And Then There Are Days

Some days are filled with endless, um, stuff to do, I guess is the right phrase-ology. Go to the store, go to the bank, get gas for the car, water the plants, you know, stuff. And then there are the days when the stuff seems like nonsense and you stare for a very long time at the violets on your windowsill, the shape of the flowers, the fuzziness of the leaves, even the color of the blooms is amazing and you aren't even smoking pot! You get frozen in time sort of. Something catches your eye that you've seen lots of times before and maybe it's the way the light is hitting it or the way the breeze is moving it and suddenly it's like nothing you've ever seen before.

The thing that really catches you up though, are not the inanimate things. Mostly, the breath seizing moments are from those you love. You see them suddenly so clearly and so sharply in focus, you wonder how you didn't notice this before. Or maybe you did notice before, but it's been so long you don't remember the last time.

Our mother is 79 (sorry mom, don't read this if you can't "handle the truth" I say grinning). She has whitish, reddish, blondish short hair that either curls or bends its own way. She has a good sense of self most days. People think she is as close to a real-live saint as anyone could get. But I'm thinking of the morning a few weeks ago when I went out to breakfast with her and my step-dad. She and I both love a good breakfast out and we happen to serendipitously have a day when we could indulge ourselves. We went to a place with good pancakes, good coffee and the atmosphere wasn't as loud as a lot of other places. That last is important because we (my mother and I) both wear hearing aids and some places it just doesn't matter how high the volume is cranked on those helpful devices in ours ears, it's just too loud for conversation. Anyway, we got seated in a booth, made our selections and began to talk about this, that and the other thing. I remember thinking how lovely it was to sit and talk to mom, as I have almost always been able to do, about anything. And that her husband would throw in a comment, quip or joke now and then to punctuate our conversation.

It is usually during these talks with mom that my concerns about my children or husband or work come out. Depending on the severity or mood of either of us, we either talk about how to solve the problem, poke holes in everyone else's assumptions about how to work through this or laugh about how you can't choose your family, or employment is hell except for the paycheck. But this particular morning I had picked up that she was concerned about something, I could see it in her eyes. I asked her about it and after briefly dancing around the subject, it came out that she feared she was becoming too much like her mother and it worried her. Now my mother loved her mother fiercely--this I know. But Mom was always able, or at least as far back as I remember, to see my grandmother's flaws--not as a blunt instrument with which to pummel her, but a tool to show others how thinking can be different for different people. My grandmother was not a bad person, she was a person like all others. She had prejudices and feelings about the way things "ought to be" and she shared them relatively freely. Our mother taught us to take those granny-isms and sift through them. Not to take them as decrees from the Almighty, but take them as opinions from someone older and experienced in life. Mom saw a family home movie at our house recently and seeing my grandmother in it, projected the the ways they were alike onto herself--the fact that Mom walks with a limp now and so did our grandmother. The fact that our grandmother couldn't hear and Mom has to wear hearing aids. She saw herself as becoming her mother and she didn't want to be her.

I point out that I loved my grandmother fiercely as well. But saw her as an old woman who frequently did not wish to see the world as it was and by force of will would try to bend it back to the way it "ought to be." But our mother does not do that and I don't believe she ever will. I endeavored to help her see this by saying, "You're not your mother," I told her in my most convincing "Mommy-tone". "You cannot be. You have experienced things she never did, saw things she never saw, reacted to things she never even dreamed of having to deal with. You lived in a different era, you married a different man than your father (we both rolled our eyes at that one!) and you had four children. She only had two. You didn't experience life as she did. Although you shared a past, you had a different future. You are able to see things differently, more openly, more compassionately than she was able to in her lifetime. That isn't a bad thing, it is simply a different thing. As much as you and I are alike, we are not the same person. We can't be. And so neither can you be your mother."

She looked down then. I thought I had upset her and was mad at myself. I didn't know whether she agreed with my assessment or not, but felt it had to be said. After a moment she looked up and mouthed the words, "thank you." I was hit then with the love our mother has for us. The fact that she sees things in us we don't always see, loves us with an unconditional love that I know I feel I don't deserve at times. It was a breath catching moment between us that only lasted a moment, but will remain with me for a long time.

We don't get days of this kind of connection. Just moments. I hope I recognize them when they happen again, just for a moment.