how does adam describe his mom

Adam describes his mother as always trying to feed him, keep him healthy. She is described as overprotective and nervous. Adam contrasts this image of his mother with his memory of her from when he was younger, "he sometimes wondered what had happened to transform his mother from the laughing, tender woman to whom the scent of lilac clung into the pale and subdued and antiseptic woman who seldom left the house, who lurked behind kitchen windows." (Page 47)