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My mother's crossroads.

2004-02-26 - 12:22 p.m.

Yay! J is coming home today! I miss his presence. I miss his slightly musky boy-smell I breathe deep when I�m curled against the solid bulk of his warm back. If he�s back in time he�ll pick me up from work and we�ll have a few hours together before heading out for Indian with my mom.

My mother is in a bit of a quandary. Actually I wrote a long paragraph giving the background scenario but then decided that it wasn�t my story to tell so I�ll just say that the ultimate problem is that her long-time, live-in boyfriend�s mother has fallen ill on the other side of the world. This means that, as the eldest son, the primary responsibility falls to him to arrange for her care. For the moment, he has offered to pay his brother�s salary to free him up to take care of her and ultimately, if he can get the paperwork he�d need, he may be leaving to do so himself. This has my mother a bit worried. She has vacillated over the years about moving into, or at least closer, to town and this has stirred up the issue yet again. She currently lives in the country and really, the place needs two people to share the chores inherent in a fairly large piece of property. The driveway is long and the yard is vast so in the winter it requires a lot of shoveling and in the summer there�s mowing to contend with. They heat with wood so if she�s working a 12-hour shift it�s good to have someone tend the fire. And of course there are myriad other things that pop up that it�s good to have someone around to help deal with, such as things breaking down (including the car which means it�s handy to have someone to come fetch you).

Now, if he has to leave there are ways to work around his absence. It would require maybe a bit of money invested in things like a riding lawn mower or a service to plough the driveway. Maybe she�d have to get someone in to fix things sometimes and turn the furnace on occasionally. And she knows she can always call me or my husband any time of the day for an emergency. What worries me is that she wouldn�t. She�s broken down on her way to work before and in a panic about being late she hopped a ride from a total stranger who�d stopped. I know that the majority of people are kind and pose no threat, but I can�t like the idea of my sweet, unassertive mother in a stranger�s car.

At any rate, we�ll probably discuss options over dinner tonight. In the event that her boyfriend leaves for an undetermined amount of time, if my mom decides to stay where she is we�ll figure out how to make that happen and if she decides to move then we�ll tackle that.

Before - After


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