It happened on a walk, something my mother and I rarely took. We were having a nice time talking and walking around the block, as slowly as she needed to. It was one of those moments where I could connect with my mom as a friend. No parenting. No guilt. Most importantly, no early morning wine.

As we approached home, we ran into a neighbor and her friend sitting on their front stoop. These neighbors were two women who lived together and I realized laughably late that they were a couple. (I was probably about twenty-six when it occurred to me. And they lived there for as long as I could remember.)

We stopped and chatted, which I also don’t remember doing a lot of in our neighborhood. I can’t tell if it’s one of the incongruities of me and my family or of most people in Rochester that we’re really nice but not particularly friendly.

“How are you doing, Jene?”

I should mention that I was home for my mother’s recovery from open heart surgery for mitral valve prolapse. My mom didn’t ask me to come home for her surgery, just for her recovery. I think she didn’t want me to interrupt my life. I still wonder if I should have insisted on being there and I probably always will.

Our neighbor Laurie knew and that’s why she was asking.

I think my mother said something to the effect of, “hanging in there.”

Laurie explained to her friend, “Jene just had surgery.”

“Oh,” she said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

The friend wore glasses and a flannel shirt, jeans, work boots. She was dragging on a Marlboro red.

“I can’t do that anymore,” my mother said, talking about the cigarette. “I’ve had a couple, though.” She had confessed to having about two a day, which was a minor miracle for a woman who smoked at least a pack and a half a day for the better part of forty years. In a week or two she would have her last and remain smoke free for the last years of her life.

“I quit for years,” the friend said, “but here I am again. Remember just don’t take that first drag.”

I don’t remember how the next part happened. My mother probably mentioned her chest aching from the surgery. Laurie’s friend mentioned that she did some healing and offered some healing to my mom.

Okay, you know those people who say that they don’t really subscribe to any particular religion but they describe themselves as “spiritual”? Pre-surgery, these would be prime candidates for my mother to drag on her menthol and deem completely full of shit. So, as Laurie’s friend approached my mother, I held my breath. I was sure that in a few minutes hence, when we were out of earshot, my mother would say something to the effect of, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I just wanted her to get it over with so we could go home.”

The friend stood in front of my mother. She held her hands in front of my mother’s chest. Her hands were rough, her nails clean and cut short. She held them there rigid, with purpose, with the same pose that a superhero might use to shoot beams out of her hands. But she was drawing the painful energy out.

She drew the energy into her hands and then discarded it onto the ground a few feet from us. “Don’t step there,” she told us.

She went in again. She held her hands in front of my mother’s chest where a week before a doctor had cut her sternum open, removed a damaged valve, sewed in a new one, and then closed her up. She drew the painful energy out of my mother and then, again, discarded it into the ground.

And my mom kept her eyes closed, letting this woman do this to her. She seemed into it, like she was willing to accept this healing. Who knows why. Maybe she was really in that much pain that she would try anything. Maybe on this day she just wanted to believe. (I like to think it was the latter.)

The child in me wanted to stomp on the ground where she had discarded the energy. “See?!” I’d shout, “I’m fine!” But that would have ruined whatever moment my mom had just had.

After this friend was done, my mother thanked her. “Remember,” the friend said, “don’t take that first drag.”

We walked the short distance back to our house. I ventured, “So, uh, that was interesting.”

And my mother said simply, “It was.”

No, “Christ, Rob, you’re tellin’ me.” No, “I just wanted to get out of there.” She just accepted it and, I think, appreciated it for whatever it meant to her.

I don’t know if it was reiki but I think it’s similar. No offense to practitioners, I don’t care because that’s not really the point. I was just nice to see my cynical mom – whose cynicism I loved, by the way – just be for a moment.