Which Way Are We Going?

I'm on the Cape to visit with my mother, perhaps for the last time.

The lovely woman who is our village postmistress, Rosi, lost her mother suddenly the other day. A heart attack. Rosi's Mom never regained consciousness once she was stricken. Rosi, whose attachment to her family is strong, never had the chance to say good-bye. Or if she did, she can't be sure her mother heard.

When I was growing up, my Mom and I had a very difficult time getting along with one another. I realize now, at the age of 60, that our difficulty didn't necessarily lie between us but was, instead, intrinsic in our different relationships with my father.

Dad could be kind, he could be funny, which is why I know my Mom fell in love with him. But he spent too much time as an adult curled up at the bottom of a bottle. I protested. Oh hell, let's be honest. I screamed—at the top of my lungs.

But I was just one child among eight, and Mom, as she saw it and as her character inclines her, needed to protect all of her chicks. I thought she should leave Dad, and said so.

She said she knew that about me, that I would never have tolerated her situation in life. "But that wasn't my choice," she said.

After Dad died in 2002, Mom and I suddenly had a chance to face one another as adults and relate in that way. I know I didn't realize it at first, and I doubt she did either. But our relationship changed.

This past spring, before she became too weak to hold the phone so we could talk, she told me that she thought of me as one of her best friends, that she could pick up the phone and talk to me about anything at all.

What a remarkable gift I've been given.