So I don’t want to get overly morose, but here I go. Tomorrow, my mom and stepdad will get back from a six week trip to regions of the world that do not seem to have reliable internets or phones, aka she has been mostly MIA for more than a month.

Other than the garbled, frantic “can you hear me??” check ins (I could her her. She could not hear me. Also, it was like a phone call from 1990s Europe where there was a time delay/echo every time. Whomp, there it is!). Anyway, the point is, I have basically have not talked to my mom in six weeks. It is a very weird feeling. One I do not like.

My father was quite ill over the past year and so mortality has been on my mind more than it should be or at least more than I want it to be. My mom is 70, in great health (knock viciously on some seriously hard wood) and can do a handstand in yoga. I think she might go to bed later than I do, and she definitely has more of a social life than I have (the teenage me would never believe this, but it’s true, 16 year-old self, it is true). So I am lucky enough to not have any real reason to worry (still knocking). But not taking to her for this long is, how do I put this, ass. Or in a more eloquent way, unsettling. Because one day this is how it will be. Forever. And I don’t like it at all.

Even in this short time, I have wanted so many times to pick up the phone with small things – a cute thing one of my kids did or said, a question only she would know, reporting in on my various relatively minor ailments. Or really, just to hear her voice. It is reassuring every time (even when I violently disagree with the advice she is giving. When I was single, I liked to remind her that she herself had not been single since the 1960s, so maybe she was not a dating guru. I digress). I know she’s got my back and that she is the one person other than me/spouse who loves my kids close to the way we do. She would do anything for me, which I know even more since I became a mom myself. And these weeks were a reminder to cherish this time because I don’t know when it will be gone, and it won’t just be six weeks that we don’t talk but six months and then six years and….I can’t even write this without getting teary.

As anyone who knows me will attest, I am not a kumbaya, Pollyanna, glass half-full person. I have other positive qualities, but optimism is not really one of them. I don’t believe that you need to “put positive vibes out there” (hard to tell, I know) and never come to me if you want me to point out “the bright side.”  But these six weeks have reminded me that I am too old to take things for granted, and that these relationships we have are special and never to be replicated.  So mom, I missed you. Please get home safely, do the 90,000 things you need to do around your house to be moderately calm/not distracted/not sorting mail. And then call me.