trying to remember what she looked like so I can draw her. So far, all I have is a pencil line drawing of the side of her face, turned away, cigarette in one upraised hand. She is sitting on a bed at the Holiday Inn on Cocoa Beach where we stayed when we first moved to Florida when I was ten…