I looked at the caller ID. “Hey, Mom. Good timing—I’m just leaving a class.” “Morning, sunshine,” she said in a soft, sleepy-sounding voice. “How’s school going so far?” I stepped to the side of the hallway, right in front of the classroom door. “It’s good. What, did you sleep in today? You sound groggy.” Mom was a morning person, normally up at five-thirty daily on the dot. When I’d lived at home, there were many mornings she’d push my tired ass out of bed with a not-so-gentle shove. There was a pause. “Oh, I woke up with a bad backache, so I took some pain meds. They make me a little fuzzy.” My heart rate picked up a bit. “You okay? When did the backache start? Have you talked to the doctor about it?” Mom hadn’t indicated any pain from her injury in a long time, so naturally I was alarmed. Hopefully this wouldn’t turn out to be something chronic for her. “No, no, it’s fine, I’m sure,” she said. “I probably just slept weird or something.
