Changing Roles Come With Age

When I was a very little girl, my mother wiped drool from my lips, combed snarls from my hair, and tucked me safely into bed. Now that my mother is a very old woman, I do the same for her.

Mine is a sporadic, time-limited care, not the night-and-day tending she once did for me. I am not that brave, and she is not my child. I remind myself of that second point whenever I rush to wipe spilt soup from her chin or lecture her on the habits of good hygiene.

After all, this is the woman who shot bears with her father, argued theology with a Catholic monsignor, and, as a widow with marginal job skills, put two kids though college. This is the woman who brought me into the world. And I am the woman who, if grace allows, will see her leave it. Last weekend, I saw the shadow of that future, ghostly grace.

She had come for her Thanksgiving visit, and true to tradition, had stuffed herself like a prized holiday bird, while pilfering cigarettes and sneaking wine. Yes, she knows smoking is bad for her. Very bad. And yes, she knows that wine plays havoc with her balance. Major havoc.

At 80, she knows a lot of things and three things she knows for sure are the pleasure of a “good smoke,” the taste of a fine wine and the thrill of reading a good book. All three are habit-forming, and two of them can kill you. Still, for her, a life without some pleasure, however deadly, is no life at all. And besides, in the big mall of her life, there are only so many more shopping days left.

Shortly after the dinner, Mom announced she was going to bed. She stood unsteadily on spindly crane legs and shuffled to the bedroom. I ran behind her, pulling her walker.

I thought it wise to stay with her, if only for moral support. She insisted I go, for pride’s sake. I reminded myself again that she is not my child and left the bedroom. I went to the study directly next door to her bedroom where I could watch her reflection in the adjacent windows. If she fell, I would be only steps away. An invisible means of support, a benevolent Peeping Tom.

She sat down on the seat of her walker, which I had placed strategically parallel to the bed, and proceeded to remove her knee-hi nylons. Slowly, gingerly, she reached down and tugged on the ends of the stocking, painstakingly working it down the length of her calf, past her cracked and crooked toes and finally completely off. She then flung the stocking, with no small amount of triumph, onto the bed table. Each stocking took about 10 minutes. Her pants took another 15. Exhausted, she decided to forgo her nightgown and wear her turtleneck sweater to bed.

The bed may as well have been Mount Everest. A pillowtop mattress, it presented a major maneuvering dilemma to her. I watched as she measured the bed’s height and distance against her ability to hold and launch her own weight. She straightened her small, sparrow-like shoulders and prepared for liftoff. She failed, falling back down onto the seat of the walker. She rested and tried again. On the third try, she succeeded.

Now, she was sprawled length-wise across the bed. Helpless as an upended turtle, she lay face down on the comforter. I left the study and ran to the bedroom, slowing my pace to a walk as I approached the bed. While I lifted and straightened her body, plumped her pillows and tucked in her blankets, she drifted off to sleep. Her lungs wheezed and rattled like the chains of Marley’s ghost. Then suddenly, she stopped breathing altogether.

I waited, holding my breath against time, hoping I could stop it from passing into a future I didn’t want to arrive. Waited. And this time, it worked. Like a stalled engine, my mother’s lungs snorted back to life.

As I watched her sleeping, I thought of all the old people in all the spare rooms of the world. I thought of the hard work of putting on a sweater, or taking off a stocking or walking on thin ice in the deep winter.

Maybe life grinds us down so eternity’s alchemy can render us to stardust. Maybe. One thing I know for sure. When I was a child, my mother taught me how much patience it takes to grow up. And now, she’s teaching me how much courage it takes to grow old.