I grumbled a kind of wishy-washy, what-are-you-going-to-do agreement. Because I wasn’t ardent in co-condemnation, the rest of our conversation fizzled. I couldn’t tell if she was disappointed that I was never as brutally honest as she was, never as angry, at least not in my direct expressions, and if I remained, in her eyes (as in mine), the sensitive child who wouldn’t stick up for himself. I didn’t blame her in the least for thinking I hadn’t changed. That was the curse of being a parent: your child was forever who they once were, or at the very least the adult version of the child would be compared to the kid in whom the parent saw their own best and worst selves. The other half of the curse was that within the adult child’s aging eyes the parent inevitably changed and became someone else, a person in whom the adult child saw their own best and worst selves.

My one glass of wine had already turned into a headache. I gave her a quick hug and tottered off upstairs with a large cup of water. Instead of bed, I plunked down at my writing desk and wrote about the show and my time in the kitchen with Mom. When I first sat down, I scribbled some thoughts into a notebook, something I didn’t intend to include in the book.

But here it is anyway:

* * *

I wonder where we will be in another seven years. Will I still be writing this book? Will I still play live music? Will Mom still be who she is now? Will I? Will you? Will we have finally painted the kitchen? Will I still be living here? Will she be here? Will something terrible happen? When will something terrible happen? Is the worst always to come? The worst is always to come.

* * *