Mom startled me with a sharp rap-rap on the door of my home office, where I sat focused on my laptop screen, lost in classic rock. She cried and squeaked out her Sunday afternoon plea for me to push her for a walk around the block.  I detest being started, and reacted involuntarily harshly.  “I don’t think it will rain,” she hoped.  Thunderclouds thickened and lighting sheeted over the neighborhood—and the rain began to fall.  With each passing car, I thought, They must think I’m such a moron for taking my parents in their wheelchairs in the rain.  But we actually loved the gentle shower.  Mom tilted her head back and spread her arms wide to the sky.  All three of us wondered if I would be struck by lightning.  In the moment, I didn’t care.  Returning home, I saw that the porch lights were on, three hours before sundown.  With such irritation, I have been snapping the porch lights off, for months.  Why does she turn the lights on so early every day, I finally asked her.  “I turn them on for you, to welcome you home from work.”  Finally I saw the early-afternoon porch lights for what they were: a mother’s welcome home to her little boy who has been away all day.  I such a heel, I thought.  A moron and a heel.  Before situating Dad back into his recliner, I studied the multicompartmentalized cushion he sits on, designed to avoid pressure sores.  The cushion had flattened over the months.  Mom watched me intently as I tried and failed to use the tire pump, the bike pump, and the ball pump, struggling to inflate the cushion.  The stem closed with clockwise turn, but by the time I quickly closed the stem, the cushion had lost all my hard-blown air.  I sat on a stool with the stem between my teeth, still blowing, and spinning the cushion around to close the stem.    “Thanks for doing that, Roger.  I have a pressure sore on my butt, and a full cushion should help.”