The Thursdays I Owed My Mother

The Chair Is Mine

Last Thursday I got to Maple Court at ten of, with my thermos and two real cups and the baby quilt in my tote. Four rows left, in blue and yellow wedges gone soft from fifty years of washing.

Mom was in the rocker by the window with the Dresden Plate across her knees, humming “Abide With Me,” off-key, the way she always has. The maple outside had gone the color of a school bus. I poured the coffee. She took hers black and looked at me over the rim the way she looks at the back of a hem.

“My hip’s talking to me. I’ve sat in this chair since breakfast.” She set her cup on the sill and put her hands on the arms. With her walker and Tonya’s hand at her elbow, she stood. It took a while. “I’m going to lie down a few minutes and listen to you stitch.”

Then she went and sat on the bed. Her own bed, with the floral bedspread.

I stood in the middle of the room holding a thermos.

“Well, go on,” said my mother. “You’ve been looking at that chair for six months like it might bite.”

I sat down very carefully, the way you get into a boat.

It took my weight. The seat was worn smooth and warm in the middle where my mother has sat every evening for years, and I thought: you were here the whole time. The chair rocked back, and it creaked, the same as it ever did.

“There,” said my mother from the bed. “Now you know where it’s softest. You can have it for the length of one row. Then I want my chair back.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And Gail. Your father would have been pleased you took your time.”

I still owed my sister twenty-six hundred dollars. I owed my mother more than I could ever count. The chair was hers, and I only borrowed it. I picked up the needle, and took one stitch, small and even, and then another, and I did not hurry.