Mommy

It doesn't help that over the phone she is telling her friends she'll stay until the first part of September. The first part, if I do the math, ends on September 15th. My mother in law is here, visiting, I thought, for a week. I'm certain she said a week. I would remember that, because I like her, but she makes me nervous. We are in an unnatural pause in our marriage, a hovering of sorts, as I learn how to be related to someone else.

I do not call her Mom.

My mother was devout. Had we lived in the Ozarks (is Meford in the Ozarks?) she would have been considered a zealot, a snake-handling faith-healer. Mom was a cheerleader, a rally girl from North Bend. She hated cats, heights and the coast. She took in strays and could dance the Charleston but couldn't change a light bulb for fear of electricity. I don't think she expected it to catch on quite like it has. She had faith in Jesus and the curative power of vinegar and raised five children on 200 dollars a month. Wild children. Bad children. She never expected my father to die, which he did, too too soon. And once he was gone, she didn't expect to live so long. She taught me how to pack and move. We lived in four houses on the same street. She wore her poverty like a ragged crown. Insisted on it. There were times she lived in a car and refused gifts--considered them evidence of worldliness -- the greatest sin.

This woman in my house, this new mother, is modern. I don't get it. There are no soft edges. No comfort. No lap for bouncing the grandkids. I doubt she knows all the nursery rhymes or the names of flowers. She has an IRA and a will that is on our coffee table. She is very organized. She rarely moves.