Yo' Mama.

Apologies, reader, for the rain delay (lack of blog) yesterday. It was this wonderful Spring rain in the morning, and instead of sitting at my stoic kitchen table, and peering out the window while writing morning pages, meditating, and composing a blog, I took my mug of coffee into my studio’s bedroom/living room, tucked myself into the corner of my couch against the window, and sat next to my cat on the arm of the couch watching the rain make everything greener.

It was warm and cozy, and I just couldn’t bring myself to break the calm of the spell. The sound of the rain, the steam from the mug, watching my cat’s chest expand and contract with each breath. Oh, calm! How I miss you! Oh, rest, you ineffable minx!

I let my thoughts roam over the landscape, and thought how I missed my mom, when she was here last, and sat on this very couch with this very cat. And so, I called her. – Strange and funny thing to do, eh? Think of someone, and actually call them? Not text or poke or email – but make a phone call – God, it’s luxury and connection incarnate.

I knew she’d just returned from her annual trip with her beau to some Caribbean island (Back, Envy, BACK!), and even with only a half hour (barely enough time for us to scratch the surface of a conversation), I called to find out how it went.

I love talking to her. Sure, there are times when it’s grating, and I have to remind myself she’s human with flaws and working on them. But, on the whole, especially these past several years, talking with her is more refueling than it is draining – which is a gift.

She’s just hilarious. Our conversations meander, and side-track, and disambiguate, and non-sequiter, yet always find their way back, like six degrees of separation. It’s these things that I know I’ll miss most when she’s gone. And why I’m trying to get what I can now, to call, and make plans to visit, and email when I can.

Call it morbid, call it realistic. I just want to store it all. Engage in it all.

Coincidentally, one of the anecdotes from her trip was about interacting with the armed guard at the airport, the process of going through customs and homeland security, and the stark seriousness of it all. And, so, as she is wont to do, she planted a funny sentence into the bleak and rote exchange with the check-point guard.

He cracked a smile and then cracked wise. Suddenly, it was an exchange between people instead of objects.

I told her how synchronistic it was that just this very week I wrote a blog about learning from her to talk with strangers, to make our interactions with one another just that much more engaged and alive.

I shared with her my own story about being in Port Authority around the Bush Iraq invasion, and bantering briefly with a guard walking through the orange-tiled halls about exchanging his gun for some flowers.

I love that she does this, and that I do it, as I wrote the other day. It’s part of what makes this life worth living and engaging in, part of the surprise of being alive. When you engage, you don’t know what will happen, you’re rolling the ball onto the Roulette wheel. Maybe the person won’t want to play, maybe they’ll look at you with a “look, I just want to clock out, please stop talking to me” impatience. But, perhaps, both of your days will be lightened just that little bit. Maybe, in fact, it’s the only time you talk to someone all day, as can happen in our disconnected world of modern conveniences.

I asked my “intuitive” once what she thought about my moving back to New York-ish to be closer to her, since sometimes it really is painful to live so far away, to not get to pick up the phone and say, hey that movie’s playing on 72nd tonight, wanna go? Or, I just saw this exhibit is opening at the FIT Fashion Museum, meet up this week? Or, can you come with me to Sephora, I need to find a new blush?

Honestly, it pains my heart to not get to do that with her.

But, my intuitive, whenever this was, a year or so ago, had a pretty logical answer: If you go, you’ll be her caretaker, and that will not be good for you.

It’s true. There’s a fine line from being involved to being too involved, and there’s a pattern of being her caretaker that I don’t want to repeat from my childhood. And it’s a role I know I can easily fall into, without strong enough boundaries: Love as Caretaking, instead of Love as Equanimity.

The jury has been out indefinitely on my move back to the East coast. It doesn’t have to be New York. It doesn’t have to look like moving into caretaking distance. It can look like, "I’m coming down or up for the weekend, let’s do stuff," which is easier than "I’m taking a cross-country flight."

Luckily, I am not in charge of my destination, I’m only in charge of doing the work. Perhaps my boundaries become stronger, perhaps I am better able to stay out of the grooved rut of caretaker. And perhaps they don’t, and I allow myself to say, That’s okay, Mol.

But, on a rainy Saturday morning, I can still give her a call, and we can laugh, meander, and enhance one of the cherished relationships I will ever have.