Do you know her? AGING

My mother is getting old. Her eyes have already lost their glow. Her skin is yellowing, crinkling like faded newspapers. There are moments I believe she has a slight tremor in her hand and I worry, worry a lot, without mentioning it to her. Sitting with her and Dad at their dinner table, I can catch glimpses of them nodding to each other as if email was going back and forth under the table.

Mother still loves to cook. She can make and serve a bologna sandwich that will taste like a juicy burger. To have a bowl of soup, you will need a knife. Just about every imaginable healthy veggie goes in. To this day she saves the meat and bones for me. I like to suck out the marrow and have my claim in since I was a child.

It has reached the point that I can’t help noticing her grow shorter as her spine begins to curve. ‘Mother, do try to throw your shoulders back when you walk. You look so much better when you do,’ I tell her. Spit and vinegar pour from her lips and a sneer creeps from her mouth. Her green eyes turn to ice. ‘You mean I’m not pretty any more?’ she whines and then astonishes me when she bursts out laughing. ‘Daughter, I am not only getting old, I am old, but I still have my wits. My eyelids droop yet I can see most things without glasses and what I see is not pleasant.’

With that, Mother abruptly changes the subject. ‘How about helping me back an apple pie? I’ll put the dough together and you can roll it IF
you use the rolling pin that’s on the top shelf of the right hand kitchen cabinet. That was a wedding gift my mother got75 years ago,  and it is still good.’ ‘Mother, calm down. of course, I know that. You must have told me 500 times. Do you have enough juicy apples?’ The question riles her. ‘Would I ask you to help me make an apple pie if I didn’t have apples? There is a five pound bag, each apple carefully examined before I bought it, in the fridge. The peeler is where it always is. Let’s do it!

We do ‘do it’. We laugh, have fun but Mother can’t take the pie out of the oven. Her arms feel heavy. She looks frightened but not enough to stop her from telling me what to do. ‘Put the silver trivet on the counter before you take out the pie.’

‘Yes, Mother.’