My mom and I took a weekend trip to the coast. Although hardly uncommon, it’s the best I can do right now.
As we sat eating orange sticks of licorice along the banks of the Savannah River, she told me stories of her childhood. I had them all memorized as she’s told them a hundred times. But I listened again as if I’d never heard them because she enjoys reminiscing.
I bit off both ends of my licorice and dropped it into a cold bottle of Coke to use as a straw. She did the same, but forgot to hold on to it and it fell to the bottom, fizzing.
We spent the following steamy afternoon walking under the Spanish moss at Bonaventure Cemetery. My mother loves cemeteries as she used to go to them with her mother when she was a young girl in England. I watched as she stopped to take pictures at the elaborate headstone of a stranger. She paused at one that had a marble birdbath and smiled at a robin that was splashing around in a shallow pool of water.
“Can we just go to one more section?” she asked when she thought I wanted to leave.
When I’m with her, I often feel as if I’m the parent, watching her get excited over little things. At times I get the urge to tell her this, but I restrain myself. I’m getting better at letting her be, whatever that is. She has surely done that for me. I can’t ignore a sense of guilt that presses upon me when I think of all the times I took her for granted and all the things I haven’t been able to do for her.
As I get older, I treasure these moments and I appreciate her presence in my life more than I ever have before. Every sentence, every gesture and every silly joke is recorded in my mind because someday, I might need to share these stories. I’m very fortunate to have them.
