Someone's mother is our Mother

(requesting peter he wrote my other essay order number 00018104) please write an responsive essay to the text below Someone\'s Mother By Joan Murray Hitchhiking is generally illegal where I live in upstate New York, but it\'s not unusual to see someone along Route 20 with an outstretched thumb or a handmade sign saying \'\'Boston.\'\' This hitchhiker, though, was waving both arms in the air and grinning like a president boarding Air Force One. I was doing 60 -- eager to get home after a dental appointment in Albany -- and I was a mile past the hitchhiker before something made me turn back. I couldn\'t say if the hitchhiker was a man or a woman. All I knew was that the hitchhiker was old. As I drove back up the hill, I eyed the hitchhiker in the distance: dark blue raincoat, jaunty black beret. Thin arms waving, spine a little bent. Wisps of white hair lilting as the trucks whizzed by. I made a U-turn and pulled up on the gravel, face to face with an eager old woman who kept waving till I stopped. I saw no broken-down vehicle. There was no vehicle at all. She wore the same broad grin I noticed when I passed her. I rolled my window down. \'\'Can I call someone for you?\'\' \'\'No, I\'m fine -- I just need a ride.\'\' \'\'Where are you going?\'\' \'\'Nassau.\'\' That was three miles away. \'\'Are you going there to shop?\'\' \'\'No. I live there.\'\' \'\'What are you doing here?\'\' I asked with a tone I hadn\'t used since my son was a teenager. \'\'I was out for a walk.\'\' I glanced down the road: Jet\'s Autobody. Copeland Coating. Thoma Tire Company. And the half-mile hill outside Nassau -- so steep that there\'s a second lane for trucks. She must have climbed the shoulder of that hill. And the next one. And the next. Until something made her stop and throw her hands in the air. \'\'Did you get lost?\'\' I asked, trying to conceal my alarm. \'\'It was a nice day,\'\' she said with a little cry. \'\'Can\'t an old lady go for a walk on a nice day and get lost?\'\' It wasn\'t a question meant to be answered. She came around to the passenger side, opened the door and sat down. On our way to Nassau, she admitted to being 92. Though she ducked my questions about her name, her address and her family. \'\'Just leave me at the drugstore,\'\' she said. \'\'I\'ll take you home,\'\' I said. \'\'Then you can call someone.\'\' \'\'Please,\'\' she said, \'\'just leave me at the drugstore.\'\' \'\'I can\'t leave you there,\'\' I replied just as firmly. \'\'I\'m going to take you to your house. Or else to the police station.\'\' \'\'No, no,\'\' she begged. She was agitated now. \'\'If my son finds out, he\'ll put me in a home.\'\' Already I was seeing my own mother, who\'s 90. A few years ago, she was living in her house on Long Island, surrounded by her neighbors, her bird feeders, her azaleas. Then one morning she phoned my brother to say she didn\'t remember how to get dressed anymore. A few weeks later, with sorrow and worry, we arranged her move to a nursing home. I noticed that the hitchhiker had a white dove pinned to her collar. \'\'Do you belong to a church?\'\' I tried. \'\'Yes,\'\' she said. She was grinning. \'\'I\'d like to take you there,\'\' I said. \'\'No, please,\'\' she said again. \'\'My son will find out.\'\' Things were getting clearer. \'\'You\'ve gotten lost before?\'\' \'\'A few times,\'\' she shrugged. \'\'But I always find my way home. Just take me to the drugstore.\'\' As we drove, I kept thinking about my mother, watched over and cared for in a bright, clean place. I also thought about her empty bird feeders, her azaleas blooming for no one, the way she whispers on the phone, \'\'I don\'t know anyone here.\'\' When I pulled into the parking strip beside the drugstore, the hitchhiker let herself out. \'\'I just need to sit on the step for a while,\'\' she said before closing the door. I stepped out after her. \'\'Can\'t I take you home?\'\' I asked as gently as I could. She looked into my eyes for a moment. \'\'I don\'t know where I live,\'\' she said in the tiniest voice. \'\'But someone will come along who knows me. They always do.\'\' I watched as she sat herself down on the step. Already she had dismissed me from her service. She was staring ahead with her grin intact, waiting for the next person who would aid her. I should call the police, I thought. But then surely her son would be told. I should speak with the pharmacists. Surely they might know her -- though they might know her son as well. Yet who was I to keep this incident from him? And yet how could I help him put the hitchhiker in a home? \'\'Promise me you\'ll tell the druggist if no one comes soon,\'\' I said to her with great seriousness. \'\'I promise,\'\' she said with a cheerful little wave.