My mom lives in a nursing home. She probably wears diapers. When I phone her (she lives in California — I’m in Seattle), she always tells me the same things: “We have a lot of fun here. The people are really nice.”

My mom can’t remember what she did that day, or what she ate for lunch. She doesn’t know her roommate’s name. She remembers that a bus takes them into town from time to time and she can buy things. I imagine her standing at a glass counter, holding a little coin purse stuffed with a few folded bills, sliding coins across the counter to buy a weekly candy bar. In my imagination I can see the five-year-old Janey doing the same thing, only back then it was a nickel she slid across the counter instead of — how much do candy bars cost these days, anyway?

Some people would say I have lost my mother. I think I finally see who she is.
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Hi there. I am a non custodial mother. What does that mean? It means I don’t live with my kids. I don’t make their grilled cheese sandwiches. I don’t sign off on their homework. I don’t tuck them in at night. And I chose — willingly — to move 3000 miles away from them and let their dad be the primary parent-in-residence.

Who would do such a thing?

Last month I sat in a chair opposite ABC 20/20’s Elizabeth Vargas and she asked me that very question. Why would a mother leave her children? Elizabeth is a lovely woman. She is a mother. She fussed over flyaways in her hair before the cameras rolled. She wore a royal blue slim sheath no bigger around than a curvy pencil and charmingly commented on how skinny *I* was when we stood up after the interview. She seemed like many women I know and I liked her very much. But when she put on her Interviewer Face, I think she spoke for people who cannot fathom why a mother would stand back from her children without a gun to her head.
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