5 Feet, 20 Years Apart
I wrote this in June 2022, when I was staying the month with Mom in Ohio. It was an awesome stay. I'm blessed I had it. She died that November. She was 88. Happy Mother's Day Mom. I miss you everyday!
They sit five feet and twenty years apart. Her hazel eyes still dance with a bit of mischief, but are tired and weary, impossible to hide the years of worry and toil and burden of motherhood. He’s twenty years behind her, her first and oldest with eyes that show their own worry and wear yet still hold a softness for most all she says.
She talks and talks in rambling disjointed circular monologues, mostly starting a conversation with distant details of convoluted context and quickly snaps at questions about her intent with ‘Well, let me finish. I’m trying to tell you!’ It’s frustrating and frequently infuriating but he takes a breath, reminds himself of the twenty-year difference and attempts to acquiesce. They’re five feet apart on her front porch, sitting in wide armed white wicker chairs, sharing a bottle of rose, a bowl of olives, a board of cheese and hummus and carrots, pita chips, and pepper salami that she’s convinced will be too spicy and make her choke, plus the wine’s too cold for her COPD throat. Along with her concern about salt in the salami and acid in the thin slice of backyard tomato she just ate, she doesn’t understand how anyone could vote for that man, what the Supreme Court was thinking when it overturned Roe, or why her geraniums look so lousy when just a week ago they were gorgeous, full and vibrant red. ‘Look at those plants over in Carol’s yard, just bursting,’ she says, then adds, ‘I think someone’s dog peed on mine.’ She sips the rose. He just stares into her hazel eyes and doesn’t know what to say. It’s the silence in such conversations that seem to un-nerve her, the void an unknown she wants to fill before it gets too big and engulfs her. He wonders about her partial and her sunken cheeks, her thinning hair, worries about her balance and lack of it, her waning sense of adventure and fear about nearly everything outside her door beyond her porch. He worries about how much time she spends watching CNN and her special daytime show and how little time she spends in the sunshine and breathing fresh air. She waters the fern, deadheads the sad geraniums, and notes with glee all the buds and blooms on her hostas. He stares into her hazel eyes and knows it’s wise to let her go, let her meander through her days not to his projected expectations but to her priorities and shifting motivations. She sips her rose and cracks a mischievous smile: ‘Let's have another slice of that tomato.’
The best Mother’s Day narrative I read
Hope dc rendezvous works out
You are truly blessed to have had that time with your mother, Rich