With Momma’s confusion, I knew it would be a crapshoot calling her on my birthday.

I didn’t wonder for long if I should risk being wildly disappointed because I was also being realistic: this is likely the last time she would be able wish me a happy birthday. Because of that, although I’d gotten my hopes up that it would be a good day, that she’d know it was my birthday, that she’d know it was ME on the other end of the line, I had no choice but to chance it, even knowing that it was just as likely that she’d be sitting on the other end, staring blankly into space, wondering just where in the hell that woman’s voice was coming from and when the hell someone was going to come make that noise stop.

But I could tell what kind of day she was having the second I heard her voice: she was confused.

“Hello?”

I was more than disheartened at being forced to resort to Dementia 101 tactics, the ones where you give the other person all of the information necessary to have a conversation, a conversation you direct, almost like a puppet master, where you are entertained by a conversation in which you control the entire exchange. “Hi Momma. It’s Ann and it’s May 10^th. Where were you 41 years ago today?”

I held on tight, bracing myself for the disappointment I’d set up for myself. I could only look in the mirror to find someone to blame for this.

“Oh my god, I was in agony. Aaaaggggoooonnnnyyyy. I was absolutely miserable, Ann. And, what makes matters worse, I’m not quite sure that I’ve yet to fully recover.”

She paused and our phones filled with silence. I couldn’t contribute anything because, well, I was too damn hurt. My own mother had forgotten my birthday, forgotton me. And then I heard a moan on the other end of the line revving her into speech again.

“It was awful, I tell you. I’d been sound asleep and then it happened, Ann.”

“What happened, Momma?”

“A bouncing baby girl. She woke me up and it was six o’clock in the morning, Ann! Six o’clock! And you know what? I don’t think I’ve had a good night’s sleep since then either.”

I laughed as she said softly, “Happy Birthday, Old Broad.” It was nice to hear her call me by her pet name for me, even though I am well aware that few mothers likely refer to their only daughters as a “broad.”

* * * * * * *

When I was visiting a few weeks ago, I reminded her that it was my brother’s birthday.

“Would you like for me to get a card for you to give to him?”

“Yes, please. But Ann, be sure to get him, you know, get him something appropriate.”

I laughed. “Momma, since when have you worried about only giving cards that are ‘appropriate’?”

She giggled, as much at herself as my comment, and said, “True though that may be, don’t get him something gushy and maudlin. Keep it light hearted. And funny.”

I could only shake my head and chuckle, “I know, Momma, I know. One must never display one’s emotions.”

And with a quick nod of her head she said, “Exactly, Ann, I think you’ve got it.”

* * * * * * *

This is my mom. She seems caustic at times, but she’s certainly witty. And while there have been moments when I have wished that I could dismiss her as cruel, uncaring, perhaps heartless and emotionally aloof, I can’t for one reason and one reason only: she isn't.

A few years ago, years into a period during which my mother and I didn’t speak to one another (a battle of wills she ultimately won, mind you), I finally wrote a story about her, the story my father had asked me to write.

I'd been home for the summer, between my freshman and sophomore years, and my father had burst through the back door in a steam. “Your crazy mother is out at the clothesline talking to herself. I stood on the back porch and listened to her for five minutes and she never, not once, looked my way and acknowledged that I was there. I know she wasn’t talking to me but talking she was...damn, I am married to a crazy woman, Ann. Your mother is crazy, you know that, right?”

“What was she saying?”

“Jesus Christ, Ann, does it matter? She was out there talking to herself, going on and on--isn’t THAT enough?”

I stood up and walked towards the back door, hoping to go outside and find evidence that my father was wrong, that my mother wasn’t mindlessly chattering away to no one but, instead, that my father had misheard, that she wasn’t talking at all, or that the neighbor was hidden on the other side of the shrubs and they were bitching about men or the neighbor across the street or the prices at the grocery store, all subjects of which my father would vehemently disapprove (and which would therefore, in my father’s mind, serve as proof that my mother was a babbling idiot).

“You won’t be able to hear what she’s saying if you do what I did and stand on the porch. If you’re brave enough to really want to know just how fucking crazy she is, you’ll have to walk closer to her.”

Her stooped-over back was to me when I opened the back door but the squeaking hinges caught my mother’s attention; she stood up and spun around rapidly, made eye contact with me, then silently turned and reached into the bag of clothespins and snapped a few more on the line.

I sat on the back porch and watched her, listening for the chatter.

I watched her, knowing her, forgiving her, because in some ways, she was out of place. She’d married a man who she loved, but he’d dragged her from her small town life straight to the city. And she’d adapted, but barely.

Yes, she’d venture out to the grocery store, sometimes to the post office, but only long enough to take care of the essentials, and then she’d head straight back home. There, she fought back against the city in her quietly subversive ways, using her clothesline while letting the new dryer become covered with dust, cooking homemade meals each night when the world around her had already converted to TV dinners and Hamburger Helper, and lining up store-bought tomatoes along the kitchen windowsill, a tiny, red, round army against the encroaching urban life.

I watched as she weaved herself back and forth between the clotheslines, gliding between the clothes, the sheets, the towels she’d already hung. She was my mom, something that made it so hard for me to recognize her as the thin-legged, angular beauty that she was, but that day, I saw her grace, her quiet elegance, as she slipped between the legs of my brother’s hanging, wet jeans.

And then I heard her. I didn’t hear what she said, but I heard her.

She’d had her back to me again and she was edging farther away from where I was seated on the porch, down the length of the clothesline, her basket of wet clothes still full of work to be done. And then I heard her again, the very proof that my father had described.

I stood up and walked quietly towards her, hoping she’d keep her back turned, hoping I’d get close enough to hear what she was saying before she saw me moving up behind her.

“I just told you to move. You can’t stay there. We’ve gone over this already, you know.”

I stopped. And so did she. Her voice had been pleasant, pleasing, but firm. And then she bent towards the basket, grabbed another wet something-or-other, and stood back up and reached for the clothesline. And then I heard her again.

“Oh now, this has to stop. It just has to. I have to get this done so that I can go inside and finish up in there and here you are again. I mean, I don’t mind having you out here but you just keep getting in my way. It would be fine if you could go a bit farther away.”

I’d heard enough, I had to do something, I had to stop this inflow of evidence that my mother was off. “Momma,” I interrupted, “who the hell are you talking to? Dad just came in the house pretty upset that you’ve lost your friggin’ mind out here.”

“That’s his problem, not mine.”

“Momma, he says you’re out here talking to yourself. And now I’ve come out here and heard for myself.” I’d become desperate, almost pleading, “Who are you talking to?”

She threw the wet something-or-other back in the basket and stepped towards me, her finger extended towards my face. “Do you think I’m crazy?” Then her hands flew loose over her head. “Do you think I’m out here just carrying on with myself, talking up a storm, waiting for one of you to come out here, wipe the drool off my chin, and take me somewhere where I get fed smashed bananas through a straw?”

I laughed. My momma, she could always sweep my feet right out from under me by saying the very thing that I couldn’t have anticipated. “No, Momma, I don’t think you’re crazy, but…I heard you talking…”

“It’s that damned butterfly, Ann,” and she pointed to the yellow flutter hovering over the empty clothespins already pinched on the line. “He’s been here since I started all the way at the other end and he keeps following me, from clothespin to clothespin…and more than a few times, he’s lit on my hand.”

I stood there, listening, watching the butterfly light on one clothespin before quickly flitting to the next.

“I don’t want to hurt him, Ann, he seems friendly enough, but dammit, I’ve got to get these clothes hung up.”

She was getting annoyed, likely pissed at me for interrupting her, and since I had my proof, I walked back to the house. I opened the door and found my father stooped over, watching through the dining room window. “She’s not talking to herself, Dad. You owe her an apology because she’s not crazy at all. She’s trying to get the clothes hung up and that butterfly out there keeps following her.”

“So she’s talking to the butterfly?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“She’s talking to the fucking butterfly? Gee, College GIrl, THAT’S your proof that your mother isn’t crazy?” He threw his hands towards the ceiling. “Jesus, now my daughter’s fucking nuts too.”

Just then, my mother came through the back door and I raced to her side. “Momma, tell Dad who you were talking to out at the clothesline.”

“I already told you, Ann, I was talking to that butterfly out there.”

My father looked at me then spun his extended finger wildly around his ear, indicating, of course, that my mother’s brains were scrambled. “Oh goody,” my father said, patronizingly tilting his head from side to side, using the baby voice he only used when he was openly mocking his audience. “Was your little friend, the butterfly, at least a good listener?”

My mother stepped back and resigned, leaning up against the kitchen counter, folding her arms across her chest. And then something visibly came over her as she stood erect from the counter and stepped forward towards my father, her arms falling slowly to her sides, her control obvious as her bottom lip tensed across her teeth.

“Let me get this straight—talking to something that isn’t a good listener is your proof that someone is crazy? Christ almighty, grab the phone and call the damned looney bin now, right now, right this very second, and tell them to come, come quick, for me, just for me, for me and me alone, because, I swear, I need to be locked the hell up for talking to you self-absorbed assholes every damned day,” and then she smiled sweetly before collapsing in laughter.

My father turned to me then, chuckling, shaking his head, and said, “Promise me, Ann, that you'll write this someday. And I want the title to be this: My Mother Talks to Butterflies.”

* * * * * * *

And I did write it, not here, but in a story, a real story, one that, like others, is one of those tiny seeds waiting to explode into something larger. But now isn’t the time to write it, to grow it, because instead, now is the time to continue gathering seeds, every seed I can, before the long winters ahead that I spend without my mother.