Forget About Breakfast in Bed: Bathe Your Mother!

I was hard on my mother. I judged her ferociously, starting from when I was about two. I was furious with her for having another baby so soon after I was born—only a little more than a year. She was pregnant when I was four months old. I felt the full force of this betrayal when I had a baby four months old. I was looking down at him in the crib one day and I walked straight to the phone, called her, and said, how could you? She didn’t say so, but now I think she must have felt the same thing. How was she going to manage two children who couldn’t walk? How was she going to get two children and bags of food up and down the steps of an apartment building in West Philadelphia? How was she going to breathe again?

I used to be disgusted by the fact that she had a physical body. When I saw her naked my soul would shrivel. Now I have nothing but compassion for her old body. It has been through a lot. I want it not to trip her up anymore, no more cancer or heart problems, no more joint issues, nothing that requires surgery or hospitals or pain. I want her to feel as well as she wanted me to feel when I was a baby. She is highly skilled at caring for babies and dogs. When I brought home a baby less than five pounds after a withering stint in the NICU, I was too scared to bathe the tiny creature. My mother had no problem lowering him into a sink and moving a warm cloth gently over his skinny, wrinkly limbs. I’d seen her wash babies before, siblings and grandchildren, but her washing my baby brought back my own sense memories. Being bathed by her, handled by her, was safe and felt good.

A situation arose last fall where I had to bathe her. At first I balked, petrified by that old horror of her physical reality, but her helplessness and need got me over myself. What I didn’t expect was that it got me really over myself, and delivered me to a place of love and compassion for her I never before felt. Quite the contrary…we circled each other with suspicion for decades, suspicion and competition, the deadly combo that affects so many parents and children. I wanted her to just be my mother and cheer me on, but I arrived too early in her life, when she wasn’t ready to give up being her father’s pride, when she still wanted to be cosseted and cared for herself. Now twenty-two year olds seem very young and aren’t expected to behave as grown ups—at least not in the world I live in. Now I can imagine her sense of loss and frustration when I was the new girl on the block and she had to focus on protecting me.

In spite of always feeling hurt by her, I sought her attention. I wanted to make her laugh. I wanted her to take a walk with me, or play a game with me, or take a drive. Anything. There was a year when she played backgammon regularly with the daughter of a friend of hers. I can still feel the pain that caused me, and how very much I wished I were that girl. Our mothers arouse so many complicated feelings. I hated her! So why did I wanted her to play with me? Did I let her know? Or did I expect her to read my mind on the subject?

My mother did a lot of crummy things to me. In return I withheld approval. There were so many things about her to admire, but a lot of the time I kept my awareness of her many gifts to myself. My mother is one of those rare people who is good at everything. She has an artistic flair that brightens her environments, even now in assisted living. That artistry guided her arm when she played tennis or golf—she was effortlessly good at sports. People always liked her, and she had many friends. Now she doesn’t want new friends, but she is making them anyway. She’s an attractive person with a smile people want to see.

One of the worst days of my life was the one when my own child decided—no more cuddling. I knew in a vague way that that day might come, or should come, or something would happen to end childhood. But I didn’t prepare for it. It caused me an enormous amount of grief to lose the physical contact, but of course that grief had to be private, it seemed dangerous to complain about my son growing up; it was inevitable for one thing, and for another, my role, when played well, was to facilitate that. There are many many losses that are part of motherhood, but that one was the hardest I’ve had to cope with. My mother has to live with the loss of a child. She is not an affectionate person, but I have taken to hugging her anyway. Her own mother, my grandmother, used to rub Jergen’s into my hands when I was a distraught teenager to calm me down. I think that might be a practice to revive.

I keep coming back to the same conclusion about being seventy now; I’m glad I lived this long, because so many changes and revelations are happening now. If I had died younger I would never have had to bathe her, and I wouldn’t have been able to wash away all the layers of resentment and hurt that separated us. But I am fortunate:I got the chance to come full circle, back to the earliest iteration of care, the warm bath. That small chore opened the floodgates: I remembered that I deeply love my mother.