Measuring Mother

a post for Mothers Day, 2009

My sisters and I are watching her.

We gauge every conversation, then report back on how our mother is doing. She's been slipping over the last year, and now she has our attention. She has become small, frail, and forgetful. She sometimes looks lost and irritated when we ask her questions to which she knows she should have answers. Her gate that used to leave even me, the youngest, in the dust has grown hesitant and small. We compare stories, how she has reacted or not reacted to what we say to her.

Our mother is a rock for her girls. Her sense of humor and a sometimes batty personality might have thrown someone off unless they ever did business with Little Mary. When it came to money she was savvy in her younger years. In old age that became thrifty. Now she seems to deprive herself of things like a full refrigerator or a hearing aid that any one of her children would gladly pay for if she would agree to have her ears checked.

So we wait. We wait for a sign that we must move in some direction, though not one of us knows what that action would be. Sometimes I feel she's fading, like a veil of fog is surrounding her, and then in an instant the sun shines through and there she is, being Little Mary, being herself, being my mother, and me being her daughter.