When I said "Happy Mother's Day," it was just a suggestion...

I called my brother Spencer this morning to suggest that we take our mom out to the Ponderosa buffet tomorrow afternoon for Mother's Day. (I was giving in to the promotional email sent to me by Ponderosa on Friday, sadly -- but who can resist their chicken wings?) Spencer suggested we go to a diner for breakfast instead. We discussed this in earnest for a few minutes before I asked what Mom would want.

"Ask her where she would want to go if she could go anywhere for Mother's Day," I said.

He did. She said she would want to go see Tyler and Sarah in Vermont.

"Okaaaaaaaay," I said. "Would she really want me to drive her there?"

Mom hasn't driven for years, now, and there are few people on the planet allowed to drive her anywhere -- even fewer allowed to drive her on the highway. I've certainly never driven her anything like the three and a half hours it would take to get to Vermont, let alone turned around and driven the same three and a half hours back in the same day.

On the other hand, I'm never joking about a road trip. I'm always up for it.

Mom reported to Spencer that if I would drive, she would go. So I told Spencer to ask if she'd rather go to Ponderosa or the diner while I called Tyler to see what his plans would be for the next day, and whether he would want us to come.

Tyler was (overly) concerned about the wear-and-tear on my car Betty, but said we could come if we wanted, and that he would give Betty an oil change if we did.

I called Spencer back and had him tell Mom that we could go. We'd leave around 9 a.m., I proposed, and leave Vermont around 6 p.m.

She was momentarily thrown by the possibility of getting what she wanted, and gave in to it. "Is she serious??" she asked Spencer.

"I think so," he said, his voice muffled on my end of the line.

That's when she began to worry. What about gas money? What about my car? What if Tyler didn't want us to come? What if it was dark when we came back -- we wouldn't get back until 10 p.m., then? What if Tyler was disappointed if we decided not to go? What about the earrings?

"Wait, what earrings?" I asked.

She had told Spencer about earrings on sale at amazon.com last week, but he hadn't gotten them.

"I want something, because I'm moving," she said, her voice strained with the difficulty of expressing any kind of desire. "I wanted something tangible..." She trailed off. I couldn't quite understand what she was talking about.

Later it became clear that what she meant was that she would rather have earrings than a trip to Vermont. She was agonized by the decision between these two things. I was mildly amused.

"Well, Mom, I don't think you need to decide between those two things," I reasoned. "They don't have anything to do with each other. There's no choice you need to make between earrings and Vermont."

"But there aren't any more holidays between now and then," she insisted, her voice increasingly constricted. "There aren't any more times for you to get me anything before I move."

Why she wants earrings -- nice, she said, but not with any particular association with Connecticut or any of the things she'll be leaving when she goes -- is a mystery to me, but not one I feel I need to solve. Sometimes we want what we want. I can understand that.

But her sense of the niggardly universe, the bedrock under her near-desperate attempt to decide -- earrings or Vermont, earrings or Vermont? -- touched me.

It's as though the world has a certain, limited amount of good things in it, and Mom was trying to decide whether she could afford to use up some of her allotment now. If so, use it on what? What did she most want? Whatever she chose, it would have to last her until Christmas. She would have to make sure to choose correctly or spend months and months regretting her profligate spending of the universe's goodwill.

The choice would be an exhausting one, if it were real.

She called me back awhile later, after talking with Tyler, and said "I think we can do it, if we leave at 8 a.m."

"Can we leave at 8:30?" I asked. "That's when I usually leave for work."

She returned instantly to her usual disappointed affect, which sounds ridiculously close to an impression of Eeyore. "No, no, that's okay," she said. "We just won't go."

"But it's only half an hour!" I said.

"But it matters to me," she said.

I gave in with no malice, no point to make, no agenda. How much would that extra half hour of sleep matter, anyway? I like a good road trip.

But she wouldn't give in, insisting that now I would be resentful the whole day, ruining the trip. If we didn't go, Tyler would be disappointed. If we did go, I would be unbearable.

I laughed. "I don't care that much, Mom. Let's go."

There were still the earrings, though. She might rather have the earrings.

I thought this over as I drove to the Asian market and called Mom back from the parking lot.

"Mom, if Tyler changes my oil, that will offset my part of the gas money. I can still get you those earrings," I said.

No, she said, an oil change would cost me only $23. (The earrings are $25.)

"You sound so disappointed, Mom," I said, trying a more direct approach. "I certainly don't want you to be disappointed. The point is to give you what you want on Mother's Day. We can do whatever you want to do -- we can go or not go. What do you want to do? That's the only question."

"Not for me," she said. "You and Spencer can go, and leave me here alone."

I laughed. "Well, Spencer and I could go anywhere and leave you alone tomorrow, if that's what you want, but I didn't think it was."

"Well, at this point," she said, "the day is going to be miserable no matter what I choose. Why did you have to call Tyler first?"

"I feel like you're choosing to be miserable, here," I said mildly. "And there's no reason to. You can choose what you want to choose."

"No. I can't."

I said something that amounted to a verbal shrug and we got off the phone before I went in to select lotus root, canola, cuttlefish and other hot pot necessities. She's supposed to call me later to tell me her final decision, but I doubt we're going to Vermont tomorrow...which leaves us at the original, provicial choice, albeit unhappier than we were when it was first asked: Ponderosa for lunch, or the diner for breakfast.

I think she'll be better at picking out something she wants to eat.