Debbie Chan was one of Mum’s best friends in high school. She lived two doors down. Mum spent a lot of time at Debbie’s place. I like to imagine her over there during those in-between years of the seventies: studying for the straight A’s she earned throughout school, talking about boys, listening to music.

Mrs. Chan used to have geraniums over the sink, Mum said. And a cat who was not allowed in the kitchen, who always slunk away guiltily as they all laughed. So when Debbie said she can no longer recognize me, she doesn’t speak any more and probably won’t make eye contact, Mum remembered the geraniums, the Russian Blue cat.

She was sitting at a table in the sitting room area of the Home, her head down, oblivious to the comings and goings around in her. The walls were strung carefully with bright red, shiny hearts. Valentine’s Day, Mum realized.

Debbie led the way, pulling up a chair and touching her mother’s arm. “Mom, Sharon Wells is here to see you.”

She tried to remember exactly how she used to say it as she walked in the door: “Hello Mrs. Chan.” The sing-song of a friendly 17-year-old voice, gilded with summer sun and the sound of the ice cream truck and the splash of children at the local pool. “Hello, Mrs. Chan.” Taking off a couple decades, a girl walking in her favourite sandals, a peasant’s blouse. She stepped forward with a smile.

“Hello, Mrs. Chan!”

“And she looked up and looked me right in the eye…” my mother’s voice is trembling slightly with excitement on the other end of the line, “…and she smiled!”

I can imagine Debbie leaning forward, encouraging her with the urgent bend of the body. Keep going, keep talking, she’s looking.

“I remember Mrs. Chan, your geraniums in the kitchen. They always looked so beautiful. And your cat…”

“And she laughed,” Mum says, a catch in her voice. “She laughed.”

***

I will have to ask Mum sometime, to remember for me, those afternoons at Debbie's house, what she did as a blonde-haired, tanned-skin, disco-dancing, Europe-traveling child of her decade. I mean, what precisely she did besides waitress and meet my father and get her photo taken on the Swiss Alps. I want to know if she and Debbie listened to records. What they did on long Toronto winter evenings. What she drove. If there was something hanging from the rearview mirror. Those details that only she can remember. I want to ask Mum about the ballet shoes that I remember hanging on a nail in the wall of her childhood bedroom in Nana's house. About the letters her father wrote her from the West Indies. I want to ask her whether or not Dad was on time for dates as a too-cool-for-words seventeen-year-old.

Not that these details make up my mother. She is much more than these. But I want to touch them like a rosary. To remember and to understand, for the both of us. The way he does in the moments I find myself standing with a spoon at the sink and he comes up behind me and says, “You were making a cup of tea,” and provides a hug that pushes the void away.

I long to be a witness. To her life. To my sister’s life. To my niece’s life. I want to see and notice their moments: the way she habitually taps the teacup twice with the spoon, the smile she gets when she's daydreaming, the way she always shakes the curls to the side when laughing. I want to say with proud authority, “This one’s my sister!” “This one’s my mother!” “This one is.”

And because she is, I treasure the details. The red geraniums over the sink and the Russian Blue cat.