Seven or so years ago, when I was well into my twenties, my mother and I found ourselves in San Francisco with nothing to do but shop, eat and generally look around. My father and husband were attending a trade show and had to work "the floor" all day. Mom and I, on the other hand, were women of leisure and took to meandering around the city with no particular agenda. One day, I forget where we were going, we decided to take a cable car toward our destination instead of a cab or, Lord forbid, walking. As we approached the car it began to pull away. "Run," mom shouted, "we're going to miss it!" We ran and hopped on the back just as it was getting too far out of reach. On board I was consumed by an astonished silence. Who was this woman? My mother never, ever ran for anything, much less a moving vehicle. I didn't know it at the time, but that moment signalled the beginning of a gradual shift in our relationship.


Over lunch, I tried to get a grip on what has surprised me so much. I explained to mom that I was prepared to wait for the next car, that I would never have suggested we run for it, since I would have assumed that she wouldn't want to. She asked why I would assume that. I had no answer, really, except that she's the mom and for my whole life she had been very appropriately mom-like and kept us away from the rails at Niagara Falls and trotting horses at Williamsburg and made sure our hands and heads were inside the cars at all times at Disney World. Safety first, buckle up, brush your teeth and don't cross your eyes like that. She laughed and laughed and finally said, "Marsha, I had young children. I couldn't very well jump onto a cable car while trying to herd the three of you on at the same time. Someone would have been either left behind or hurt. You've arrived into adulthood safe and healthy and now it's your choice if you want to jump onto moving cars. I, for one, am happy to get back to it." So, it was true. Moms really do have inner lives.


Now I'm the one who watches to make sure my son doesn't walk too far ahead (how far is too far? Can I reach out and touch him? Can I still see him? Can I still hear him?) and doesn't jump on loose grates. I can't even imagine a future where I'd let him jump onto a moving cable car, let alone encourage him to do it. We live fairly beyond the reach of fast cars or streams and yet my stomach flipflops at the thought of letting him play outside on the patio by himself - what if something happens? So this is what it is become a mother. My son will grow up wondering why I have so many rules and regulations and why I insist on bike helmets and water wings. He will see me as a both as a protector and someone who must be protected, from his own flirtations with risk. Just as I didn't tell my mother about some of my, ahem, dumber moments, he won't tell me of his. But some day I will astonish him with my human-ness, my non-motherness. I just hope it doesn't take him 26 years to see that I am a woman and a person in addition to his mother. I hope it doesn't take me that long to show him that I am a woman and a person in addition to his mother.


So when mom calls and wants to know why I'm messing with "all that canning stuff" when I have sufficient income to purchase most of the products I make and she only did it because she was broke, I'll tell her it's because of the lessons that she taught me. That there's a place for safety and a place for risk and a place for doing something with your own heart and hands even when it could be bought for far less trouble and mess. It might be more trouble to run for a departing cable car, but you get so much more out of it than you would by, say, taking a cab, that it seems a shame not to run for it.