Happy Mother's Day?

We had a quiet Mother's Day around here. I guess so, children all flown (including me... away from my own mother). But I heard from both of my children and I gave my mom a call.

Hmm. My mother is 90. For more than 30 years we have called back and forth each week or month and would chat on the phone for over an hour. Think how much money the phone company has made off of us! But gradually those telephone calls became few and far between.

This is one of the ways I evaluate my mother's aging process. Whereas we used to have to pull ourselves away from the phone, there came a time when neither of us seemed to have any news. My excuse was that my children were gone and there is only so much you can tell someone about cats. My mother gradually ran out of things to tell me too. A new jigsaw puzzle. Book titles she was reading. Friends she had visited. But jigsaws became too difficult. Book pages she would read over and over. And at 90... not too many friends left...

It was painful for me to answer the same questions in the same telephone conversation.

"Now, HOW many cats do you have? Six?! That's too many! How did you ever get six cats?"

And those repeated questions would come at shorter and shorter intervals and our telephone conversation shortened to 30 minutes, then 15 and recently when I hang up the phone I realize I've only talked to her 10 minutes or less.

But on Mother's Day I'd better give her a call. She wasn't at "home" when I dialed but I caught her at my brother's house (20 steps away!)

We chatted a few minutes and I answered her same questions. When I asked for family news, my mother kept relaying my inquires to my sister-in-law. Finally she said,

"Why don't you just talk with Marcy. She can tell you all that."

It seems that telephone chatting is getting to be a trial for my mother these days...

Ah well, hang-in there Mom! Tetsu and I will be visiting in July and hopefully we can get in a lot of in-person chatting.

*************************

Tetsu and I did visit HIS mother for Mother's Day. Obaachan is 88 and she lives alone in a little apartment and is not very happy. She had called and said she was feeling too badly to have visitors so please not come, but that is what she says every week and to NOT visit your mother on Mother's Day when you CAN, would be a terrible flaunting of filial duty.

Tetsu bought his mother some sweet potatoes and eggs for Mother's Day. Not exactly the same realm of flowers and handkerchiefs but the thought is the same. (Tetsu's mother specifically said that flowers were too hard for her to care for and she hated all the useless stuff that she had accumulated.) Though she perked up enough to sit and chat with us she DID NOT want her picture taken.


So this is my rendition of 'mother and son' in poor lighting photography.