A Phone Call with Mother

Last night I called Mother. I never know if I will catch her in a clear time or if I will have interrupted a nap and find her especially foggy. This time she started, as she often does, with "Oh, I'm fine- not doing anything." I said, as I often do, "Well, you deserve a rest, after all those years of caring for five children and a husband, and all the cooking and cleaning and teaching...It's like you've saved up vacation days!" She enjoyed that idea.

I told her about the hurricane and all the damage on the east coast and we got on the subject of storms. I always start slowly with the conversations to see if she is really up to complex ideas or if I should go directly to reminiscence, the safe route and always interesting anyway. "Do you remember when we went to see the movie of Carousel and the tail end of a tornado was roaring outside while they were singing 'When You Walk through a Storm" inside?" She didn't remember, but began commenting about all the severe storms we had in Michigan and that she had tried to protect us from the fear the adults were feeling. This led to her mother's many fears, especially of wind, since Grandma had grown up in Kansas.

I have been suffering the last few days from performance anxiety. I am going to finally be playing a concert after two months of unemployment, and the contractor is putting me on the first stand. It's no honor any more. I would rather sit a little further from the conductor and just do my job. There are a couple of little soloish lines to play, my hand hurts and I just want to keep life simple, but this is the reality.

So my 87 year old mother, not knowing all this, but maybe retaining a bit of her old mother's psychic instincts, began to talk about fear. "I learned not to worry. It does no good. I couldn't have stood up to sing in front of hundreds of people if I had let myself be anxious." She said she saw how anxiety had hampered her mother's happiness and determined not to have those attitudes. Of course, she may have happily inherited her father's much more relaxed temperament as well. Still, she also speculated that her marriage to our father had also encouraged her ability to live in the present and to deal with problems only as they arose, as a balance to his tendency to worry. She said his fears may have come from war experiences; I think along with an innately anxiety prone nervous system, that being responsible for supporting five children on a teacher's salary could be cause for worry. Whatever it was, she kept the equilibrium of the family, seeing to it that we had what we needed in musical instruments and lessons, clothes on sale and food on a budget, and found joy wherever she could. She sang as she shopped and scrubbed the floors and drove us around town. She laughed at any opportunity, snuggled babies, enjoyed friends and beautiful days. She gave our father friendship and support and their love was the anchor of our household.

This ability of hers to live serenely even as she has lost her husband, her career,her home, much of her health and much of the clarity of her mind is an inspiration to me. Her essence is the same as always. She is still my mother, still teaching me,still showing me the way.