As parents age, the mental distance between generations becomes a chasm. Old people annoy, tire, make you want to keep communication to a minimum. Regret about this is inevitable, but often belated.
“Yes, Mom, what did you want?” – Igor’s voice was so frankly unhappy that she immediately shrank internally. Well, I called again at the wrong time! She was terribly complex because her son was annoyed by her calls both on weekdays (I’m busy!) And on weekends (I’m having a rest!). After each such rebuke, she reproached herself in her heart: she called herself an annoying fly or a classic cluck, which, having released a chick from under her wing, continues to cluck about him. Feelings at the same time experienced contradictory. On the one hand, she was glad that she had heard the most dear voice in the world (alive and well, and thank God!), And on the other, she tried to suppress the involuntarily approaching resentment.
Of course, one can understand the discontent of a guy who graduated from college three years ago and lives in a rented apartment, when his mother, at every call, begins to ask if he is healthy and if everything is safe at his work. “I’m tired of your control!” – he minted into the pipe. She began to confusely justify that this was not control at all, but simply concern for him and the manifestation of a normal interest in the life of the closest person. However, her usual arguments did not usually convince him, and each conversation ended in a standard way: “I’m fine! I will need your advice – I will certainly appeal. ” As a result, she began to call him much less often. Not because she missed him less, she was just afraid to once again incur his displeasure.
Today she also hesitated to dial his number for a long time, but at last she pressed the “Igorek” contact on her mobile. This time, in addition to her usual desire to hear her son’s voice, she needed the professional advice of a person with a higher medical education. For several days she had been bothered by now pulling, now sharp pains behind the breastbone, and the pulse was beating somewhere in her throat like a quivering butterfly, making it difficult to breathe.
“Hello my boy! Am I not really distracting you? ” – she tried to make her voice sound as serene as possible.
“You’re very distracting – I’m preparing a presentation for a scientific and practical conference, I have very little time,” the son replied with undisguised annoyance.
She fell silent. At the other end, the rumble of World of tanks was clearly audible in the tube. Obviously, the events on the battlefield did not unfold in favor of the future participant of the scientific and practical conference: something boomed loudly in the receiver simultaneously with the desperate exclamation of his son.
“Mom, what again? – Igor asked irritably. – You have not found another time to ask again how I am doing? Can I do what is important to me at least on Saturday without any hindrance? “
“No, I wasn’t going to ask about any of your business,” she said hastily, catching her breath. – On the contrary, as a doctor, I wanted to ask you for advice. You know, that day something presses in the chest and the hand goes numb. Today I hardly slept at night, and in the morning such a fear of death rolled over that I thought I would really die. I don’t want to bother you on the weekend, but maybe you’ll come by? Nothing like this has ever happened to me. “
“Oh, well, everything, my mummy drifted into the camp of eternally whimpering old women! – Igor did not consider it necessary to hide the mocking tone. – As a doctor, I’ll tell you – listen less to yourself and your feelings. I’m terribly tired of the aunts who rush to the clinic with every sneeze and spend days there, torturing doctors with their nonexistent sores. You’ve always laughed at such people, and now you yourself become like them. Since you have not had any problems in the field of cardiology before, I think, and now there is nothing special, most likely, a banal intercostal neuralgia. Try to move a little more, and not entertain yourself with serials. If he doesn’t let you go by Monday, go see a neurologist. And do not invent unnecessary ailments for yourself! “
“Okay, thanks, I’ll do it,” she cheered up as best she could so as not to annoy her son. – The new sensations just frightened me, and it hurts a lot. This is the first time with me. “
“Everything in life happens for the first time,” Igor said condescendingly. – Better do exercise, but not very intense, for the acute phase of neuralgia, this is not recommended. We’ll call you on Monday. “
“Will you come to see me this weekend? – against her will, the tone was humiliating and pleading. “If it’s easier, I would bake your favorite cabbage pie.”
“No, it won’t work! – he answered categorically. – Until the evening I will be preparing the presentation, and at six at Timur’s place we will meet with a group of guys: at the beginning of the week we agreed that today we will play Mafia. And tomorrow I want to go to the gym: from sedentary work, too, look, neuralgia will play out. So come on until Monday. Bye!”
“Bye!” – Before she could say, short beeps were heard in the receiver.
She lay still for some time, trying to calm the disturbed “butterfly” in her chest. “I really became somehow weak-willed, I began to invent diseases for myself,” she reflected. – Since it hurts, it means that she is alive, as her neighbor Valya says. You really need to move more and feel sorry for yourself less. Igor is an intelligent doctor, he always speaks. “
Taking a deep breath, she resolutely rose from the sofa – and immediately collapsed from unbearable pain. The pain pierced her through and through, spreading through her chest like hellfire, and a silent scream stuck in her throat. She gasped for air with blue lips, but could not breathe, her eyes darkened. The butterfly, fluttering in its chest, froze and shrank into a tight cocoon. In the complete darkness that came, a bright white light suddenly spilled out, and for a few seconds she was in the warm August day, which she considered the happiest in her life. Then, after several hours of contractions that exhausted her completely, she was rewarded with the bass cry of her long-awaited firstborn. An elderly doctor who was delivering childbirth, enthusiastically clucked his tongue: “Good guy! Ten points on the Apgar scale! More, my dear, it just does not happen. ” And with that, he put a warm specimen of infant perfection on her belly. Tired of the long labor, she smiled blissfully. Who cares how many points on the newborn scale her baby scored? She was overwhelmed with a previously unknown feeling of all-consuming love both for this small, vociferous lump, and for the whole world, which allowed her to know such a great joy. This love enveloped her even now, taking her somewhere far, far after the bright stream of blinding white light.
… On the way to Timur’s, Igor had a thought that, perhaps, he should look at his mother, especially since she lived in the next block from her bosom friend. But the entrance to her yard was blocked off by a Gazelle, from which the new settlers unloaded furniture, and he had no time to go around the neighborhood in search of parking, and he gave up on this venture.
This time the company got together so-so, the game was sluggish, and he was getting ready to go home. “But first to my mother,” – unexpectedly for himself, Igor again felt an urgent need to see her. Before turning into the courtyard, he missed the ambulance, which stopped at the entrance where his mother lived. Two orderlies got out of the car and slowly began to pull out the stretcher. Igor’s inside went cold. “Guys, which apartment are you in?” He shouted, lowering the glass. “Seventy-second!” – the middle-aged orderly answered reluctantly. “So move faster!” – Igor shouted, jumping out of the car. “We have nowhere to rush,” his young partner said in a businesslike manner. – We were summoned to take out the body. The woman had already died for several hours, judging by the words of the neighbor who discovered her. It’s a good thing that it hasn’t been lying around for a long time, or sometimes neighbors will recognize the death of such lonely people by the smell from the apartment. You park your car somewhere, otherwise it will prevent us from leaving. “
The young orderly continued to say something, but Igor did not hear him. “Won’t you come to see me this weekend?” – this last mother’s request, said in such a pleading tone that he did not like, throbbed in his head with a growing alarm. “I came to you, Mom,” he said aloud and did not recognize his voice. “I’m sorry I was late.”