Life Lesson #1

Now I know the point at which you have to acknowledge your own mortality.

It happens when your mother has a heart attack and has to be Medevac'd from the idyllic Northern Neck to Richmond for treatment only five days after you sat on the dock with her watching the tide come in.

The woman who gave up flying in airplanes ten years ago has now had her first helicopter ride. Her assessment?

"There's a lot more water between here and there than I realized. But the ride was so smooth!"

It happens after she's had three stents put in her arteries and I walk in to her hospital room to find her smiling and wearing her usual pink lipstick.

When I comment on how good her lipstick looks, she says, "You're the third person who's said that!"

As someone who wears lipstick on her daily walk, I realize that the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree, even if the tree is a little less sturdy than it used to be.

It happens when she is made to stay flat in bed for hours after the procedure is over and gets hungry.

Her nurse brings in lunch, hands it to me, lays a towel over her chest and says with a grin, "Be gentle with her."

As I prepare a forkful of food for her, I tease her by saying, "Boy, we've come full circle, haven't we?"

Laughing, she says, "You just love it, don't you?"  What I love is teasing her about the absurdity of the situation and having her agree.

By the time I left her five hours later, she has scrutinized Venus' tennis dress, applauded Judge Judy's grammar corrections and assured me that Casey Anthony most certainly killed her daughter despite the trial not being over.

She goes home Wednesday morning and I can already tell she's going to be just fine.

But now I know that I won't always be.

At least with the lipstick, I can look my best until that day.