Mothering Heights

It's a life-long relationship

Friday afternoon I left work early and went to see my 95-year old mother. She’d received a refund from the IRS that was a physical check and somebody needed to take it to the bank and deposit it for her. This is not something she can do for herself any more.

With my mother in 2025

I don’t always know which mom will be there when I arrive.

This time she was lost in her teenage years of the 1940s. She sang me songs and warned me that “mother” wouldn’t like it if she caught me with my elbows on the table (she confuses me with her younger sister—we have the same name). I guess it could seem scary, but it was fun to hear her relive her teens.

I felt sad, though, because she was scared of the teenage boys at the corner store where she used to ride her bike in the summers, when her family stayed at their beach cottage. I knew exactly where she was talking about, because we used to go there too, 30 or so years later. She told me how the owner had a hook instead of a hand, and her parents told her not to stare at it or ask about it, but, she said, he was very clever and when he was pumping gas he would show them all the things he could do with his hook, saying it was almost as good as a hand. I asked her if she knew how he had been injured and she didn’t, so we speculated it had been in the first World War. Or the second, I supposed.

We had dinner together and talked for about three hours. She was very dreamy and would change topics often. She kept singing a song from 1943, “They’re Either Too Young or Too Old,” the first verse of which is

They’re either too young, or too old

They’re either too gray or too grassy green

The pickings are poor and the crop is lean

What’s good is in the army

What’s left will never harm me

She was taken with the slant rhyme of “army/harm me” and would repeat it and exclaim how funny and clever it was. She said she would have liked to have been a lyricist, then mentally wandered into an alternate reality where she was a lyricist and her husband (or maybe her father) helped her write songs. I was surprised by this, as she’d never shown any interest in writing song lyrics before. I knew my father didn’t write music.

I’m not always sure how to react when my mother goes off on these fantasy tangents. I think you’re not supposed to tell people with dementia (although my mother’s diagnosis is officially “age-related cognitive decline,” which is not the same thing) that they aren’t remembering things properly so I asked her about what songs she would want to write and she quickly returned to praising the “army/harm me” rhyme.

Another topic she would return to several times was “why didn’t anyone tell me I was smart? I always got straight As, I liked to read books, I went to Oberlin, why did I think I was stupid?” Then she would say “I guess I was just trying to make myself small. Why did I do that?” I joined in and told her “I always knew I was smart, it was hard to miss, but I do wish I had known I was pretty.” She laughed and said “oh, I always knew that.” Which is the first time I ever heard her admit it. My mother’s previous narrative of her youth was that she was fat and slow and everyone else was smarter and prettier, especially her younger sister. I always have suspected that my mother had more self-confidence than she ever let on.¹

My mother has always been reticent. Whenever she gets in this semi-confessional mood, I always hope she will reveal some of her secrets, but so far she hasn’t told me anything I didn’t already know. Encouraged by her unusual openness, I tried to turn the conversation to how much my father had made,² but no luck. She indignantly said that other girls she’d grown up with knew AND TOLD how much money their fathers made but she would never do that. “But would you tell me how much money my father made?” “No, you don’t need to know. We were always comfortable. He took good care of us.”

She asked me if I thought I had a good childhood. That’s a difficult question to answer. I know, though, that it’s very important to my mother that I say yes, so I tell her that I always felt very safe and secure. And I did, within the immediate family circle. I didn’t even know what kind of bad things might happen to children, other than their parents being very disappointed in them for being impolite. I knew parents could die, because my mother’s mother had died at 45, but I didn’t think it could happen to me.

When it got to my usual bedtime, I was tired. Mom is a night owl who likes to stay up, so I apologized to her for not being able to keep her company. She said it was fine, as long as I said goodbye before I left on Saturday. She said “I think someone once left without saying goodbye, and I didn’t feel good about it.”

I always tell my mother I love her as often as possible, so I can hear her say “And I love you” back to me.

The next day I got up early. L, mom’s weekend caregiver, was awake and gave me tea, fruit, and two hard-boiled eggs she had just made for herself. I protested that I didn’t want to take her breakfast but she laughed and waved her hand dismissively. “I have more eggs.” She told me that my mother had been awake most of the night, watching TV. L feels she has to stay with her in case she falls (this has happened before). Though if she does fall, all L can do is call 911. I asked her when she was going to get to sleep and she replied “Now your mother will sleep in bed until three and I will sleep in the chair next to her.” In response to my surprised expression, she shrugged and said “This is how we live.”³

I used GPS to get to the bank, which is in the neighboring small city. There was very little traffic, early-ish on a Saturday before the shops were open. The route took me through the town center and then along twisting residential back roads, approaching the bank from behind, past the wholesale furniture and parts depots on the side road. I was there by 9 am. Nobody was around except the teller and the manager.

Everything went smoothly. I got back to my car and texted my sisters a picture of the deposit slip with the caption “Mission accomplished!”

I returned via the same route. There was a lot more traffic, even though it was less than an hour later. I detoured slightly and went around the town center, past the 18th century church I grew up attending. I wanted to go along the top of the ridge, so I could break out of the trees and be in the sun. There’s a good view of the reservoir, which belongs to the neighboring small city.⁴ There are some small estates and fancy houses and it’s nice to drive that way sometimes. I passed several houses where I used to babysit in my teens. I don’t know who lives there now.

When I got home, both my mother and L were asleep. I decided to leave instead of waiting for my mother to wake up, since I had a lot of things to do back home and tickets for a choral concert at 4 pm. I felt bad about not saying goodbye, but I also knew she would probably not remember, especially since my youngest sister and her spouse would be arriving around one and she would be excited and distracted to see them.

I hope it didn’t leave my mother with a bad feeling, even so.

News from Veronica

She’ll be back in moments

She was very fussy this morning, wandering around and crying. Offered food or water, she would eat or drink a little and then return to pacing and mewing. She would ask to go out and then want to come back in minutes later. I asked my husband what he thought was going on and he said “she’s sleepy and wants to take a nap but doesn’t know how to settle herself.” Sure enough, I found her making herself a nest in the bedclothes a bit later. She’s probably still there.

1. To do otherwise would be to show off

2. Money was never, ever mentioned in my childhood, except to say we couldn’t afford things. You can see how I might have gotten the wrong idea.

3. We’ve tried hiring people to stay with her at night and she hates it. She doesn’t like waking up to “see a stranger staring at me.” Our solution, suggested by the caregivers themselves, is to hire people to do errands and stay with my mother while she sleeps during the day, so her regular caregivers can catch up on their rest.

4. All the houses in my hometown get their drinking water from wells.