My brother could find no way to break the news gently. His e-mail was short and to the point.

"The psychiatrist has diagnosed Mom as suffering from a bipolar personality disorder, with manic depressive tendencies, and he says she is in the early stages of dementia."

She also seemed to be in alarmingly poor physical health, her weight plummeting, her frailty manifesting in difficulty in walking.

After Mom had been ejected from the 'assisted living' apartment she had occupied for five years and then, in quick succession, from two 'adult foster care homes,' someone had the bright idea of asking for a personality assessment of this elderly woman who exhibited an alarming tendency for violence—for both physical and verbal assaults on staff and fellow residents of the facilities.

The doctor's assessment was not news to my brother, sisters, and me. We had known, from earliest childhood, that she was somehow 'mad.' It was only odd that it had taken so long for our suspicions to be confirmed. Admittedly, however, the dementia element was unforeseen, something that could be attributed to Mother's age—seventy-nine years old.

My sister drove us to the town in northern Michigan where my mother lived in a care home in the vicinity of my brother's home. We had made a late start from my sister's home in southern Indiana, and we arrived, we felt, too late to pay a call on my mother before heading to my brother's home to spend the night there.

My brother woke my sister and me early the next morning in the bedroom we shared. He informed us that he had just been summoned to mother's care home by one of the staff: mother had become violent and refused to cooperate in any way. We hastily dressed and hurried to the home. We found mother standing in the center of her room, angrily defiant, accusing a worker of stealing some of her personal letters. I suspect the person she was really furious with was me: I should have made her my first priority and gone to the care home on arriving in the town.

The manager of the care home insisted we take mother to the hospital, to have her medications checked, and to be sedated. Mother refused to budge. My brother, a man who is over six feet tall, suddenly swung his arms around her, picked her up like some inanimate object and carried her to his car. I felt stunned and followed, unthinkingly joining mother in the back seat and embracing her silently during our rapid drive to the hospital.

Once we entered, mother's mood suddenly changed. She had accomplished her goal: she had two of her daughters and her son. She became genial, coherent, and accommodating, as though we had simply all decided to visit the hospital as a diversion. 'Well, at least I have three of my babies with me," she beamed. 'Now, if I can just get your big sister here, too, I'll be in heaven." My brother and sister and I stood by awkwardly, not knowing what to say, what even to think. If my mother had been a general, attempting to marshal her forces, a military tactician would say that she had achieved her objective.

What is a mother? What qualities are ideal in a mother? My mother was a bad cook and a slatternly housekeeper. She has never held a job in her life. She can be lazy and irresponsible. When her marriage disintegrated, she disintegrated, too, and only gradually made a partial recovery. We children felt we had lost both parents when my father left and that we suddenly needed to raise ourselves.

If the 'best' mother, however, is one able to give unconditional love, then my mother qualifies, and all the character defects and past 'sins of omission' fade in comparison. When my brother went through a phase as a hippie in the '60s, an experience complete with a summer spent in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco with his girlfriend, Mom took it in her stride. When my brother hitched to Woodstock and the police telephoned seven times in the following three days wanting to certify his identity, Mom uncomplainingly obliged. When my brother decided, as a junior in college, to marry his girlfriend, there was no question of her not attending the ceremony. My father, on the other hand, refused and scarcely spoke to my brother for years after.

One of my sisters flouted small-town Midwest convention by dating a black boy in the early 70s. My mother seemed scarcely to realize that some might disapprove of their relationship. Similarly, I lived with a number of boyfriends before finally marrying. Mother routinely allocated us our own bedroom when we visited.

When I was a child, I liked the fact that my mother seemed somehow as young as me. She wept at sad movies. She liked popcorn. She begged my sisters and me to accompany her on walks in blizzards, to marvel at the icicles, and make 'angels' in the snow. She stopped to enjoy the fragrance of blossoming flowers. She pointed out the beauty of starry night skies. And then, there was the not inconsiderable matter of emotional support. My father supplied the financial assistance that made our lives comfortable, but Mom, the warm-hearted love that made life worthwhile. Mother has always been fond of physical demonstrations of affection. She insists on hugging and kissing. She often tells us how much she loves us. She is our greatest fan.

One of my sisters still finds it difficult to forgive mother for her defection, for what seemed at the time like abandonment. And, in my gloomier moments, I wonder if I am re-enacting mother's disengagement with us, her own children, in my disinclination to learn Japanese sufficiently to be able to communicate well with my three sons.

As I grow older, and my own frailties become nearly as apparent to me as other people's, I find myself increasingly mindful of the wisdom contained in the adage advising occupants of glass houses not to throw stones.

What I most like about age is the opportunity the passing years offers for re-evaluation, including the chance to see the past in a new light. Now that I'm a mother myself, I see my own mother in a much different way than I had as recently as twenty years ago. I love her. I hope my own children will think of me as fondly.

Wendy Jones Nakanishi is an American but has spent much of her life overseas: seven years in Britain, one year in France, half a year in Holland, and twenty-three years in Japan. She is married to a Japanese farmer and has three sons. She has been employed, since her arrival in Japan, as an English professor at a small private university in Shikoku. She publishes academic monographs and articles on English and Japanese literature and also 'creative writing' pieces concerning her personal experiences in the States, the U.K., and in Japan.