A few nights ago, I made myself dinner at home. I decided to eat at the dining room table, not off a TV table in my living room. I needed to nurture myself. Since early December, my eighty-nine year-old mother has needed some extra attention, and I felt like my time was getting stretched too thin. I broiled a niece piece of salmon which I served with a salad, buttered peas, and glass of sauvignon blanc.

At some point during my meal, I went to the kitchen to get something and looked back at my plate. The tender coral colored salmon fillet was gone. Only stray greens and pieces of red onion were left of my salad. But my plate was still full of peas.

When I was around three, I wasn’t too fond of peas, but my mother, as any good mother would, wanted to get some green foods in my belly. Green beans, for me, became more palatable folded into a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup and topped with breaded onion rings. Broccoli spears were like miniature trees and seemed to taste just fine under a blanket of melted cheddar cheese. (I guess I was born with the philosophy that with enough gooey, melted cheese, almost anything could taste good.)

But peas – oh please! Nothing seemed to make them taste better.

My mother had to devise some other strategy for getting me to eat peas, one that didn’t simply involve adding fat.

She began to put frozen peas into clear, beef broth. She would tell me to look at the peas swimming around in the liquid. Sometimes, the peas would float around individually. At other times, they seemed to gather in clusters. My mother would load several onto a spoon, holding the spoonful under the surface of the colored water then tell me that the peas were skin divers and that they were going to explore deeper depths of the ocean. She’d raise the spoon, at which time I would open my mouth, and she would make some sort of remark about the skin divers swimming down narrow passages to get to my stomach. It was all sort of silly; why, after being so clear about not liking to eat a particular food, it suddenly became all right to me. The best way I could understand my child psyche at the time was that I related the peas, as skin divers, to the TV show, Sea Hunt, starring Lloyd Bridges. I thought Lloyd Bridges was terribly cool and nothing could be better than watching green-suited, oxygen tank enabled adventurers push aside oddly animate shapes to explore the world under the waves. Mom was on to something. I ate the peas.

Over the last few months, my mother has been depressed and very disengaged with life. Her right hip, which was merely painful at times, was giving her an extreme amount of trouble. The topic of hip replacement surgery came up and my sister and I encouraged my mother to do it. At this point, she had pretty much stopped walking on her own and, if for no other reason than to alleviate pain, it seemed that surgery was her only option.

While prepped adequately for the procedure from the surgeon’s perspective, the anesthesiologist felt more cautious about keeping my mom’s 89 year-old organs humming while the crack cutter did his thing. She was in the surgical schedule twice within a four week period and was canceled minutes before being rolled to the operating room on each occasion. The gas passer kept finding some small deviation from range in her latest test results that he considered reason enough not to continue. She’s been at home, with 24 hour a day care, mostly napping or sitting in her wheel chair as my sister and I have been trying to line things up with a different surgeon and larger hospital.

My mother’s leg and hip muscles have been atrophying. We arranged to have physical therapy for her a couple times a week, but I have been trying to get her to exercise a little bit each day, if only to raise her legs from her chair. Unfortunately, she has made “I can’t” her mantra. My sister and I are not sure how to respond to this. When she says, “I can’t,” does it mean, she’s not physically capable? Or, does it mean she’s in pain and we need to manage pain meds better? Or, does it mean she doesn’t want to?

The other week, I found myself trying to tell her a story from her life in hopes that she would commit to making either result (rehab after surgery or the rest of her life with limited mobility) as livable as possible.

“Remember when we threw a birthday party for you, for your eighty-fifth birthday? You put together the guest list, and Barbara talked over the menu with the caterer, and I brought your favorite mocha cream cake from Café Selmarie?” My mother smiled. “It was a nice party,” she mumbled quietly.

“It came together wonderfully,” I went on, “Because we ALL did our part. You have to do your part now and put in some effort to make your body stronger. You have to do your part,” I repeated.

She didn’t say anything in response to me. Maybe she’ll come around to the idea of taking on physical therapy with more commitment. I don’t know. I don’t know if this was the right story, but it was a story about her, about something she loved. And, as I looked at the peas still on my plate, I wished I knew the perfect story to tell her, a story that could turn refrains of “I can’t” into a chorus of “I can” and “I am,” a story like the one she told me about peas being skin divers. I know there is a kind of magic in the right story that can change everything, that can change anything, even a firmly made-up mind.

Finding the perfect story to tell is no small thing.