ansley
I am the official town decorator. I know. I’m a big deal. Whenever the library needs new carpet or the museum’s reading room needs to be updated, I am the person they call. It was my first paying gig when we moved back to Peachtree. I donate a ton of my time, too, because in the laundry list of positions I fill, this is one of my favorites. It appeared that I would be adding another role to that laundry list: caretaker. It isn’t somewhere a mind ever wants to go. But I guess that at fifty-eight, with an eighty-three-year-old mother, I knew this was coming. Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow, but I had to have known that my mother wasn’t going to be able to live on her own forever.
I think that’s what hit me the hardest, realizing that her needing me, depending on anyone, was the beginning of the end. There was no question that my brother Scott got his independence from my mother. She was still living alone, cooking alone, driving alone. She still did her own grocery shopping and went to Zumba and walked her dog. Scott had taken the dog, much to my disappointment. But when I told Caroline that my mom was coming to stay, she had printed an article for me about a new study on how, while it was previously thought that dogs and humans couldn’t pass viruses and bacteria back and forth, they were now realizing that this wasn’t true—and dogs carry hundreds of viruses not usually found in humans.
I tacked one on the fridge, over hers, that said that children who grow up with dogs or cats have stronger immune systems—because they are exposed to hundreds of viruses not normally found in humans.
But honestly, despite how much I wanted a dog running around the house again, between the three daughters and the four grandchildren and now the mother, I had enough to take care of. So I let Caroline think she had won that one.
When I walked into the living room that morning, everything was quiet. Sloane was on the floor with Adam, sorting plastic animals by color.
“Wow!” I said. “Adam, you are so smart!”
He grinned up at me, plunking a green dinosaur beside the other green dinosaurs with enthusiasm.
“So you still think you’re going to do this homeschooling thing all the way through?”
Sloane nodded. “Absolutely. Then if Adam is transferred or deployed for a long time, I’m flexible. The kids won’t have to switch around to a bunch of different schools.”
Emerson walked down the stairs, eyes blurry, hair in a messy bun on top of her head.
Now that my mother was coming, Emerson had to move upstairs with the rest of us to make room.
I patted the couch beside me, and she snuggled up under my arm, head resting on my shoulder. She had always been my most affectionate child.
“That’s so good, Adam,” she said.
She smelled of perfume and alcohol.
“Aunt Emmy!” he shouted. “Watch this!”
She looked like she was resisting the urge to cover her ears. “How can Adam bear to miss this?” she asked. “How do you do it, Sloane? You are Superwoman.”
Sloane smiled. “This is what I chose, so I accept it. Plain and simple.” She shook her head. “But his twenty years are up in four more, and I sure do hope he chooses civilian life. This military stuff is a hard business.”
“Do you think he will?” I asked.
Sloane laughed. “Realistically? Not a chance. He loves it. It’s his passion.”
Caroline came in about that time. Except that Caroline doesn’t really come in. She makes an entrance; she arrives. She was all dolled up, her hair fixed, her makeup done. It was shocking to see her in wedges and a dress after a few weeks of lounging around.
“You look fantastic, sweets,” I said. “Where are you going?”
She looked at me like I was dense. “To pick up Grammy, obviously.”
“Yeah, girl. Work that driver’s license,” Sloane said, laughing.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Grammy has already been in one accident this month.”
Caroline shot me a look. “I’ll have you know that I got a perfect score on my driving test. I parallel parked for the first time with an eight-months-pregnant belly. So I don’t want any lip from any of you.”
I was so proud that my daughter was doing something selfless. I had been dreading having to leave this quiet morning with my grandson and daughters to go to the airport alone. Even though I joke about Caroline being difficult, I would be happy to have my firstborn all to myself for a little while.
And Mom would be thrilled. She and Caroline had always had a special bond, like Vivi and me. I don’t know how that happens, except that being a grandparent is like being a parent but with decades more perspective. I had felt guilty about Mom having to fly by herself, but Scott insisted that he couldn’t go, and Mom insisted that she didn’t need me flying there to come get her only to get right back on a plane to come home. “They have people for that,” she said. “They are paid to take care of old people like me.”
Mom and I had had our share of disagreements in the past, the largest, of course, that she wouldn’t let me come home when I needed her the very most. I never told her how I wished she would have been there more when my girls were young, taken a greater role in their lives. But she had raised her three children. She was finished. I think it was more of an internal struggle I had, a difference in how we parented, in that she continued on with her life and we fit in on the fringes where we could. I knew I would never be that kind of parent. And I wasn’t. Not even now that they were all grown up.
I remember thinking when I was young that there was no greater gift than losing yourself to raise your children. People complained and moaned about it, but to me, it was a privilege. I don’t regret one single day that I spent with them. I knew that this would be exactly the same thing. I would lose myself again, the self that I had clawed and scraped to recreate after Carter had died, but I would find something else in caring for my mother. Just like when my girls were young, I knew I would never regret one moment I had spent with her, would always cherish that I had been the one to get to be there for her final time on earth, no matter how long that time was. I knew already from being a mother that sometimes the days would be long. Some days would be hard, would wring me out, would lend me that tiredness I felt from the roots of my hair to the soles of my feet. But the years? They would be inexplicably too short. And so, even on the toughest days, I would be grateful. I had the gift of time. I had the privilege of more days to work through our differences, to say the things that so desperately needed to be said.
Emerson, Vivi, and I had done a yoga video that morning whose main theme was surrender. Life, we had been instructed, was as much about surrender as it was about control.
Surrender, I thought. It was a tricky thing. Letting go. Trusting another person more than you trusted yourself. Knowing he would be there for you. Believing that the universe would send you the right thing. When your husband is killed in a way so excruciating that you can’t bear to think of it, that you have nightmares of being burned, buried alive, suffocating on smoke for years and years and years, surrender is no longer in your vocabulary.
When you find out that someone you had trusted more than anyone else on the planet hadn’t bothered to let you in on the very real financial distress that was facing your family, letting go was a tricky concept.
But when your three daughters and four grandchildren were living under your roof, your eleven-year-old granddaughter mastering Warrior Two right beside you, and contrary to your fears, it was going swimmingly, and your old boyfriend came back and was living on his dump of a boat presumably to be near you, and your mother was coming back home and you didn’t know what to expect but you were less nervous than you thought, you start to think that maybe, just maybe, this surrender thing might work for you. Maybe you can learn to live your life in a different way, in a better way.
My phone beeped. Sandra. It was a group text to Emily and me. It was such a shocking change from nothing but my girls over the past few weeks, I almost did a double take. Don’t kill me . . . Did you see the Ladies Who Lunch previews for tonight?
I rolled my eyes. That was the last thing I would want to know about. That show is off limits in my house. And you know I don’t have a TV!
Emily: Even with all the kids??
Sandra: It looks like James dumps Edie . . . For Caroline.
Emily: She might want to see it. Maybe.
Sandra: We should watch first. Make sure it’s all aboveboard.
Me: James and Caroline are going out. I’m babysitting. Can’t come.
Sandra: We’ll come to you.
Emily: Gary will set it all up. Livestreaming.
I was going to be in so much trouble. Curiosity killed the cat, and I was only human. Curiosity was going to kill me if I didn’t figure out what this was all about. When Caroline burst through the door, I threw my cell phone across the counter.
She gave me a weird look. “Mom? You OK?”
“Oh, yeah.” I smiled, trying to look nonchalant. “I’m just nervous about Mom coming.”
She raised her eyebrows. “About Grammy coming? Or riding with me?”
I laughed, but really, riding with her was something to be nervous about.
I took a deep breath and followed her out the door. And it occurred to me that being a parent is one giant leap of faith.