I miss my mother.

Twenty-nine years ago this fall, I drove from my home, then an hour south of Knoxville, TN, to Cleveland, OH, a trip of at least ten hours. I took with me my oldest son, who was then two. During this visit home, my mother and I took him to pick apples at an orchard I’ve known since my childhood, Kiraly’s in Ashtabula. Just thinking of this place in my mind’s eye, I can almost smell the sweet, tart scent of the Cortland apples grown there, remember long ago visits with my then young parents, my whole family, when we filled bushels with apples my mother stored in our cellar coal bin and later made into apple sauce and pies.

Twenty-nine years ago, the day was perfect for apple picking–one of those gorgeous Indian summer days, dew on the grass in cool mornings, blue, cloudless skies, golden sunlit afternoons, the last lazy bees on the bruised fallen fruit, the distillation of all these factors into one crisp, scintillating, and memorable experience of time. My mother was 56 and I was 29. Before we left Kiraly’s, my mother changed my son’s diaper in the car. Then we drove to Erie, PA, where my grandmother, my mother ’s mother, lived in a group home. We called my grandmother Muma (pronounced Muh-muh).

I had last seen Muma after I graduated from college, 5-8 years earlier. On this occasion, my mother and I took Muma to Miller’s, a restaurant in Lakewood that no longer exists. Miller’s was famous for its sticky rolls, generously brought around to your table throughout your meal. My mother must have begun to see signs of deterioration in Muma’s memory. She repeated things. I later learned she’d become ill with pneumonia because she hadn’t been eating right, and then heard about her move to the group care home in Erie, about two hours from Lakewood.

When we visited Muma there, I felt shocked at her appearance. The skin of her neck seemed to have loosened, and now sagged in thick folds under her chin. In a voice unrecognizable to me, a voice that sounded unhuman, Muma asked a caretaker for coffee, and receiving some, drank it in a few gulps, rocking back and forth, before she asked for more. I wouldn’t say she looked at us, but that she alternately gaped, looked away, rocked some more, and gaped at us again. I stared in disbelief while my son eyes, though wary, gazed at her nonjudgmentally as a child does. My mother wanted Muma to meet him, the first of 16 grandchildren my parents would claim in the following years.

She said, “Muma, this is Annie, your granddaughter, and this is her son Max.”

Muma stopped rocking momentarily, looked at me, and said, “She’s too young to have children.” Then she looked away, and continued rocking, forgetting us.

My mother shook her head and said, “You just don’t know what a difficult life she’s had. My God. You can’t imagine.”

I didn’t know. I knew she’d been orphaned in Poland at age 8, eventually came to the US, married a musician who was probably bipolar and sometimes abusive to her. He didn’t always give her enough money to run a household of four children on a farm, and so she, without knowing English, eventually went to work in a factory. My mother in turn idolized a big family that lived nearby who seemed to have the unity, happiness and warmth that was lacking at home, where, although she loved and admired him dearly, she learned to steer clear of her erratic father. 

I’m now 56. My oldest son is 29. My mother is 85 and in the final stages of her battle with dementia. She doesn’t know me or any of my siblings anymore. She often refuses to walk, eats and drinks less and less. I’m not sure what prompted me to write about this exact apple picking memory, because I only just discovered that I am now the age she was then. Twenty-nine years have passed like a blink. I’m not exaggerating. My life has been abundantly full, with all life’s joys and sorrows. I’m left, not regretting, but wishing one could somehow pay total attention to life as it happens, at each instant, in order appreciate everything. 

I once told my mother of this wish, particularly in regards to the time I spent with my two children, my wish to somehow remember and appreciate everything. 

She said, “Oh. I think that forgetting saves you so you can survive and go on living day to day. Otherwise your heart would break.”

Yes. She was right. I never credited her for her insights, mostly aquired by living.

I miss my mother as I knew her. Full of life and energy, constantly working, spirited, keenly intelligent. Sometimes irrational, like me. She never complained about the cards life dealt her. She welcomed all, especially, if perhaps unwisely, strangers. Curious. Moving all the time. Rarely asleep.

Much of this blog will be about her.