My mother has no idea that her ninetieth birthday is coming up. She has no notion of the time of day, the day of the week. the season of the year, the year of the century. No notion of the approaching millennium. And no idea any longer, who I am. Her forgetting of me happened just a few months ago, after I had been traveling for more than a month and hadn't been to see her. When I came back, she asked me if I were her niece, l said no, I was her daughter. "Does that mean I had you?" she asked. 1 said yes. "Where was I when l had you?" she asked me. I told her she was in a hospital in Far Rockaway. New York. "So much has happened to me in my life." she said "You can't expect me to remember everything."

　　我妈妈不知道，她的第九十个生日快到了。她没有一天的时间概念，一天的一周。今年的赛季，这一年的世纪。没有接近千年的概念。不知道任何更长的时间，我是谁。她忘记了我就在几个月前，我已经超过一个月没有见到她。当我回来时，她问我，如果我是她的侄女，我说不是，我是她的女儿。”这是否意味着我拥有你?”她问。1说是的。”我在那里当我把你?”她问我。我告诉她，她是在医院在法尔罗卡韦。纽约。”这么多已经发生在我身上。”她说，“你不能指望我记得一切。”

　　My mother was once a beautiful woman, but all her teeth are gone now. Toothless. No woman can be considered beautiful. Whenever I visit her in the nursing home, she is sitting at the table in the common dining room, her head in her hands, rocking. Medication has eased her anxiety, but nothing moves her from her stupor except occasional moments of fear, too deep for medication. This is a room that has no windows, that lets in no light, in which an overlarge TV is constantly blaring, sending images that no one looks at where the floors are beige tiles, the walls cream colored at the bottom, papered halfway up with a pattern of nearly invisible grayish leaves. Many of the residents sit staring, slack-jawed, open mouthed. I find it impossible to imagine what they might be looking at.