23 and Mommy

I complained to a friend the other day about how stubbornly independent my mother is. Okay, well maybe I just said stubborn, and he suggested independent. And then he had the gall to remind me I probably had 23 of her chromosomes, which I suppose he meant has a compliment but when you've spent much of your adult life pretending you are the opposite of your mother that kind of thing can sound like an accusation.

While it's all the rage now to send off saliva samples in the hope of discovering the mysteries buried within ones DNA, I have neither the need or desire to spit into a vial. I have enough trouble fighting off the genetic predispositions I know. 

My mother is 87 years old. Seven years ago, we were in a car accident together, and she got broken in several places. I, on the other hand, endured a few coffee stains on my dress and a little bit of a stressful entrance to my daughter's graduation ceremony. For the next year, my mother fought like hell to recover. She had to learn to walk again, and -- just as importantly, I think -- build up the strength to once again carry her two-ton "pocketbooks." Not even an intervening spinal collapse could stop her. She fretted. I snapped at her constantly. Her injuries and her negativity were infuriating, not to mention inconvenient.

She walked again, a bit more slowly. She tried her best to leave some of the designer accessories at home so she would not have to suffer the indignity of carrying an ordinary purse. I continued to snap at her about the ridiculousness of it all -- her refusal to lighten her load, her refusal to take a wheelchair ride to speed things up at the airport. Those are for old people, she told me.

Last year, she broke her hip. Again, extraordinarily inconvenient for me. I finagled and cajoled, and got the doctors to agree to release her in time so she could make it to Chicago -- in a wheelchair -- for her granddaughter's wedding two weeks later. The doctors were easy. Mom was not.

She did not make it to her granddaughter's wedding, but she is walking again. And carrying her pocketbook. And doing all kinds of things, for herself and by herself, that nobody in her right mind would be doing at 87, especially after so many broken bones. Stubborn. Crazy. Infuriating.

Independent. On the outside, my mother is beautiful and impeccably dressed and, to the casual observer -- and, to me, when I'm feeling particularly nasty -- all about appearances. My younger daughter, living with her grandmother temporarily, assured me, yesterday, after she overheard our somewhat heated telephone conversation, that my 87 year old mother was happily ironing her St. John suit before heading out on an "errand" I deemed wildly unnecessary and reckless. I had to laugh.

It is all about independence. I like to think, somewhere in the 23 chromosomes I can trace back to her, that "stubbornly independent" gene slipped in. My own children have already threatened to put me on a leash. They need only look at their grandmother to know that's not going to happen.