Before Twilight

It's Sunday afternoon and we are driving home from a joyless shopping trip, my mother, my brother, and me. On the drive there, my mother and brother, who was driving, debated whether all or any of the following were overrated: Renaissance Faires, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Beatles, Elvis. I kept mostly quiet, and then my brother dropped us off and headed to his place of work, while my mother and I went into the store, and I manned the cart while my mother moved sluggishly. I did my best to keep her cheerful but it wasn't an easy task, and then we finished and Noel had not yet returned. My dad called from England. "It's a beautiful day," my mother said to him, as we stood waiting at the front of the store. "But there's no other good news." It's like this, sometimes.

As we drive home, I look out the window. I haven't managed to be here for the changing of the leaves in many years, maybe ever since I moved to California. My mother says, "Well, boys, I don't think I'm long for this earth." I don't know what she's feeling but I know what she means; as each day passes her battles seem less likely to end in victory, and these battles have been going on so long I wonder how much longer, really, this can go on. I see a particularly stunning Maple tree passing out the window, a Sugar Maple I believe, its leaves a gradient of green to yellow to fiery red, and I wonder if this is the last year my mother will get to see autumn, and I wonder, a moment later, if this might be, less expectedly, my last year too. We never really know, do we?