The visit that ends a day early
By Lorna Beckwith, Editor · · 3 min read
I was in the kitchen when the son came in and said, with the particular casualness that means a thing has been discussed in another room, that they thought they would head back Saturday instead of Sunday, to beat the traffic, and his mother, who had a ham for Sunday, said that was fine.
It was not fine. I was there. But she said it in the voice she uses for fine, and he took it at that, or chose to, and the visit, which had been planned for four days since March, lasted three.
The reasons that get offered
Traffic. The dog at the kennel. A thing on Monday. The baby sleeps badly away from home. All of these were true, in the case I watched, and none of them was the reason, and his mother knew it, and spent the Sunday she had planned a ham for trying to work out what the reason was, which is a worse way to spend a Sunday than the ham.
The explanation she arrived at, by evening, was that she had said something. She went through the three days in order. The comment about the baby's jacket. The question about whether they had thought about a church. The look, which she could not now remember giving, when his wife said they were thinking of moving farther away.
I suspect she had said all of those things, and I suspect none of them was the reason either.
The reason that does not get offered
What I have seen, in enough of these visits to feel sure of it and not enough to prove it, is that the fourth day is simply longer than a grown child can be a child for. Three days in the house you grew up in, in the bed you grew up in, with your mother asking whether you want eggs, is a visit. The fourth day is a regression, and some part of the son knows it on Friday night, and the Monday thing gets remembered.
I put this to a son once, not mine, and he was quiet for a while and then said that on the third night he had lain in his old bed and heard his mother turn off the hall light the way she had when he was nine, and that it was the kindest sound he knew and he could not take a fourth night of it.
That is not about the jacket comment. It is not about her at all, which is both the comfort and the difficulty, because a mother who has decided it was the jacket comment can at least resolve not to mention jackets, and a mother who has been told it is the fourth day itself has nothing to resolve. She can plan three-day visits. She can serve the ham on Friday.
She did neither, as far as I know. They came again at Thanksgiving, for four days, and left after three, and she had the pie for Sunday, and she said it was fine.