Saturday,
June 25, 2011
Dear
Kathy, Suzy, and Jonathan,
I had a fascinating hour with Mom
today! She was in the mood that you
described earlier in the day, Kathy—a bit taciturn but not belligerent.
When I arrived at 1:35, she was in
the dining room starting on a page to color, but she was trying to make sure
that one of the aides knew just what was in the two big plastic garbage bags so
she could find what she was looking for, whatever that was.
She kissed me and said she was glad
to see me but “I’m having a bad day.”
She asked me to help her identify just what it was she was
coloring. I told her the four “things”
on the page looked like carrot candles, and she told me—looking just a little
askance—that she and I thought alike because they looked like carrot candles to
her too.
At that point, I don’t think she had
any crayons, so she was coloring with a black pen, and since she wasn’t at the
table, she needed something firm underneath her page to color, so I offered her
the big envelop I’d gotten from my mailbox before leaving San Francisco. When I saw the envelope wasn’t firm enough, I
got her the photo album binder, and then I opened the envelope up and found
“The Carrot Seed,” a children’s story that was written in 1945 that I’d ordered
for someone in Germany whose free-lance job it is to draw seeds and what they
grow into for every vegetable in Germany!
I showed Mom that I too had carrots, but she wasn’t as amazed as I was.
Before she started using the album
as a desk, we added the pictures of her
and you, Jonathan, at the piano and you, Kathy,
and her at the ice cream parlor.
She saw the picture of Betty Zulch and asked, “Has Betty Zulch passed
on?” I told her she had, about two or
three years ago, and Mom asked about her husband.
Then Mom asked me to find her an
orange crayon, so I asked an aide whether they had one. She looked through about six boxes in the cupboards and found one pink, one orange. Mother wanted more, so I went to Safeway and
got a package of 24. But on my way out,
I forgot to press the star button after the 4,3,2,1, so the alarm went off when
I pushed the door, and Francis Dean, the
newest resident, said, “I’ll be going out with you.” An aide called him back in, saying, “Mr.
Dean, you have a phone call. Your daughter
is on the phone.” I had the terrible
feeling that his daughter wasn’t really on the phone.
When I came back from Safeway, Mom
was at the table writing captions for the photos in her album.
When I gave her the box of crayons,
she started to use them for the captions she was writing, so I asked her where
the coloring page was, and we found it underneath the album and she
resumed. The carrot candles had diagonal
lines down them, so Mom alternated the colors, and then she said, “I was trying
to figure out what the heck I was coloring, but now I see that they look like
ties!” They did. Carrot-candle ties. (Pictures will be attached as soon as my new
camera installation no longer interferes with the pictures I took today.)
Mother asked me whether I’d brought
anything to eat, and then I remembered I’d made Magic Cookie Bars, so I gave
her a couple, and Carol took a small one because, she said, she had to watch
her stomach. Bobbie declined but told May
to eat one or someone else would eat it.
That was just after Doreen came by and opted for the whole container.
While Mom was coloring with great
intensity, May and Bobbie started talking about the two bedroom and bath home someone
had found for them. They’d also placed
an ad to sell their cars. Bobbie said
that they’d better keep one of the cars, and May said that they wouldn’t let
her use the cell phone, and they took the clothes out of the hamper—two
sets.
“They stole them.”
“We’ll just have to buy new
clothes,” Bobbie said, and May wanted to know where they would put the new
clothes, and Bobbie said they’d have a place to put the clothes when they
bought a place to live, and May said “That’ll be the day, when we have a
place. We don’t have any place now. But we’ll go out and buy things and charge
them to her,” Bobbie said about whoever gets the credit.
May got up to make a telephone call but came back and said, “I got a message
saying this number is not in service.”
Mom said, “I called my home phone
and got the same thing.
9-3-5—5-2-5-9. This number is
not in service.“
Bobbie said, “We’ll figure out a
way, honey,” and May said, “The way we’ll figure out will be staying here the
rest of our lives,” but Bobbie told May they would definitely not do that. They talked back and forth in a very sweet,
close-friends sort of way, and I asked them whether they were sisters.
I said, “You’re so sweet to each other. You seem really close.”
Bobbie said, “We are! We’ve always been close. We were close as children, and then we got
married and had our own children, but we always helped each other. If one person wasn’t working, then the one
who wasn’t working gave money to the person who was.”
I had a feeling that wasn’t what she
meant, but that would certainly be an incentive to work, wouldn’t it?
“You talk so nicely to each other,”
I said, and Bobbie said, “That’s the way sisters are. If they’re not that way, they’re not
sisters.”
Mom said, “I’ll bet you really support each
other. I don’t mean just
financially.”
They agreed.
They asked me, “Is she your mother,”
and when I said, “Yes, and she’s a wonderful mother,” they said, “Well, it’s good of her to come
here and volunteer!”
Mom said, “Well, I try to help
people, and sometimes I do.”
They nodded.
Mother asked them what they thought
she was coloring, and Bobbie said “A carrot” and May said, “A candle.” Nobody said a tie.
Then an aide called out to Franz to come let
her change his pad because he was wet, and on his way to get changed, he
stopped by the table and said to Bobbie, “My sweetheart.” The aide called out about the wet pad again,
and Bobbie kissed his hand and told him he could go get changed now.
I can’t remember the order of things very
well, but I know that I told Mom that you, Jonathan, had enjoyed your visit
with her on Thursday, and she said, “He’s a love.” Then she asked, “Do you know what he brought
me? A pound of candy! It was an inexpensive brand, but it was still
more than I anticipated.” Did you do
that, Jonathan? Or is she just trying to
get me to compete with you?
I told her Dana was coming to visit
and she said she’d heard, that “somehow she’d worked herself into our…” Then
she said, “She’s probably renting a car.
I guess I should see her back at the house.”
I told her Dana was coming here (Aegis), and Mom said, “She’s
going to see me here!? That’s quite an
order coming from Dana.”
I’m not sure what she meant, but I know that
the third time you visited her, Jonathan, she expressed surprise that you were
seeing here there.
I took pictures of Mom’s finished
carrot-candle tie, and she asked me what she’d written on the back. It was something that seemed copied—about gay
couples thriving in Tulares, Colorado, even though it hasn’t been known for its
gay friendliness. She’d written down the
percentage of voters who supported Prop 8 in 2008. Then she’d copied something else, but I can’t remember
what. It was unrelated. Oh, I know.
It was about nurses supporting Wall Street instead of…But she hadn’t
copied what it was instead of.
At one point, I cleared my throat,
and she said, “Well, that was a nice perfunctory cough.” I asked her what she meant, and she said
that it sounded like “the kind of cough someone would make just because they
thought, ‘Well, it’s time for me to make a perfunctory cough.’ Maybe so they weren’t ignored.”
I told her the truth, which was that
I understood about the self-conscious clearing of the throat but that my cough
was completely sincere and unpremeditated.
Then, before leaving, I told her Dana and I would see her on
Monday, probably together.
But now I’d better go before I come
down with a perfunctory cough .
Love,
Tina
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