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Trading Places Bonds Mother, Daughter

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 23, 2007

My mother is in her ninth decade. That makes my own age look like a typo when I'm asked to write it on a page and sound like an outright lie when I speak it.

The truth is that she is old. And I am old. But through her eyes I am still her baby, at times six months old and rarely more than eight or nine years.

And in my view she is in her 40s, wearing ragged tennis shoes and walking me down a red dirt road to the bus stop.

In that dream, I am comfortable with the roles we played.

Nowadays things aren't quite so clear.
Fourteen years ago, I drove 1,200 miles to bring her to Florida. I had no plan and should have been worried, but I didn't have time. I was just plowing through a bunch of muck to get to what I hoped would be the sunnier side of both our lives. I needed a sign and found one, both literally and figuratively when we moved to a very old stucco building at the corner of Springtime and Sunset, me on the top floor and her in a downstairs corner unit.

Since then, the roles have been changing. Back and forth and back again.

For my childhood and most of my adult life, my mother's main concern and the focus of almost all our conversations was her asking if I was warm, fed and safe from harm. That made me angry - didn't she trust I could take care of myself?

She's never stopped asking me questions like those, despite all sorts of proof that I am warm, fed and safe. But now I am asking her similar sorts of questions. Things like, "Is your front door locked?

"Did you take your medicine? How are your bowels today?" Yes, dear readers under 40, one day you'll need to talk about such things.

Once, when I was around five years old, Mama watched me run out of the doctor's office when I heard the nurse say I'd be getting a shot in my rear. I don't recall Mama dragging me back in. So now, if she chooses not to take her medicine, what can I do?

Suggest, cajole, rant and rave, or all of the above?

I'm not so good at letting things be, especially when I am certain letting things be will hurt her. And me.

She makes me crazy in other ways, too.

Like when she not only listens to but heeds the advice she's gotten from who knows who about a subject I consider myself if not an expert on, then at the least very well-informed. And Lord knows, if it's a man, she's doubly apt to listen! I'm told that's a generational thing, but I have my doubts. Like any daughter, right?

I worry about con men and women trying to sell her time shares and hurricane windows. She worries that an Internet boogie man will come after me.

I don't have children, which in addition to that making me an expert on how others should raise theirs, gives me more time to worry about, nag and boss her.

Mama lets me do that without fussing back from time to time.

We look out for each other. That can mean asking uncomfortable, pestering questions full of all sorts of room for misunderstandings and hurt feelings.

It is simple if I let it be. We don't always listen to each other and rarely do we take the other's advice explicitly and immediately. We say stupid things, and then we say we're sorry. And sometimes our motivations are not always unselfish.

But if she wants to send me home with an extra blanket, or fry me up a pan of chicken, I won't mind. I can save my lecture for another day.

Sandra Webber is a freelance writer living in Clearwater.

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