I came in the door having just gotten off of the bus. Mom was sitting on the couch in the exact same place as she had been when I had left. In fact, she was also wearing the same pale yellow sweat pants and she was staring at the same wall. Grandpa was getting ready to cook dinner; Grandma was at work; Jared was playing video games.

"Hey, Mom."

"What? Oh. Hey."

Mom puts her right hand over her left in her lap. Switches to the left on top of the right. Picks her fingernails nervously, even though there is no one around. She adjusts her hands again, right over left. So it goes. Her hair is frizzy and disheveled. She wears no make-up. She will eat dinner without talking much, return to the couch and perhaps fall asleep around 8. She will go to psychiatrist appointments. She will go to therapy. She will go to church. She will sit on the couch.

My mom was on vacation. She had moved my brother and I out of state into my grandparents and then she checked out. My always put together, stunningly beautiful, social butterfly of a mother had been transformed into a blob in a mere matter of months. Her marriage had dissolved, a marriage she had fought tooth and nail to save. She was questioning everything she had previously thought about God and religion. To question God was to risk eternal damnation. And so, seemingly at the same time, she had found herself with no job, no skills, no education, no husband and possibly going to Hell in a very real way. And mentally ill. Sitting on the couch, staring at walls, absent from time and place, trying to find the right combination of meds.

Jared and I went about our lives without a functioning mother. Grandma and Grandpa filled in with the essentials- food, clothing, a place to sleep, a home. During the week we were in school. Saturdays we helped with chores and watch TV. On Sundays we would go to church and then eat lunch at my Great Grandpa's house, a house he had built with his own hands using wood that had grown on his property. He was in his 90's and had dementia, so there wasn't much conversation to be had. Jared and I would run around the old tobacco barns and worm beds, rummage through the really old clothes in the upstairs bedrooms and play the exceptionally old piano.

Sometime around the beginning of 9th grade, Mom started to come around. The right meds, the right job, who knows? She started devouring books such as The Road Less Traveled and Farther Along The Road Less Traveled. She would get into long conversations with me about forgiveness, and how you haven't really forgiven someone until you can wish them good in their lives. Not just be apathetic towards their existence, but really, truly wish them well. She journaled like a mad woman. Music came back into our (well, my Grandparents) home. The Beetles, James Taylor, Peter Frampton. I can't really pinpoint an exact moment, or week, or even month, but she was on her way back into her head. When I was a freshman in college, she built her own small house on what was my Great Grandpa's land. He had died and they were selling it all off at irresponsibly low prices. They saved a piece for Mom. She weaned herself off of her meds and moved on with life as if nothing had ever happened.

Fast forward to Christmas 2008. Mom and her husband, Patrick, come to visit. Mom is in the kitchen with me and Avram, who is cooking Christmas dinner.

"When I was little, we spent every Christmas night at Granddaddy's house. All of the girls slept up in this upstairs bedroom that was just huge! It was so long, like this long, and had these double beds...."

"Mom, I know. I've been in that room a hundred times."

"Oh, you have?"

"Yeah, you remember when we used to go eat lunch on Sundays at Great Grandpa's house? Jared and I would play up there."

"Oh. [She laughs.] I don't remember that at all. I don't remember much from that time."

"It's okay, Mom. You had a rough couple of years. But yeah, it is a big room."