Another day on the prairie

Women my age are called the sandwich generation, so I am told--taking care of both children and parents. My mother is 90 years old, a role model to me all of my life of both what I wanted to be and what I wanted to avoid being. She could be, simultaneously, arrogant and nurturing. She always thought she knew what was right and she loved us ferociously. My younger brother and I came to her late in her childbearing years, many years after my older brother had moved into the solitary existence of male adolesence.

These days my mother suffers from short and long-term dementia. I spent the afternoon with her today and our conversation largely consisted of discussing the length I would cut her hair and her swollen ankles. This is a woman who was lobbying Senator Fulbright against the Vietnam war in 1963, when most Americans didn't even know where Vietnam was, much less that we had troops acting as "advisers" there. I walked picket lines for fair housing with her in Kensington, Maryland, in 1964. Now, she can barely walk me to the elevator of her senior complex.

I try to take care of her and remember the woman that she has been, but it seems a cruel turn of fate that someone so vital should now have so little left to her. Yet, that is not fully accurate. The activities leaders at her residence say she is always participating and willing to engage in any activity, whether it is singing, playing dice or bingo, crafts or current events discussions. It's just that I can't talk to her the way I used to. I miss her, even her adamancy, her certainty that she is right.

Even so, if I can live half of the life that she has, I would feel that I have earned my time on earth. The tables have turned. Now, as she ruefully notes now and then, it is my turn to be the parent. I hope I am as good of a one to her as she has been to me.