I hate being predictable, but as Mother’s Day approached this month my dreams flooded with images of my mother. In one dream I stood in the kitchen and heard someone opening the front door of this apartment. I asked myself “Who has a key to this place besides me? Who is allowed in?” Through that door my mother walked, looking like 30 years ago, and both my questions were answered. She had that look on her brow, the demonstrably frowning mouth, the perturbed brow, as if she had just woken up. Throughout my adolescence my mother woke up angry. On weekend mornings when I woke up before her she took umbrage. With only two of us in the house there was not much competition, but competition it was, this matter of being the first to rise. She was competitive about the strangest earthly things, but being the first in the house to wake up in the morning was her rite. Was she angry at me, or just angry? There were days she woke up throwing things. I somehow lodged a bottle cap into a bar of soap, the last bar of soap in the house, and I whimsically presented this object to my mother as she opened her bedroom door, greeting the day. I thought the pock-marked bar of soap was amusing but Mother thought otherwise, hurling the soap at the wall and screaming “It’s a WASTE!” She was not angry for all the day, though she quickly rose from serenity to shouting, falling back quicker still to seeming serenity. She woke up angry, though. I never thought about that until now, after last week’s dream in which she confidently entered this apartment, looking full-face frown like she did those tempestuous mornings. I do not think I have ever once woken up like that. I have woken to immediate aggravation caused by the demands of electronic gadgets, ceaseless car alarms, or the noise pollution of the Mr. Softee Truck. But rising from sleep to panic hardly seems possible. Another dream last week had swirls of water rushing around her grave.