At 79, My Mother Decides to Plant Trees

A society grows great when old men plant treesin whose shade they can never hope to sit.

—Greek Proverb

They loom over us like sequoias, our parents. In my first holy communion photos, they flank me, grave and unsmiling in formal black clothes—my father's dark wool suit, my mother's bouclé skirt, long gloves, and short jacket. Her lips a bright smear of red. Nuns surround me in the other photos—Sister Jacinta, Sister Paula, my prison guards—their white coifs pulled tight around foreheads, dark tunics heavy and flowing to the floor, drawn tight at the waist by rosary beads.

I am the sapling between them in a white dress, white tights, shoes, and a lace veil with a chaplet of flowers crowning my head. My face looks thin and drawn, stricken even. Dark circles under my eyes, the celebrant not celebrating. Have I drunk too deeply of the communion wine? No, by this age I have sampled Grandpa's rhubarb wine and wedding whiskey. I know the swirl.

Have I misunderstood the lessons of transubstantiation, taken too seriously the metaphor of eating the body of Christ? I hate meat. Our dairy cows and their calves are my friends, as are the dogs, cats, and chickens. Sitting too long at the kitchen table has become my nightly ritual, moving steak around on the plate, obscuring it under mashed potatoes and green beans. My mother's despairing calls from the kitchen that I am too frail. My father yelling from the living room, already watching his favorite show. "She'll eat when she's hungry."

They were not giants outside of time, I will understand later—my father, barely five foot six; my mother, five two. Sister Paula, our principal, just under five feet. The little generals of my childhood. By the time of this photo, they've baptized me unwittingly, initiated me into the rituals of confession and penance, and now they've brought me through to communion. They've broken the bad news in increments.

Second grade, and even the pope agrees, I have reached the age of reason. I am ready to know the snare of mortality—the way we are born into this life without our knowledge or consent and then left with no good alternative for how to exit. None of this is reasonable.

They are all gone now, except my mother, eroded off the edge of a disappearing hillside. The nuns to nun-retirement and nun-nursing homes, where we will later learn, one by one, the news of their deaths. No one, not even Jesus, to save them.

And my father, gone off the edge of a cliff, never to be heard from again. Goodbye, goodbye. Despite the dirty trick you played on me. Thank you. I love you.

________

I have a friend who says, "Times change; people do not." But that hasn't been my observation. Take my mother, for example—aside from a brief splash of turquoise on her kitchen walls in 1966, my mother remained faithful to taupe and green: olive side chairs, mossy drapes, avocado shag. Then at 70, she visited my sister in Montana and came home madly in love with the color pink. And not just pastel pink but hot fuchsia, throbbing magenta.

What happened? During the trip, my sister's friend Jennifer gave my mother a pair of hot pink sneakers with hand-appliquéd sparkles. And that was enough. She was pinked. Once home, she painted her bedroom walls a shade somewhere between bubblegum and polka-dot pink, requiring new pink sheets, comforters, and pajamas.

Who knew change could be so easy? After that, pink earrings, sweaters, and scarves followed. My father had died a few years earlier, and it seems for the first time in her adult life my mother had time to consider what colors she preferred.

This was all good news. Because what can you possibly buy to entertain and delight your 70-year-old mother each year for Christmas, birthdays, and Mother's Day? How many crystalline angels, La-Z...