The roles remain

"It would be nice if yuh could come tuh church wit meh tonight, Ri," she says wistfully, handing me a strip of tape.

"It would be nice if you would stop asking," I say lightly, pressing the tape to a corner of red wrapping paper.

We've already had the conversation about her beliefs and her respecting mine—or lack thereof. I've already endured the disapproving looks of well-meaning relatives leveled at the faithless heathen who no longer goes to Mass every Sunday. (A venial sin, I believe.)

Later, in the car, after we've delivered the wrapped hamper and the toys, she says: "Ri, if de church open, les go an' see de altar nuh."

"It open?" she asks as we drive by.

"Yes! It open!" she cries before I can answer. "Ri, les go nuh!"

I don't have to look over to hear the excitement, the hope in her voice. It's a fair compromise, I tell myself, I won't be attending Mass; it's the least I can do.

I stifle a sigh and make the block.

More than an hour before the midnight Christmas service begins and already the carefully dressed parishioners are trickling in. My mother and I slip past the priest greeting the faithful at the door and walk through the threshold in jeans and flip flops.

"It beautiful eh, Ri?" she gasps, her eyes shining as she points to the altar. "Yuh see de Blessed Virgin?"

It's then I realize she decorated the altar. When I ask, she demurs and says she had help. But it's why she wanted me to see it so badly.

"Yes, Mom. I see her. It's gorgeous." I smile.

She drags me out the side door. We pass the beveled glass windows I peered through as a teenager for the homily, having graduated from the pews to outside. A sure sign of things to come.

We pass the bell I sat under for morning Mass on New Years Day a decade ago, nursing a hangover. "Yuh lookin' like a wet fowl," she'd said that day. A promise to attend church in the morning was the only reason she'd let me out the night before. I smile at the memory.

***

While she showers, I iron her cotton skirt and yellow shirt. I do her hair and makeup. I know she feels beautiful. She looks it.

"I not used to wearin' a skirt, nuh," she says girlishly, nervously pressing down the folds in the car.

After we park, I snap her picture and watch her walk across the parking lot and then the road. I feel fiercely protective, as if the roles have somehow reversed. I want to hold her hand and make sure she makes it up the stairs in one piece.

She waves when she arrives and stands there looking out. I wave back. And then I realize she's waiting to see me drive away.

I pull out of the lot and smile again. Maybe the roles haven't reversed, after all. Maybe they never will.

Photo by Randy Faris, set in San Miguel, Guanajuato, Mexico, courtesy Corbis