My grandmother moves into her new apartment today. After years of living more than a thousand miles away from the closest family member, her memory is failing sufficiently that she has agreed to move east. She�ll be living about 40 minutes away from my mom and dad.

She�s been diagnosed with Alzheimer�s, although her symptoms are still atypical and we�re not entirely certain if she�s really suffering from the disease or if her memory problems are related to ongoing problems with drug interactions and dosages. In any case, she has her good days and her bad days. On her good days she�s happy, sociable and still as sharp as a tack. On her bad days she�s paranoid, frightened and she doesn�t know what time it is.

It�s been hard watching my mom watching her mom. I feel both inside and outside the situation, and also like I�m getting a picture of things to come for me. My mom suffers on her bad days, although she tries hard not to. And on her good days, she is always hopeful that everything�s going to be fine. From my perspective, it looks as if it will be a bumpy ride and that we should not be expecting the good days to stay good, but to enjoy them while they�re here. Still, as much as I love my grandma, she is not my mother. We lose all perspective when it comes to our mothers. And rather than try to keep mom on an even keel, I�ve felt the best thing I can do is be there to share the good days and talk her through the bad. I�m not going to talk her down from the ledge, but I will hold the safety net.

My mom�s mother was her only parent for her early life. My grandmother was a war bride. She talks little about her first husband, but he was in the military and was shipped out shortly after the wedding and never really returned. My mom doesn�t remember him. After he left, my mom and her mother moved in with her grandmother, who owned a dry cleaning store in the Castro in San Francisco. She, too, was a divorcee at a time when that was still uncommon. My great grandmother was a difficult person. To those whom she adored like my mom and my brother, she was a wonder. To those on the outside, like my grandmother and myself, she could be callous.

During the Depression when money was tight, my great grandmother sent her children to live with other families while she worked to support them. My grandmother and her brother were separated and sent to different places. She and her brother used to walk miles to meet in a field halfway between their new residences to see each other. My great grandmother didn�t even always remember to send them cards on their birthdays.

As a result of her early childhood, my mother and her mother have been very close. My mother looks at her mother�s anxiety over the move east with understanding. The moves my grandmother has made in her life have not, for the most part, been especially happy. Even though my grandmother does not like where she has been living, she is afraid to leave. But at the same time, she is having a hard time facing my grandmother�s negativity over the whole venture. I hope and suspect she will become less negative when she is more comfortable. But for the moment, the negativity is often directed at my mother who, although she knows that she shouldn�t take it personally, finds it impossible to avoid doing so. And who wouldn�t.

My mother will most certainly not go gently into that good night, nor would I want her to do so. I am trying to watch all of this with an eye toward the future. But more than anything, my grandmother�s illness has changed the way I look at my mother and myself. My mother has always been a close confidant, but as we age, I am realizing more and more what a blend of traits I have from both of my parents. I inherited my mom�s passion, but it is tempered by my dad�s logical ethicism and diplomacy.

As I type this I am wearing a pair of earrings I received for my birthday. My grandmother bought them to wear to my brother�s wedding ten years ago. I remember admiring them then. When she decided she would not be likely to wear them again, she gave them to my mother who last week passed them along to me. Their silver wires hold up a tiny silver grape leaf and bunch of grapes, which in turn hold up an oval piece of amber. Inside the amber, you can see tiny bubbles and a few small insects captured in some long-ago moment in time. They are immobilized, perfectly still. But if you stare at them for a while, it looks like they�re trying to fly.

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