I wish she knew I miss being exhausted.
I travel frequently for work, and she proved to be absolutely incapable of understanding time differences. Combine this with a fear I would be eaten by mountain lions while out hiking alone or even in the safety of my hotel room, and you get a mother who calls you most mornings and nights at the worst times when you are far from home.
And when I say she didn't understand time zones, I don't mean she would forget about them. She often remembered I was in a different zone, but her range of time spanned a six-hour window in either direction from reality. So when I was two hours behind her, she would call and wake me at one in the morning assuming it was only ten in the evening. Then she would call me at four in the morning assuming it was now seven in the morning. I had to explain to her on several occasions the passing of time remains the same. If three hours have passed for her, then only three hours have passed for me.
The explanation was often provided while sleep deprived, and thus carried tones of heightened frustration. She would say, 'If you are going to get this upset about it, then turn your damn phone on silent!"
Which always resulted in an exasperated retort of, "When I turn my damn phone on silent you get mad you can't reach me when you are sick!!"
You see my mother was often sick. My mother often thrived on guilt. My mother was often confused easily, and her mind was often muddled. But my mother was also often lonely, and only wished I would want to talk to her as badly as she wanted to talk to me.
I wish she knew I would give up many more hours of sleep to argue time zones and the relation of her clock to my clock. I wish she knew when I am out on the road, and I wake up rested in the morning, that feeling of relief is washed away when I remember why my phone no longer rings in the middle of the night.
