"And No Singing!"

          On Sunday in mid-May, I called Mom between visits, and she thought I was Dana, not Tina, which is interesting because Dana assumes my name—on her business cards, online, on her message machine—and the “pairing” of siblings started to change a few years ago.  Mom and I had always been close, and Dana and Daddy were.  But at the end of his life, Daddy and I were closer than any other two people in the family, and Mom started calling me to get in touch with Dana, who didn’t return her calls (although she did invite Mom to visit her in Chicago up to 2004, when Mom started to fear leaving the house). 

          There were some very strange and strangely funny calls from Mom, forgetting that she’d just called me to find out what color yard she should use for a sweater for Dana.

          But on this Sunday, I finally convinced her that I was Tina, not Dana, and I told her we’d enjoyed the time with her the day before.

          “I enjoyed it too,” she said.

           I told her I couldn’t make it over there that night, but I’d see her the next day, and she told, me to come very quietly because it would just break the hearts of the “unrelatived” people there to see that she had visitors when they didn’t.

                “And no singing,” she added.  “I will be living here until my 90^th birthday.”

                Then she added, “So do as you…No, I won’t say ‘Do as you see fit.’  I’ll say 'Do as your mother tells you.’”

                So I did as my mother told me and when I went the next day,  I didn’t go singing.