Emerging from the gate, her smile was like a seven-year-old kid’s, gone to Six Flags, all
adventuresome and free, meeting up with her best buds. Just to have someone to talk to,
somewhere to go besides her bedroom, was a great thrill for her, though she always claimed,
when asked, that it didn’t bother her to be alone, to lack a reason to get up, while family
members were off at work. I met her at the gate, a gentle surge of mother-love in her eyes, or
at least a greatly weathered sweetness. I whisked her away, relieved that we’d avoided some
terrific hassle like her getting lost along the way, or a security breech—the plane making an
emergent stop to expel a dangerously disoriented old lady. Jaunty and lightweight, she
practically skipped down the concourse, tra-la-laing past the security station. When we met up
with my husband Luke, his face reflected, in his more patient manner, my own apprehension.
“Three weeks?” – Luke and I asked each other after we’d brought her back to our temporary
and tiny one-bedroom apartment. “How many more days?” we then asked at least once every
day of mom’s visit, our eyes rolling in that oh-my-God manner, neither of us ever even having
children to contend with. “What’ll I do if mom throws up?” I asked. Luke promised to clean it
up, though he reminded me that the idea for the visit had been mine. My sister Mary, with
whom my mom lived, had greatly welcomed it, agreeing to give me a little money from mom’s
account for my loss of work time.
Despite our efforts to explain otherwise, mom had it all figured out: we were staying in her
apartment—not the other way around. In mom’s mind, our two cats were hers, which we were
graciously feeding. Though she didn’t know precisely who we were, this was of no concern to
her; she just kept thanking us for being such nice people in that kind, chipper manner that
seemed to have only intensified with the loss of so much else. “Who is Mary?” mom asked when
I announced I was calling Mary. Exasperated by mom’s relentless questions, which seemed to
have become even more ridiculous, I ignored her. “Why didn’t you warn me of mom’s
deterioration,” I asked Mary on the phone. “She’ll get better, more oriented as the weeks go
by; you’ll see,” Mary answered, ignoring my question. With mom having gone to the “little girl’s
room,” I felt free to complain. “If it wasn’t for her neurotic personality, the selfish narcissism she’
s always had, she wouldn’t be near so difficult.” Mary agreed heartily. “Have fun dear,” she said
with sisterly sarcasm. But I wasn’t laughing—awash as I was with all the old feelings: the guilt,
oh yes, but also the anger, resentment, and pain. Why!—why had she never encouraged in me
the greatness I’d so desperately wanted to see in myself? Why had she not sent me, as a girl,
to therapy after my father left us. She’d had to work full-time, and I’d felt she’d neglected me in
particular. My father having been out of the picture, I had only her to blame for my teenage
depressions, the deadening apathy that completely took hold, leaving me to feel only a few blips
of pleasure or happiness over the years. I was sure I’d never felt real love, not even for my
lovely and tolerant husband. “I’ll just go to my room now and be quiet,” mom said, as I set
about to make dinner. Mom had always been a good girl, a daddy’s girl (her own mother dying
when she was nine). “Nooo mom. That room’s for Luke. He has to get up and work in the
morning. We’ll sleep out here in the living room, you on that futon, me on that one.” “Okay,
dear,” she answered, not seeming to mind the cramped quarters—the fact that her futon and
mine were almost touching with just a few steps from hers to the bathroom and a few steps
from mine to the front door. “We’ll have a good time, a slumber party,” she said. “Yeah,” I
said, remembering she snored loudly. Mary also mentioned that mom talked, muttered,
incessantly in her sleep.
Because mom liked to rearrange things, I’d gone to great lengths to hide things that she might
rearrange or mistake for trash or things she might eat. Once, I caught her, gritting her teeth
with effort, attempting to pull a rigorously glued-on decoration—a fake piece of peppermint
candy—from my antique candy jar. All pills, of course, had to be hidden so she wouldn’t
assume they were hers which, left to her own attempts at dosing, might kill her. Various tapes
and bells were placed on drawers, stove knobs, freezer and fridge handles. She giggled,
seeming not to understand their purpose, asking if it was Christmas (not a clue it was April).
Since she thought our beloved indoor-only cats were hers, there was no telling how she might
rearrange them. Triple sets of bells had been placed on windows and doors. I felt, with such
armaments, there was no way she’d wander out in the middle of the night, setting our fluffy
babies free. “Maybe we should let them out,” mom would say. “No mom, they never go out.”
Little did I anticipate that all her undiagnosed OCD tendencies of the past had greatly
intensified. Before going to bed, she spent hours rearranging the bedding on her futon. Of
particular concern to her was the crackly plastic shower curtain underneath the fitted sheet. I’d
put it there to protect the futon, though I really had no reason to believe she pee-pee’d in her
sleep. I kept it there, feeling it best not to try and explain its purpose, even as she spent hours
circling the futon, smoothing out the crackles and wrinkles, clearly confused by their origin. She’
d take exasperated breaks, only to start folding and refolding the bedding, deciding and un-
deciding on the arrangement of pillows and covers. Finally, late one night, with Luke and I even
more exhausted than the night before, my “interventions” reached that perfect parental pitch.
“Stop it. The bed is fine. Pleassse go brush your teeth.” With effort, I pushed the futon frame
against the wall, thwarting her circles. “Please put your pajamas on,” I commanded, pleaded.
“Shut up,” she snapped, hands on hips, her tone drippingly sarcastic, uncharacteristic at least in
recent memory. With super-human strength, she yanked the futon away from the wall and
resumed circling and smoothing. “Mom, pleeease,” I begged. “Shut up!” she shrieked. She’d
amazingly morphed into me as a teenager, yet also with the innocence that her complete
obliviousness to time and place afforded. “What’s it to you if I want to fix my bed, stay up
late.” “Pajamas pleeease.” I surged with anger, sure she was waking the neighbors. “Shut the
hell up,” mom ranted; “it’s my house,” she raged, “I can do what I want!” “No,” Luke
intervened, “it’s our house,” his calm authority making mom stop, something flickering across
her face, and then the rage bursting over her again. “Here!” Spittle flying. “Is THIS want you
want!” she screamed, pulling up her shirt then her bra, flashing her fallen breasts. Luke, in
shock, had turned away just in time. Miraculously, I then managed to sit her down, distract her,
and she cheerfully went to bed. Interestingly enough—although she claimed to not remember
the incident even minutes after it—from this night on, she ceased the rearranging whenever I
asked, going to bed thereafter as complacently as a lamb.
“The child becomes the mother; the mother becomes the child,” mom had become fond of
saying. “What’s this? What’s that?” “That’s soap mom, that’s shampoo.” “Do I wash my hair
with this?” “No, mom, that’s toothpaste. Get in the shower now.” Although my brusqueness
tended to sadden and discourage me, there was nothing I could do to stop its guilty flow. “It’s
too cold, too hot, too cold,” she’d say with a little whine, wanting me to spend a good five
minutes adjusting the shower’s temperature. “Mom . . . it’s fine,” I’d exclaim. “You’re being
ridiculous, like a little child.” (I refrained from saying, like you’re retarded.) I gladly left her to
dry herself, a task which took over thirty minutes, instructing herself the entire time, indicating
to herself where to dry real good. Coming back to dress her, facing her in her most naked and
vulnerable, I’d sometimes try to explain: “Mom, I never asked, never wanted, to be a mom . . .
that’s why I never had kids.” I didn’t come right out and say it sickened me that she wanted me
to be her mom, when she’d never been a proper mom to me, never instilled in me the mother-
love.
As the weeks passed, I became filled with irritation at her joy as she sat across from Luke and I,
hanging on our every word as we talked and ate, apparently her favorite “big folks” in all the
world. It was hard to tell with whom she was more captivated. Luke was wonderful with her.
He’d talk to her of art and science, eventually coming back to God or the existence of space
aliens (her two favorite subjects) proving that, if someone tried enough, a real conversation
could still be had. After dinner, they’d settle in front of the Internet, looking up childhood songs
that Luke noticed she was always humming: “Rachel, Rachel, Reuben, Reuben” and the one
about “giving babies away for a half a pound of tea.”
“I was brilliant, you know,” mom interjected into many conversations. It dawned on me during
this visit that it’d become like a broken record, an obvious badge of self-defense. She’d been
telling friends and family about her magnificent brain for as long as I could remember—how she’d
skipped grades in school, entered college when she was 15; how she was one of the few women
in her era to earn a graduate degree in chemistry, from Vanderbilt no less. Although the details
had become lost to her, she continued to speak of her past brilliance. In fact, she seemed to be
bringing it up more in recent days, making me realize, in a rare objective moment, that some
part of her must’ve known her repetitive questions, her abject helplessness, were aggravating
to others. My objectivity, however, was fleeting, considering my need to confront her yet
again: Why hadn’t she motivated her children to be academic successes? Why hadn’t she told
us we were brilliant? I cross-examined her as I always had, though it ate me up a little. Why
hadn’t she been concerned about my apathy? I pushed on in the manner we’d always jabbed at
each other—she, perhaps inadvertently, even when fully cognizant. “Mom,” I asked, “why is
your brilliance the only thing you can remember?” “I was a great student,” she insisted quite
moodily, jauntily, “my children never did well in school. It’s the grades, the grades.” Actually,
there was one other thing she persistently remembered. “Men are jerks,” she remained quick to
conclude. Although she’d ultimately forgotten who my father was or that she’d been abandoned
by him, her jokes and jibes remained full of admonitions regarding men and, more recently,
“hubbies.” “Be nice to him, honey, or he’ll find himself a little chickie,” giggle, giggle. “Mom, they’
re not all like that.” I’d been rather desperately trying to convince her since I was a little girl. I
gave up, though, by the third week. Any attempt at sustained conversation had just become
too much.
By the third week, the world was dropping out from under me. “God dammit! Mom’s pooping
in her pants.” I called Luke at work. “I can’t believe it,” I lamented, “a little even got on the
futon.” I called big sis. She said it’d never happened at home (or at least she’d never noticed).
“Ooohhh freakin gross,” I bellowed, but I set about then, with amazing resolve, bleaching the
sheets after herding mom off to the shower, scolding her. I resigned myself to the inevitable:
Diapers. I made plans to restrict her foods: smaller quantities, less veggies, spice, and grease.
I could only pray her sphincter wouldn’t completely give out. Or my last nerve. I was beyond
exhaustion. I continued to be woken up several times a night by mom’s babbling, snippets of
which seemed to pertain to longstanding issues between us, making them impossible to ignore.
“I did the best I could,” she’d say, far more convincing than I’d ever heard her in any waking,
lucid state. “He tried to come back . . . ,” babble, gurgle, babble, cough. “Mom, pleeease,” I’d
say, turning up the TV, it never seeming to wake her. I wasn’t sure what bothered me more,
the genuine remorse in any recognizable statements, or the raw, saliva-filled mutters, the
braying of the very old, the demented.
“Mary . . . Maaary . . .” By the third week, her sleep babble intensified in the form of calling out
for big sis. I’d gotten up early, defeated, a virtual zombie, perhaps long-tired of shouldering my
rebellious front, of justifying my reasons for being the selfish daughter as she’d so long-ago
implied. “Mary . . . Mary . . . where?” The raw need in her voice was impossible to ignore, even
as I turned on my computer, trying to grab some rare work time. I sat there with my coffee,
watching her toss and turn, listening to her increasingly bewildered muttering. Her dark turmoil
seemed to confirm what I’d sensed we shared in waking hours—the stubborn regret, the mutual
disappointment, clouding up the air between us, denser and blacker than ever. I turned back to
my computer, fighting tears. “Mary . . . MAAAry!” She screamed. “MAAAryyy!” The sound of
it ear-splitting, blood-curdling, the sound of a woman on a precipice, facing death itself. Her
terror so lancing, it cut through me, so curiously engendering a symbiosis, so rich and pure.
“MARY!” Rushing to her, rousing her from sleep, my words flowed out: “I love you; I love you
so much.” I sat her up, hugged her hard.
“I was on a boat,” she said, still trembling, “falling off.”
Three days later, mom flew home. I called to make sure she’d arrived okay. “Who are you?”
she said with her little chuckle, “you know I can’t remember.” “Don’t worry,” I told her. It didn’
t really matter so much anymore. I was just glad to hear her voice again. I was still glowing
from the night before when she’d been rolling around in her sleep, babbling, still working things
out. “I did the best I could.” “Yes mom, I know you did,” I’d responded. Surprisingly, my
words stirred her. She’d sleep-moved closer, down to the end of the bed. “I did all I knew
how,” she said. “You are a wonderful mother,” I’d said, fighting easy tears. She smiled, that
peaceful, knowing smile she’d always had in our best moments.
Hanging up the phone, I turned to Luke. “I miss mom . . . ,” that little ache in my voice. “Me,
tooo,” he said emphatically.
adventuresome and free, meeting up with her best buds. Just to have someone to talk to,
somewhere to go besides her bedroom, was a great thrill for her, though she always claimed,
when asked, that it didn’t bother her to be alone, to lack a reason to get up, while family
members were off at work. I met her at the gate, a gentle surge of mother-love in her eyes, or
at least a greatly weathered sweetness. I whisked her away, relieved that we’d avoided some
terrific hassle like her getting lost along the way, or a security breech—the plane making an
emergent stop to expel a dangerously disoriented old lady. Jaunty and lightweight, she
practically skipped down the concourse, tra-la-laing past the security station. When we met up
with my husband Luke, his face reflected, in his more patient manner, my own apprehension.
“Three weeks?” – Luke and I asked each other after we’d brought her back to our temporary
and tiny one-bedroom apartment. “How many more days?” we then asked at least once every
day of mom’s visit, our eyes rolling in that oh-my-God manner, neither of us ever even having
children to contend with. “What’ll I do if mom throws up?” I asked. Luke promised to clean it
up, though he reminded me that the idea for the visit had been mine. My sister Mary, with
whom my mom lived, had greatly welcomed it, agreeing to give me a little money from mom’s
account for my loss of work time.
Despite our efforts to explain otherwise, mom had it all figured out: we were staying in her
apartment—not the other way around. In mom’s mind, our two cats were hers, which we were
graciously feeding. Though she didn’t know precisely who we were, this was of no concern to
her; she just kept thanking us for being such nice people in that kind, chipper manner that
seemed to have only intensified with the loss of so much else. “Who is Mary?” mom asked when
I announced I was calling Mary. Exasperated by mom’s relentless questions, which seemed to
have become even more ridiculous, I ignored her. “Why didn’t you warn me of mom’s
deterioration,” I asked Mary on the phone. “She’ll get better, more oriented as the weeks go
by; you’ll see,” Mary answered, ignoring my question. With mom having gone to the “little girl’s
room,” I felt free to complain. “If it wasn’t for her neurotic personality, the selfish narcissism she’
s always had, she wouldn’t be near so difficult.” Mary agreed heartily. “Have fun dear,” she said
with sisterly sarcasm. But I wasn’t laughing—awash as I was with all the old feelings: the guilt,
oh yes, but also the anger, resentment, and pain. Why!—why had she never encouraged in me
the greatness I’d so desperately wanted to see in myself? Why had she not sent me, as a girl,
to therapy after my father left us. She’d had to work full-time, and I’d felt she’d neglected me in
particular. My father having been out of the picture, I had only her to blame for my teenage
depressions, the deadening apathy that completely took hold, leaving me to feel only a few blips
of pleasure or happiness over the years. I was sure I’d never felt real love, not even for my
lovely and tolerant husband. “I’ll just go to my room now and be quiet,” mom said, as I set
about to make dinner. Mom had always been a good girl, a daddy’s girl (her own mother dying
when she was nine). “Nooo mom. That room’s for Luke. He has to get up and work in the
morning. We’ll sleep out here in the living room, you on that futon, me on that one.” “Okay,
dear,” she answered, not seeming to mind the cramped quarters—the fact that her futon and
mine were almost touching with just a few steps from hers to the bathroom and a few steps
from mine to the front door. “We’ll have a good time, a slumber party,” she said. “Yeah,” I
said, remembering she snored loudly. Mary also mentioned that mom talked, muttered,
incessantly in her sleep.
Because mom liked to rearrange things, I’d gone to great lengths to hide things that she might
rearrange or mistake for trash or things she might eat. Once, I caught her, gritting her teeth
with effort, attempting to pull a rigorously glued-on decoration—a fake piece of peppermint
candy—from my antique candy jar. All pills, of course, had to be hidden so she wouldn’t
assume they were hers which, left to her own attempts at dosing, might kill her. Various tapes
and bells were placed on drawers, stove knobs, freezer and fridge handles. She giggled,
seeming not to understand their purpose, asking if it was Christmas (not a clue it was April).
Since she thought our beloved indoor-only cats were hers, there was no telling how she might
rearrange them. Triple sets of bells had been placed on windows and doors. I felt, with such
armaments, there was no way she’d wander out in the middle of the night, setting our fluffy
babies free. “Maybe we should let them out,” mom would say. “No mom, they never go out.”
Little did I anticipate that all her undiagnosed OCD tendencies of the past had greatly
intensified. Before going to bed, she spent hours rearranging the bedding on her futon. Of
particular concern to her was the crackly plastic shower curtain underneath the fitted sheet. I’d
put it there to protect the futon, though I really had no reason to believe she pee-pee’d in her
sleep. I kept it there, feeling it best not to try and explain its purpose, even as she spent hours
circling the futon, smoothing out the crackles and wrinkles, clearly confused by their origin. She’
d take exasperated breaks, only to start folding and refolding the bedding, deciding and un-
deciding on the arrangement of pillows and covers. Finally, late one night, with Luke and I even
more exhausted than the night before, my “interventions” reached that perfect parental pitch.
“Stop it. The bed is fine. Pleassse go brush your teeth.” With effort, I pushed the futon frame
against the wall, thwarting her circles. “Please put your pajamas on,” I commanded, pleaded.
“Shut up,” she snapped, hands on hips, her tone drippingly sarcastic, uncharacteristic at least in
recent memory. With super-human strength, she yanked the futon away from the wall and
resumed circling and smoothing. “Mom, pleeease,” I begged. “Shut up!” she shrieked. She’d
amazingly morphed into me as a teenager, yet also with the innocence that her complete
obliviousness to time and place afforded. “What’s it to you if I want to fix my bed, stay up
late.” “Pajamas pleeease.” I surged with anger, sure she was waking the neighbors. “Shut the
hell up,” mom ranted; “it’s my house,” she raged, “I can do what I want!” “No,” Luke
intervened, “it’s our house,” his calm authority making mom stop, something flickering across
her face, and then the rage bursting over her again. “Here!” Spittle flying. “Is THIS want you
want!” she screamed, pulling up her shirt then her bra, flashing her fallen breasts. Luke, in
shock, had turned away just in time. Miraculously, I then managed to sit her down, distract her,
and she cheerfully went to bed. Interestingly enough—although she claimed to not remember
the incident even minutes after it—from this night on, she ceased the rearranging whenever I
asked, going to bed thereafter as complacently as a lamb.
“The child becomes the mother; the mother becomes the child,” mom had become fond of
saying. “What’s this? What’s that?” “That’s soap mom, that’s shampoo.” “Do I wash my hair
with this?” “No, mom, that’s toothpaste. Get in the shower now.” Although my brusqueness
tended to sadden and discourage me, there was nothing I could do to stop its guilty flow. “It’s
too cold, too hot, too cold,” she’d say with a little whine, wanting me to spend a good five
minutes adjusting the shower’s temperature. “Mom . . . it’s fine,” I’d exclaim. “You’re being
ridiculous, like a little child.” (I refrained from saying, like you’re retarded.) I gladly left her to
dry herself, a task which took over thirty minutes, instructing herself the entire time, indicating
to herself where to dry real good. Coming back to dress her, facing her in her most naked and
vulnerable, I’d sometimes try to explain: “Mom, I never asked, never wanted, to be a mom . . .
that’s why I never had kids.” I didn’t come right out and say it sickened me that she wanted me
to be her mom, when she’d never been a proper mom to me, never instilled in me the mother-
love.
As the weeks passed, I became filled with irritation at her joy as she sat across from Luke and I,
hanging on our every word as we talked and ate, apparently her favorite “big folks” in all the
world. It was hard to tell with whom she was more captivated. Luke was wonderful with her.
He’d talk to her of art and science, eventually coming back to God or the existence of space
aliens (her two favorite subjects) proving that, if someone tried enough, a real conversation
could still be had. After dinner, they’d settle in front of the Internet, looking up childhood songs
that Luke noticed she was always humming: “Rachel, Rachel, Reuben, Reuben” and the one
about “giving babies away for a half a pound of tea.”
“I was brilliant, you know,” mom interjected into many conversations. It dawned on me during
this visit that it’d become like a broken record, an obvious badge of self-defense. She’d been
telling friends and family about her magnificent brain for as long as I could remember—how she’d
skipped grades in school, entered college when she was 15; how she was one of the few women
in her era to earn a graduate degree in chemistry, from Vanderbilt no less. Although the details
had become lost to her, she continued to speak of her past brilliance. In fact, she seemed to be
bringing it up more in recent days, making me realize, in a rare objective moment, that some
part of her must’ve known her repetitive questions, her abject helplessness, were aggravating
to others. My objectivity, however, was fleeting, considering my need to confront her yet
again: Why hadn’t she motivated her children to be academic successes? Why hadn’t she told
us we were brilliant? I cross-examined her as I always had, though it ate me up a little. Why
hadn’t she been concerned about my apathy? I pushed on in the manner we’d always jabbed at
each other—she, perhaps inadvertently, even when fully cognizant. “Mom,” I asked, “why is
your brilliance the only thing you can remember?” “I was a great student,” she insisted quite
moodily, jauntily, “my children never did well in school. It’s the grades, the grades.” Actually,
there was one other thing she persistently remembered. “Men are jerks,” she remained quick to
conclude. Although she’d ultimately forgotten who my father was or that she’d been abandoned
by him, her jokes and jibes remained full of admonitions regarding men and, more recently,
“hubbies.” “Be nice to him, honey, or he’ll find himself a little chickie,” giggle, giggle. “Mom, they’
re not all like that.” I’d been rather desperately trying to convince her since I was a little girl. I
gave up, though, by the third week. Any attempt at sustained conversation had just become
too much.
By the third week, the world was dropping out from under me. “God dammit! Mom’s pooping
in her pants.” I called Luke at work. “I can’t believe it,” I lamented, “a little even got on the
futon.” I called big sis. She said it’d never happened at home (or at least she’d never noticed).
“Ooohhh freakin gross,” I bellowed, but I set about then, with amazing resolve, bleaching the
sheets after herding mom off to the shower, scolding her. I resigned myself to the inevitable:
Diapers. I made plans to restrict her foods: smaller quantities, less veggies, spice, and grease.
I could only pray her sphincter wouldn’t completely give out. Or my last nerve. I was beyond
exhaustion. I continued to be woken up several times a night by mom’s babbling, snippets of
which seemed to pertain to longstanding issues between us, making them impossible to ignore.
“I did the best I could,” she’d say, far more convincing than I’d ever heard her in any waking,
lucid state. “He tried to come back . . . ,” babble, gurgle, babble, cough. “Mom, pleeease,” I’d
say, turning up the TV, it never seeming to wake her. I wasn’t sure what bothered me more,
the genuine remorse in any recognizable statements, or the raw, saliva-filled mutters, the
braying of the very old, the demented.
“Mary . . . Maaary . . .” By the third week, her sleep babble intensified in the form of calling out
for big sis. I’d gotten up early, defeated, a virtual zombie, perhaps long-tired of shouldering my
rebellious front, of justifying my reasons for being the selfish daughter as she’d so long-ago
implied. “Mary . . . Mary . . . where?” The raw need in her voice was impossible to ignore, even
as I turned on my computer, trying to grab some rare work time. I sat there with my coffee,
watching her toss and turn, listening to her increasingly bewildered muttering. Her dark turmoil
seemed to confirm what I’d sensed we shared in waking hours—the stubborn regret, the mutual
disappointment, clouding up the air between us, denser and blacker than ever. I turned back to
my computer, fighting tears. “Mary . . . MAAAry!” She screamed. “MAAAryyy!” The sound of
it ear-splitting, blood-curdling, the sound of a woman on a precipice, facing death itself. Her
terror so lancing, it cut through me, so curiously engendering a symbiosis, so rich and pure.
“MARY!” Rushing to her, rousing her from sleep, my words flowed out: “I love you; I love you
so much.” I sat her up, hugged her hard.
“I was on a boat,” she said, still trembling, “falling off.”
Three days later, mom flew home. I called to make sure she’d arrived okay. “Who are you?”
she said with her little chuckle, “you know I can’t remember.” “Don’t worry,” I told her. It didn’
t really matter so much anymore. I was just glad to hear her voice again. I was still glowing
from the night before when she’d been rolling around in her sleep, babbling, still working things
out. “I did the best I could.” “Yes mom, I know you did,” I’d responded. Surprisingly, my
words stirred her. She’d sleep-moved closer, down to the end of the bed. “I did all I knew
how,” she said. “You are a wonderful mother,” I’d said, fighting easy tears. She smiled, that
peaceful, knowing smile she’d always had in our best moments.
Hanging up the phone, I turned to Luke. “I miss mom . . . ,” that little ache in my voice. “Me,
tooo,” he said emphatically.
| Mother's Keeper by Thea Zimmer r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary non-fiction fall 2008/winter 2009 |
