Do You Know Where Your Mother Is?

Yesterday afternoon I called my son.  I didn't get an answer and I didn't leave a message.  I knew that I wasn't going to be home for him to call me back.  He has caller ID, however, and he called back while I was enjoying myself at a drum circle.  It was late when I got home so I didn't bother to call him back. 

This morning I was at a SGI Buddhist district meeting and when I got home I had another message from my son.  "Where are you!!?  It is 10:00 in the morning."  I ate my lunch and called him back.  "There you are.  Where have you been?" 

Excuse me.  I was out having a life.  And I told him so.  I may be a grandmother but my butt is not stuck in a rocking chair. 

Then I called my mother.  She sounded rushed.  "What are you doing?"  I asked. 

"Waiting for my ride."  "Where are you going?"  "To play cribbage and I don't know when I will be home."

I had to chuckle.

There were times before my father got cancer that I didn't even know where they were.  They spent a few years traveling around the country in their RV and I had days when I would laugh and say to myself, "It is nine o'clock at night.  Do you know where your parents are?"  During the last few years, though, their life had become fairly sedentary.  They stayed close to home and after Dad was diagnosed with cancer Mom spent most of her days with him. 

My father died eighteen months ago and my mother has taken to widowhood as if her wings were just waiting to spread.  I know she misses him but she has blossomed. 

Now I never know when to call her.  She is either at this club or that card group or doing this or that for her church or going to lunch or having coffee or playing the slots at the casino on the reservation.  She is nineteen years older than I am and she has a bigger social life than I do. 

I am proud of her.  I know there are many women who become widows and fall into self pity and loneliness.  I am glad my mother is not one of them.  She visited my sister in Connecticut last winter and had so much fun at the Senior Center that she found an apartment and will be moving from her life long home in Wisconsin to be closer to her daughters and her new friends.  She is amazing. 

On those nights when I call and wonder where my mother is I am grateful because I know she is enjoying life.