Permission To Take Over In Her Absence

Maybe a month ago my mom called me.  Not unusual.  She had a specific reason for this call.  Not unusual either.  The subject matter was introspective and serious with an edge of humor underlying the entirety.  Also not so very unusual.  It was, however, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of call between an ageing mother and her responsible adult daughter.

In a nutshell, I was given implicit and explicit instructions to mother her as the years go by.

At 72, mom has had plenty of time to witness the unfolding of years, decade by decade, in the generations which came before her.  This includes her own very active and dynamic mother, my grandma, who turns 90 this very month.  She also resides in, and part-time manages at, an apartment complex populated with primarily elderly residents. 

A string of recent incidents in her building, coupled with a tense driving experience with her mother at the helm during a visit earlier this year, spurred my mom into ruminating over her own situation and the multiple ways in which she could possibly change in the coming season of her waning life.

"I want you to promise to bring any odd behaviors to my attention.  You have my permission to do so, even if I am stubborn or disagree with you," she said in all seriousness.  "So-and-so in apartment # such-and-such was lifting her television onto a chair and she 98 years-old!"  She even promised to sign a contract stating as much to prove she brought this up, in case she ever tried to protest my recollection of this momentous call.  We chuckled, for sure, but we both knew it for what it was: the parent will one day become the child and the child will usurp the role of parent.

For now, mom's acumen is sharp and her memory clear enough to prevent fires in her living space.  Sure, she forgets the teapot on the stove now and again.  And, her stories have a tendency to ramble once in awhile.  But I'm thirty-two years her junior and have flipped those particular switches more than a time or two myself!  (Reminds me of the story of one woman in her building who pushed her refrigerator in front of her apartment door to keep out the riff-raff -- her door opens to an inside hallway in a small two-story building with a locked main entrance -- and insisted if a blaze ever occurred, she could tie her sheets together and shimmy out the window.  She's on the second floor.  Oh, it's the same lady of 98 years I mentioned earlier.)

There will come a day -- and it had better knock loudly -- when I will have to ask for the keys to her champagne-hued Park Avenue sedan and listen patiently as she regales me with recycled tales she does not remember telling just a few moments before.

It's the least I can do for her. 

And if I'm being honest, the picture of her possibly attempting a window escape with her crisp bed linens strung together in a homemade rope is a wee bit humorous.  Especially since she lives on the first floor.