tiny mistakes, tiny gestures

The first time, she kept asking her mother how she could help. She wanted to do something. She had forwarded her mother information about a local cancer support group. She had mailed her a book about the best diet for cancer patients. But her mother had never attended the group and she found the book on the hallway table where her mother kept things to re-gift. Who would she re-gift the cancer diet book to?

So, when her mother asked her to wash her hair in the kitchen sink because she wasn’t supposed to get the drain tube in her arm pit wet, she was surprised that she did not feel relieved to be finally helping. Her mother’s house was old, the kitchen sink knobs were fiddly. When you turned one knob one way, it was hot and the other knob another way, it was cold, or the reverse of that. She still doesn’t know which way they go. Her mother bent over the sink with a nubby towel draped around her neck. She gently pushed her mother’s head under the water and tried to adjust the water temperature. In her unease, she turned the knobs the wrong way. Her mother yelped and pressed her palm to her scalded skull. She saw her mother clench her teeth and say softly without looking at her, I’ll just do it myself.

The second time, almost 12 years later when the cancer came back again, she had been trying to convince her mother to take a bath. Her mother had always loved baths. The way their house was laid out, when she was young, if she was tucked into her little twin bed against the wall with her bedroom door open, and her mother was in the bathtub with the bathroom door open, they could see each other across the long hallway. She would watch her mother sink into the bath, her long lean frame folding neatly into the small porcelain tub. Her mother would settle against the back of the tub and look down the hall at her snug in her bed. Her mother would tuck her thumb into her palm and wave the other four fingers slightly toward her with a cupped hand near her face, and she would do the same tiny gesture back – an itty-bitty wave between mother and daughter, rooms apart.

It was hard to convince her mother about the bath now though. Her mother didn’t want to get wet, be cold, and didn’t know if she could get in, nor out. She had bathed a few days ago, her mother said, and people washed themselves too much these days. When she was growing up, they only had a bath once a week, her mother complained. Finally, she managed to convince her mother that the hot water would feel good. They got her in OK. Her mother’s body was now way past long and lean. It was skeletal. She turned her sadness down, way down, so it wasn’t there at all, really. She used the hand-held sprayer to wash her mother’s hair, this time with good warm water. Her mother leaned back against the tub and closed her eyes for a minute. She sat on the toilet, closer, so much closer (too close?) than her little twin bed, still there, down the hall. When it was time to get out, her mother surprised them both with her strength, saying, Wait, let me try, managing to somewhat awkwardly tuck one leg under herself, grasp the metal bar attached to the outer lip of the tub, and yank herself to standing with only minor under arm support. But as strong as her mother was, she was weak. She held in frightened tears, locked her breath. Just don’t break her, she admonished herself silently.

Here is where the scene slows down. She is toweling her mother’s body off. Her mother says, My feet. The tops of my feet. She looks down at her mother’s still beautiful feet and sees a scattering of water droplets along her tall arches. She bends down toward the droplets, and softly brushes the white towel across the top of her mother’s feet. As she stands, her mother yanks the towel from her, and bracing herself stiffly with one hand on the edge of the sink, stoops over to dry her own feet again saying, You got to get the tops of the feet really good. No one likes wet feet.

She couldn’t help her mother. It was unnatural. A mother is supposed to do the caring, not the daughter. This was their mistake. When they should have been waving their tiny wave to each other, they were trying, and failing, to cleanse their fear of impending loss. In the end, the real end, she bathed her mother’s body in warm water and lavender oil as she lay in her brass bed wrapped in Grandma’s flower garden quilt. A cello concerto blasted through the halls of the house. The beautiful music wafted from room to room.