Lost in Transitions

I will make no deals with the devil, despite this crossroads I find myself upon.  Too cross-hatched are these days--as parent and daughter--for me to commit to a particular junction at which to sell my soul.  And so, I tighten my proverbial belt instead (having been belt-less since months before my birthing years), and ready myself for the ride.

Steadying myself for the words that I will form next week, as I mold them into sentences that feel more like Sentences.

"Where is your will located?"  "Do you wish to be cremated?"  "Who is your lawyer?"  "Who else has the keys to your safe deposit box?"

And my mother--whose synapses have slowed and whose lovely hands have grown knobby--will become child for the duration of our conversation, as her children gather up the legal and financial and emotional history of the woman who has raised them.  These are the necessary burdens of life lived in the 21st century, when our digital detritus wafts ever ocean-ward, and we lose sight of the trails along the way.

With good luck and tender care, our mother, who is simply old, will continue to be simply old for many years to come.  But that does not mean we can afford to know nothing of these cold details of her life.  And so, we must ask her to share them with us, even as we recognize their coldness, their steely edges that care not a whit about their possessor.

Afterwards, our heads aswirl and our stomachs filled with cheese pizza, we will leave her apartment, embarrassed to have asked all those questions, one right after another.  And each of us will go home to our own lives, slipping them on again like jeans, too tight, wondering why they do not feel like they once did, comfortable and easy.

And, soon enough, I will don a new costume--that of "mom,"--thumbing through baby books filled with chubby, young versions of Allison and Eric, wondering how I will put on the right face as each packs up their lives and heads to new realms.

Much of life is faking it, pretending to be a competent parent or child, a good teacher or neighbor, and holding our breath in hopes that the jig is not up.  Not yet, at least. 

It is both odd and wonderful that, despite all of the costume changes, most of us wake up each day happy to have another act before us.