Cricket, one of my college roommates, walked into our room as she ended her usual Sunday night phone call to her family in Vermont. She laughed into her cell phone. �I love you,� she said. �Take care. I will. Buh-bye.� I looked at the clock. She had been on the phone with her family for at least half an hour.

I was working at my desk when Cricket approached me. She noticed the to-do list on top of my book pile. �Email home,� she read out loud from the paper. She took a pen, crossed out �Email� and substituted �Call� instead.

�I wish,� I said. �Not my mom.�

She laughed. �Why not?�

The first time I called home, while away at college, was to wish my older brother Greg a happy birthday. It had been four days since my family helped me move up to school in Boston from our home in New York City.

My mom answered the phone. It was a Sunday morning, and I imagined she and my brother, who had graduated from college in May and was living at home, lingering at the table, reading The New York Times, with my mom paying the most attention to the wedding announcements of strangers and to the fashion articles.

She shot out, �How are you? Do you need anything?� It sounded as if I had called her at the office, at the busiest time, with pharmaceutical salespeople trying to get her to purchase their newest product, and with doctors calling her, demanding she stock a certain drug. I answered that I was fine, and meant to go into more detail, but before I could continue, she said, �Okay, okay, anything else? Let me put your brother on the phone.�

I spoke to Greg for five minutes, and he asked me if I still needed to talk to Mom. No, I didn�t need to talk to someone who made me feel rushed, and that I was calling at the worst possible time. I said no. My roommates were nice enough to look away while I wiped my eyes after I got off the phone.

When I was young, the only reason I called my mom at the hospital pharmacy where she worked was if I was sick or if something broke in the house. I didn�t need to talk to her because my dad�s parents lived with us, and watched Greg and me during the day while my parents were at work. My grandparents could handle the little things, but their limited knowledge of English required my mother to intervene in big situations, such as when the refrigerator broke down.

My parents divorced when I was twelve, and my grandparents moved out of the house. Greg and I took care of ourselves after school. My mom likes to brag about how little Greg and I call her at work. She comes home and criticizes one of her co-workers because her teenage daughter always calls her at the office. �You only call me when robbers have broken into the house!� she says.

I came home from high school one afternoon to find the front door open and dented. The first floor looked untouched. I went upstairs. The closets and dresser drawers were open. Clothes were on the floor. The jewelry box was no longer on the bureau. I picked up the phone. �I came home from school and the front door was open,� I said to my mom when she got on the line. �They�ve gone through our stuff upstairs.�

�I�ll be home soon. Wait outside,� she said.

When I call home now, she sounds the same. �How are you? How are classes? How are you eating? How�s the weather? Do you need anything?� she asks, all in one breath. I answer, �Fine, fine, fine, fine, and no.� When we hang up, I look at my cell phone, to see how long the call lasted. Forty seconds is a good call. I don�t call often, to save her heart rate from going up�though it�s always been rheumatoid arthritis that�s bothered her, not her heart. If I do call, I prefer calling home at a time when I know I can talk to the answering machine uninterrupted.

I once complained to Greg, �Mom�s always in a rush to get off the phone with me.�

�She�s busy at work,� he said. �She also probably thinks you�re busy at school.�

When I�m at home sitting at the dinner table, my mom has time for me and she can see I have time for her. Over pasta with broccoli, capers and red pepper flakes, she tells stories I�ve heard before but never get tired of�how her family immigrated to Peru to escape communism in China when she was a child, about the general store her parents ran by the foot of the Andes, and about the Chinese restaurant her parents later started when the family moved into Lima. We have seconds of pasta and she talks about coming to New York and attending pharmacy school.

After clearing the table and moving to the kitchen to clean up, it�s my turn to talk. As I wipe down the countertops, I�ll update her on how my high school friends are doing, on who�s still dating, and on who changed their major for the third time. My mom loads the dishwasher and sympathizes with me when I complain about the one roommate who always leaves crusty bowls in the sink. She asks what my favorite dish in the college dining hall is, and to please look into certain Boston hotels and restaurants for her, for the next time she visits me. Once the kitchen is clean, we go upstairs to dye the gray strands in her otherwise dark and permed hair. In the crayon pictures Greg and I drew of her as children, her hair looks like a black bush on her head.

And I never go back to school empty-handed.

�Do you like this sweater? Take it. The cut works better on you. You�re tall and slim. Too much hips,� she�ll say, patting her sides. �I wish I were so tall.�

I return to school with not only the sweater, but rings she can no longer wear because her arthritic hands are swollen and twisted, three rolls of bread, and a bag of candy left over from Halloween. She would give me more if I didn�t argue.

I miss my mother. I miss the gestures and sound effects she makes when telling a story, and how she likes watching Japanese soap operas even though she doesn�t know the language. I don�t call home, though. I write emails home, but I don�t dial my home number on my phone. I�ll be sitting next to my mother at the dinner table soon enough, and that woman is the mother I miss.

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