My son is in the back seat, behind me where I can’t see his face unless I tilt sideways to peer into the rearview mirror. He’s in first grade. “I made you something for Mother’s Day at school, but I’m not going to tell you what it is ’cause it’s a surprise.”
I like surprises, I say. Well, try and guess what it is, he says. I thought it was a surprise, I say. Guess, he says.
A flower? “No.” A card? “No.” Pottery? “You’re cold.” A pumpkin. “No, well, you’re kinda warm.” A plant?
“I’ll give you another clue. It’s made of paper.”
A picture. “No.” A flower. “You already said a flower, and a flower’s not made of paper.” It could be, I say. He sighs, says: “Here’s another clue, OK? It has numbers.”
Numbers and paper. A bingo card.
Wrong.
I don’t know then, I say. I’m going to tell you, he says, but then you have to forget, OK?
You’re not supposed to tell.
It’s a calendar, numbers, paper, get it, a calendar.
Wow. What’s a pumpkin have to do with a calendar?
You know. October. And it says, M-O-T-H-E-R on the front. We had to write a word for all the letters. For the “M” I wrote M&Ms, for the “O” I wrote Oreos. For the “T” I wrote tea because you love tea.
So, what’d you write for H? Hot dogs?
No! I forgot, he says. Probably “helpful,” I say. “Yeah!” he says. “How did you know?”
Mom guess, I say.
I have my own mom calendar. It measures the length of a life span. In this case my mother’s. I am sure I am not alone in my habit of keeping this internal calendar. I am sure because I know my sisters do the same. I’m sure because I mentioned this once in a column and my e-mail box filled with words of the grown children of parents who also died young.
Mom died just before her 45th birthday, of cancer, in a hospital room in Albuquerque. She had lost her hair and was emaciated, but when she opened her eyes, she looked beautiful. Besides her smile, her eyes were the most vibrant part of her, the part that defied her illness, the grayness of it. It is safe to assume she probably looked much older than she was. I don’t remember that. I only remember thinking she was too young and would never hold her grandchildren.
The calendar begins with my age at the time. It ends with her death. Mine, then, counted 20 years. As in: “If I live as long as mom, I have 20 years left.” My sisters and I also called this countdown “the clock.”
This will sound morbid to some of you. I can assure you we do not walk around sighing or fretting or imagining our own eventual demise. The calendar, in fact, prevents this. It has been not simply a measurement of time, but a calling to account of the way in which that time has been spent. It provides a place from which to take stock.
Twenty years becomes 10 and then five and then one and so, last month, I turned 45 and outlived my mother. The calendar’s last page turned.
The day the calendar expires is actually April 5, 17 days before my 45th birthday. I say something about it to a colleague. He says: What, you afraid you’re going to die young too?
No. Nothing like that. I’m not sure what I expected to feel. Relief, maybe. Or sadness. Or the feeling of crossing a finish line. I feel none of these. I move into years that my mother did not have, and, if anything, I feel the presence of that time, the gift of it. Which is just another way of saying the questions I asked myself while I marked the calendar within me haven’t changed. What are you doing with the time you have been given? What is important to you, and are you doing that? What matters?
We first learn to be parents as children, to be mothers as daughters. We learn what to do and, in some cases, what never to do. My youngest sister, a mother of two, has given this some thought. From our mother, she says: “We learned we’re not supposed to be our kids’ friends. We learned to set limits. We learned we need to treat each other with respect. We learned to be independent. We learned responsibility. We learned to value friendship. We learned generosity. We learned forgiveness.”
I look back now as the mother of two young children. Conscious of time in a different, though no less poignant, way. No less precious. The daughter I was all those years ago is the mother I am still becoming.
My son says from the back seat: “OK, now you have to forget it’s a calendar. Think of sheep.” Sheep?
Yeah, you know, count sheep.
OK.
Mom?
What?
Did you forget, yet?
Ba-a-a
Mom?
What?
I can fake-burp my ABCs. Watch.
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-1416 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
