My mother, GiGi, flew in on Friday afternoon from Chicago to spend the weekend with us. Well, to spend it with the girls. It was a whirlwind affair, a lot of shopping, a bit of eating and a lot of she and Pea sitting at Pea’s little table and chairs in a corner of the dining room while working on art projects. GiGi took us to Michael’s, a craft store, and went a little nuts. We bought papers and feathers and popsicle sticks and glue and paint and paint brush sets and origami paper. The list goes on and on. My mother is an interior designer, but I prefer to call her an artist. That’s where her passion lies, she has real talent, too. It’s always been her first love, but her career as an interior designer is where she’s made herself a name. And money to go with the name. Safety is important to my mother, I suppose that stems from being a single mother raising two young children on her own. She worries about her financial affairs more than I think a person should have to worry. I know she’s been very careful and set herself up well so that she can retire when she hits 65, and yet she still wants to work at something, albeit part time, when she does retire. I can’t figure out if it’s for financial reasons, or if it’s just because really, this is a woman who cannot sit still.

Last September, of 2006, I received a call from her at the hospital. She had been admitted as an emergency patient, the doctors thought she’d had a stroke. My God, that was the most dreadful thing I’d ever heard. My mother and I have always been close, but that closeness had worn off a little bit in the last few years, as I became a mother myself and settled into life here in Texas, and she bought a new house in the city with her partner, Ted. She was busy, I was busy. We didn’t talk as much as we used to. But then I got the call and it was devastating. I immediately thought the worst, that we were going to lose her.

As it turns out, she had something called Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a rare and weird disease that is rarely fatal but is nonetheless debilitating and life altering. It’s been a long road back to health for her. My whole life, she’s been a fitness buff. Aerobics, swimming, weight training and lately yoga. We’re talking 6 days a week. At 59, she was super fit. And then her disease hit, and she was in the hospital for 8 weeks, while also ringing in her big 6-0. I was pregnant with Coco at the time and had a one-year old, too, so we didn’t make the trip to Chicago to see her during this time. It was a little selfish on my part, possibly some denial mixed in, but it was also her insistence that we not come in because I think she just didn’t want me to see her like that.

She’s much better now. She’s still in physical therapy and she’s not as active as she once was. One side of her face is still paralyzed and probably will be for the rest of her life. When she’s tired, one of her eyes droops and her speech becomes slurred. It’s heart-wrenching to see. Especially if you knew her before.

So as much as she drives me insane (doesn’t that happen with most mother-daughter duos?), I am reminded when I look at her cuddling Coco and painting with Pea that we are so lucky that she is still here. Pea loves GiGi and I know Coco will too, as she grows. She’s an amazing grandmother, loves these girls to pieces and would do anything for them. And I know that. So I just have to let the small stuff go. Like the way she is always sipping from my drinks when she’s known my whole life that I don’t share drinks. Or the way she leaves a trail of dry cereal from the pantry to the dining room table. Or the way she always leaves the toilet seat lid up and puts the toilet paper on the holder threaded under instead of over. And how she rearranges my furniture every time she’s here. And complains that I don’t have enough overhead lighting in my living room. Just have to let it go. Starting… now.