Just plain guilt

See this cute little old lady? You know when my eldest was little he was pretty cute. Cute little crutches and before those a really cute teensy little walker. So maybe when he's old he'll be cute again. And who can be mad at little crippled children or white haired old ladies?
 So 2 days ago I called my mom a bad word. She actually often uses this word as an adjective as in, "I'm itchy." Only with the bad word. And I did not use it as an adjective. No, I said to my pain riddled, miserable, 94 year old mother, "You are an itch." Well, not exactly those words. As a friend said, I am so going to ell. It even took me a while to be sorry and I'm still not sure I'm as sorry as I should be. At the time it seemed appropriate. We made up of course and I apologized and she came as close as ever to apologizing -she is always sorry "things got out of hand," or some such thing which leaves it wide open as to whether she actually did anything wrong. I had not as a matter of fact said the bad word out of the blue. By which I mean she is not always as cute as she looks. She has in fact never been someone anyone (at least her daughters) would call cute. She has never wanted to run anyone's life but her own -and now she can't. I guess that makes you itchy.
   But, here's the rub. If I try so hard to feel for her I find myself a bit itchy too. A few months ago I had to remind myself that my life was not almost over and as much as 50 was not 20 (amen and amen) it still wasn't 94 -or 84. Even between here and 74 there is a whole lot of living that can happen. So I have had to pull away and I think she knows it. I have to watch from the shore and I see her a little differently from a distance. So I reminded her that we were neither of us going to be saved by being good, that we just can't do it, and, although she has never been a big fan of grace (runs her own life, remember?), she owned this was true. She said she was glad "Jesus came". Now since it worked out so well I'm off the hook for the bad word, right?