Swimming Sessions Are A Treasured Ritual

I have a picture of my mom at 17 in my living room. It is a formal portrait and she is truly beautiful. I am passing that photograph now, in my bathrobe, preparing to swim. Mom and I swim together two times a week in my lap pool. It has a low tent over it in the winter and we swim in the nude.

Swimming laps side by side in this misty cocoon, the 80-year-old mother, the 51-year-old daughter, she tells me stories of our family. She tells me about relatives she laughed with who are only people in yellowed photographs to me. I tell her how strange it is to realize she is the closest genetic duplicate to me there is and one day she will be gone. No one else will know what she knows.

Many cultures have baths where generations meet and talk in the nude. Mom and I have created our own ritual. I take pleasure in the exercise both for my continued flexibility and hers. She tells me, between stories, what she wants me to know about the rest of her life.

I had already persuaded her and her husband, Ken, to move here from Arizona so I could be closer to her before some crisis developed. We found a small house, on one level, close to her church, the Masonic temple and a shopping district. We joke about the time that may come when she gives up her motor scooter for an electric wheelchair. The flat terrain will make it easy for her to get around.

We remodeled the bedroom last year, added a sink and sliding glass door to a deck that would provide easy access to the garden she loves. She knew I was thinking about sinks and sickness but she was planning a pond just beyond the deck. She and Ken hauled 30 pounds of cement to build it. She joked the next morning about being a little stiff and handed me a living will. Mom has been very explicit about what she wants and what she doesn’t want and I have written it down so I will know at a time when I might not want to know.

Mom and I belong to Group Health and share the same doctor. So much of what we are is inherited it seems like an extra benefit. Last month we went for our mammograms together. It was strange, but right, to sit in our adjoining booths in those cotton gowns. My son will never sit with me or swim with me in quite the same way. He and I have other rituals.

She has written her will, told me what to do with her things and her ashes. I don’t want the John Wayne clock, just the photographs. The ashes go back to England to the family plot. Ken wants to go there, too, which gives Mom two husbands in the same plot.

When her older sister died at 85, having never married, I remembered she had complained that my mother always got more than her share and would again. My son took my aunt’s ashes there last fall, met the minister and arranged the burial ceremony. I thought it was good practice, forging his own links, even though I’ll stay on this side of the ocean when I die.

Mom and Ken are planning a trip to Italy and I’m worried. Two 80-year-olds traveling is not the same as the trip they took on Vespas when they were 70. Then they wore matching orange jumpsuits and had a wild time. Mom finally agrees to accept a “taxi fund” from me to use whenever they get tired and need a ride. I know it is the only concession I’ll get because Mom is still very much in charge.

I think of these things as Mom and I swim. What else do I need to know? I know how much she loves Ken so I will find it easy to offer him the same care I would give her. What questions will I wish I’d asked when she is no longer beside me? What can I do now to have her life be what it can be?

I want to do what I can to make whatever happens easier for both of us. I want to set a model for my son. At 30 he thinks you are supposed to do all the things I do for Mom. I think I’ll get her to go on another cruise just to give him some good ideas.

Last year, on Christmas Eve, Mom read the lessons at church. I sat in the front row and listened as she read the ancient Bible passages in her strong clear voice. She was so pleased to have me in church and I wanted to be there for her. I want to be a good daughter so I honor her spiritual traditions. But I still find my deepest connections with the Spirit, when I am with her, just swimming back and forth, through the waters of time.

xxxx

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jennifer James The Spokesman-Review