My mother fell in June and broke her hip. She is eighty one, and for about a week I was certain I was going to do this badly.

What I remember from that week is how much I did not know. Which questions to ask. Who to call. Whether I was allowed to go home and sleep.

Then one afternoon she told me what she was actually afraid of, and it was not the surgery. It was that nobody would water her tomatoes.

I have thought about that a lot since. All that worrying about whether I was competent, and what she needed was somebody to go out to the yard.

You know less than you think you are supposed to know. That was true for me too, and she is fine, and the tomatoes are fine. I water them now. She watches from the window and tells me I am doing it wrong.