Mom & Me Journals Histories: 1999 - 2001

    Different subject. My mother and I were doing errands yesterday [I got her out! Maybe it's easier for "mothers" to get mothers out than it is for daughters to get mothers out.], talking a lot, generally having a good time, and something happened that triggered a realization for me. She has a life-long habit of checking herself in the passenger side mirror off and on throughout any trip. She was amusingly vain when she was much younger, before I got to know the aspects of her that weren't my mother which, I think, happened when I was pretty young because she worked and since she was a teacher I often saw her at work. One of her perpetual comments when she looks in the passenger mirror is "Look at all the wrinkles I'm getting!" She isn't getting any more, nor, I think, are the ones she has getting any deeper. But hearing her say this today set me to thinking about how we all imagine ourselves. I was wandering the topic of self-image, specifically what might happen to one's self-image as one becomes much, much older, and why, and I stumbled across this: I think it might be a boon to many people of advanced age to have caretakers or close, attentive relatives who remember what they were like at several different stages of their life. We all imagine ourselves differently than others image (purposeful change in word form) us. But when there are people in our lives whose image of us includes large stretches of time and many changes our sense of who we are remains much more elastic and encompassing than if we are surrounded by people who only know us as "old". I realize that in some cases these long term relationships, emotionally volatile as they are, can also be restricting and that the people who are involved in them can inadvertently refuse to recognize who we are now to our detriment. But when long term relationships like this work for the old, I think it may be because there is a fullness to the unspoken images surrounding us that allows us more movement in any direction. Not that "new" relationships aren't good for the old. They have extraordinary value in that I think they allow wider present movement. I see this, often, when my mother is relating to her hairdressers, to people she's only known as an older adult, to strangers in the supermarket, etc. I think, though, there is immense value in being surrounded often by benevolent people who project onto one a range of years of identity fluctuation.

    Back to the less rarefied air. Speaking of identity, I am Gail this morning. I'm still slightly off kilter from having been my mother's mother last night but this could be because I'm sleep deprived from having stayed up to see if my identity was the only aspect of reality my mother was hallucinating. I guess being a mother's mother is something I'll be "growing" into.

    My mother just went to bed. Part of her bedtime ritual involves The Little Girl discovering she's in bed, heading into the bedroom, spending a few minutes roaming the room then jumping up on the bed, having a good night conversation with my mother, going to the bottom of the bed and settling down on the fleece blanket. My mother always calls me in at some point in this ritual because The Little Girl's bedtime routine thrills her so and she likes to share the thrill. So when Mom goes to bed I keep my ear cocked for her call of, "Gail...Gail," and head in. Tonight, she called, "Mother...Mother..."
    I was startled. I went in, not sure who I was going to be. As it turned out, by the time I appeared in her room I was Gail again. I thought about whether to even mention her call for her mother to her then decided, yeah, why not, maybe making her aware of these things as she does them helps her in some way; not to revert back to what I think of as reality but helps her keep in touch with the fact that she's still here dealing with people in a reality somewhat different from hers. Maybe doing this even allows her to accept it, appreciate it and go with the flow. My mother has always liked the objective perspective.
    So I asked her if she realized she'd just called me "mother".
    "I did?" she said, her brow wrinkling in confusion.
    "Yeah, Mom, you did." I laughed, making sure it was an easy laugh.
    I remembered mentioning to you that I was glad I hadn't become her mother because her relationship with her mother was distant. So I said, "Well, if I'm going to be your mother I hope our relationship is better than yours was with your mother."
    She took this in stride. "It's already better than my relationship with my mother was."
    I can't tell you how gratifying it was for me to hear this.
    "O.K. So, I guess I'm your mother now," I said.
    "And I'm yours."
    "I wonder what the geneticists would make of that."
    My mother laughed. "They'd say, 'It figures, those Hudson women, way out there alone, no men around, you just never know.'" This was a reference to a quote from her mother, who, as she was slipping into senility, remarked anxiously to my Aunt Jean about my mother's living circumstances, "It's just not right, women way out there [in Mesa], alone, without any men."
    I laughed.
    My mother turned out her light.
    I'm her mother, now. God, LTF, I didn't think this would happen yet.

    Yeah, I did stay up a little late. I started another period [I don't think of them as "my" periods, anymore, because I never know when I'm going to have one.] yesterday, although I've known for a couple of weeks it was coming. Everyday for a couple of weeks I've thought that "today" was going to be the day. Well, yesterday was it and it felt like my body's been working up to it for a couple of weeks and threw a blowout celebration, yesterday, to commemorate it's ability to produce one more period. I'll be glad when my body forgets it's supposed to have these things. Anyway, I finally started feeling halfway decent last night.
    Mom stayed up late last night and read a book I had bought and read for the bookclub a couple of months ago, The Bonesetter's Daughter. I really liked it. Mom likes it so much she can't put it down. I think you'll like it, too. I'll send it to you but not today. Mom's still reading it so I'd have to send Mom, too, and you know how she feels about traveling now.
    Nothing extraordinary is happening here although last night we got a call from a man named Paul Edwards. Apparently sometime this afternoon Mom decided to call MPS and forgot to use the area code (I think, lately, she's been thinking she is in Mesa). Anyway she tried three times and all three times she got this guy. Since I wasn't in the dining room when she did it I don't know how her side of the conversations went. Apparently she asked for MPS a couple of times. When Paul and I finally sorted out what happened I promised him I would make sure she didn't call his cell phone again. So, I asked Mom if, from now on, when I'm here, if she decides to make a call that she have me dial it.
    You know, it's funny but it actually is a lot easier on me that I was here before all of this began and it's happening "only" bit by bit. This way I'm not thrown quite so badly by the successive taking over of the small chores needed to maintain her life that we "forget" to do as we move beyond this life.