The Phone Call

Six months later, I received a phone call from my daughter.

Her voice sounded different.

“Mom, can I come over?”

“Of course.”

She arrived twenty minutes later.

She looked exhausted.

She sat at my kitchen table and began crying.

I had never seen Linda cry like that.

“What happened?”

She wiped her face.

“I think I’m becoming you.”

I laughed softly.

“That sounds like a compliment.”

“It isn’t.”

She looked at me.

“I’m forty-nine, Mom. And I’m already scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“Everything.”

She told me about work.

About her marriage.

About her children growing up.

About bills.

About getting older.

About watching her own life disappear while she spent every day trying to keep everything under control.

Then she said something that broke my heart.

“I thought if I kept you safe, I could stop being afraid of losing you.”

I reached across the table.

“Linda, you can’t protect someone from life.”

“I know.”

“You can only help them live it.”

She nodded.

Then she asked:

“Are you afraid of dying?”

I thought about it.

“Yes.”

She looked surprised.

“I thought you weren’t.”

“I am.”

“Then how can you be so calm?”

I smiled.

“Because I’m more afraid of wasting the time I have left.”

She was silent.

Then I took her to the community center.

Helen was teaching piano.

Maya was helping younger children read.

Three retired men were repairing broken bicycles.

A seventy-six-year-old woman was teaching cooking.

Everyone was busy.

Everyone was needed.

Everyone was alive.

Linda watched them for several minutes.

Then she whispered:

“I understand now.”

I looked at her.

“What?”

“You weren’t trying to escape old age.”

“No.”

“You were trying to escape waiting.”

I smiled.

“Exactly.”

That night, Linda asked me to teach her how to sew.

She had never asked me that before.

We sat at my kitchen table until midnight.

And for the first time in years, my daughter wasn’t taking care of me.

We were simply two women learning something together.

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