texas or bust

I called my mother last week to tell her that I was coming to visit.

"Hi Mom!" I said as soon as she picked up the phone.

"Hullo?" I heard her say. Her speech sounded muffled and distant.

"Turn the phone around!" I hollered.

"Who's that?" she demanded, directly into the earpiece. She keeps picking up the phone upside down. You can't blame her, really. When she first starting using telephones you cranked it up, held a cup to your ear and shouted into a box on the wall. It was all very straight forward.

"Ma, you're holding the phone upside down. Turn it around!" I shouted, presumably into her mouth.

"Oh, wait a minute! I'm holding it upside down!" She giggled. I listened as she shuffled things around. Sometimes she says she's going to turn the TV down, and I hear her hitting the buttons on the phone. I've done the same thing, truth be told, pointing the phone at the TV in a vain attempt to change the channel. And people wonder why I don't have a cell phone.

"How you doing, Ma?"

"Yesterday I ate seven...maybe eight... chocolate Ex-Lax!" she exclaimed. She could not have sounded more delighted.

"You did what now?"

"Here, I'll let Joel tell you." My brother got on the line.

"I handed her the package," he began, "and told her to take two. I meant two squares. I don't know why I didn't snap to it ~ I should have known she'd take two whole bars ~ half the whole thing. More than half."

"How is she? Is she OK?"

He gave a low chuckle. "It was a nerve-wracking night, I can tell you. I came in and checked on her a few times. She seemed fine. Just fell asleep. She was out like a light." He laughed again. "She liked it! She's happy about it. You know how she is".

Indeed I do. My mother has been addicted to laxatives for as long as I can remember. She's refused to take medication of any kind, including aspirin, for most of her life, but laxatives are another story; she can't get through the day without them. She thinks of them as vitamins. Never having developed a taste for fresh fruits or vegetables, she has always preferred to just take a pill, then relax and enjoy a diet of fried chicken, cheese omelettes and ice cream. Need fiber? She put two desserts on the table for dinner every night when I was growing up. I developed into a rather plump teenager. She, on the other hand, weighed all of 105 pounds then; 86 pounds soaking wet now. Go figure.

She got back on the phone.
"So how you feeling, Mom?"

"Pretty good!" she chirped.

"Listen, I called to tell you I'm coming for your birthday!"

"Oh, that's nice. When?"

"On your birthday! Well, the last week in April, anyway. It's a long story. I have to fly on a Wednesday because..."

"Good, good....I have to go now."

"What...why? What's the rush?"

"I just have to go!" She laughed. "Can't wait to see you. Bye!"

She hung up.

So I'm off to Texas, to party with Mom and her Peeps, on the occasion of her 92nd birthday. I have no idea what to get her. Maybe a box of chocolates. The box will say Godiva, but the contents might be a whole 'nother story.

And poor Hubs. He'll be all alone with the Stalker.

we are the people our parents warned us about

We met our friends Bill and Marion for drinks at the local Fish House Restaurant late yesterday afternoon. We arrived to find the parking lot jammed, with people wandering about in Hawaiian shirts and belly packs. Two large tour buses loomed ominously in a tiny side lot.

“Uh oh,” said Marion. “Something’s going on. Looks like some kind of tourist convention.”

“I didn’t think tourists still dress like that,” said Bill.

“We’ll never get seats,” fretted Turk.

We elbowed our way in and nailed 4 at the bar.

“Jackpot!” sang Marion. The joint was jumping with brightly plumed revelers.

"What's going on?" asked Turk of the bartender.

"Jimmy Buffet's at the Pond, and the Angels are playing a home game!" shouted the barkeep. I looked around ~ sure enough, smartly dressed in their own colors like a very tidy rival street gang were red-shirted Angel fans mingling amongst the Parrot Heads. We ordered before a turf war could break out. From the restaurant sound system Jimmy sang:

Haul the sheet in as we ride on the wind
that our Forefathers harnessed before us.
Hear the bells ring as the tide rigging sings.
It's a son of a gun of a chorus.

"So you missin' the pope yet?" Bill, a devout Catholic asked my husband, a very lapsed one and no great fan of the church.

"Can't say as I am," he replied, drinking deeply of his frosty pint. Bill laughed.

"Wish I coulda' gone to Rome," he said.

"I wish I coulda' gone to this concert," I moaned. Jimmy sang:

Where it all ends I can't fathom, my friends.
If I knew, I might toss out my anchor.
So I'll cruise along always searchin' for songs,
Not a lawyer, a thief or a banker.

Parrot Heads and Angel fans jockeyed for seats.

"Looks like Arte Moreno is going do alright in spite of us," lamented Marion. "The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim? What kind of idiocy is that? Makes us all look like morons!" We ordered cheese quesadillas and oysters and drank to putting a curse on the team owner's head. Jimmy searched for his lost shaker of salt.

"So you think the pope is in heaven yet?" asked Bill. Bill likes to talk religion with agnostics, Jehovah's Witnesses, lapsed Catholics and others he considers lost souls.

"Hasn't he got an express elevator to the top?" grumbled Turk. "The bouncer's at the gate wavin' him in right now, like this.." and he did his best impression of a burly club doorman giving a VIP a cool nod signaling go ahead ; a signal we ourselves have never experienced directly, I might add.

Bill smiled. "You really think so?"

"No."
Jimmy sang:

I don't want to live on that kind of island
No, I don't want to swim in a roped off sea.
Too much for me, too much for me
I've got to be where the wind and the water are free.

The Angel fans left for the game and we left for Chinese. Over Sizzling Beef, Szechuan Chicken, and Moo Shoo Pork we debated Social Security reform and tried to answer the Geography Trivia questions on the back of our cocktail napkins. We started in teams and disintegrated into three against Turk, who is some kind of geography savant. We drank sweet pink wine and jasmine tea. I ate with chop sticks.

"Ignore her. She's just showing off," said my husband.

I shrugged modestly. "It's a gift."

"Yeah, just you and 8 billion Chinese people."

We opened our fortune cookies and added the phrase "in the bedroom" to the end of each. Bill's said "You will travel far..." Marion gave him a dirty look. Mine said "You have executive ability...." I thought that sounded promising, and indicated I would look into putting it on my resume'.

We headed out to the lot for the short drive home. Bill, who still has high hopes for my husband although he has quite given up on me, hollered "See you in church!" as he got into his car.

"Don't hold your breath!" replied the Hubs good-naturedly.
And in my head Jimmy sang:

And there's that one particular harbour
Sheltered from the wind
Where the children play on the shore each day
And all are safe within

Lakes below the mountains
Flow into the sea
Like oils applied to canvas
They permeate through me.

a little patio music

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, my weekends had a certain pleasingly slacker, low-tech routine to them.

I'd get up, wash my face and have a couple of cups of strong, black coffee while reading the paper. If the news was good, the morning would be spent in relative peace; if bad the Hubs would be subjected to a well-reasoned if increasingly desperate rant, followed by sighs, more coffee, and a retreat to the comics pages.

Eventually I would rise, slap on some head phones, tune into NPR or maybe a little jazz, and go out onto the patio to paint. I have an old wooden table, left by the previous owners of the house, set up with newspapers, a bunch of old coffee cans full of various mediums and an easel I bought on sale at a craft store.

Sometimes the painting would go well, and I would lose myself for hours in gooey globs of green and rose and the heady mixture of turpentine and linseed oil. Sometimes it would go poorly, and I would lose myself in problems of perspective and scale, (the same problems, it occurrs, that plague in the real world) . Yet even these less successful days never felt wasted, for time spent playing in paint is, for me, time lived completely in the moment, absorbed and absorbing. Focused. Reaching.

Sometime around 4:00, I’d wind down, clean my brushes, take a shower, grab a glass of wine and wander back outside to sit in the Adirondack chair, contemplate the days work, and maybe write in my journal. Nothing smart, poetic or clever, full of bad grammar and awful punctuation, it was just idle musings, maybe a sketch or idea, something that made me laugh. No one came along to comment ~ imagine the shock if they had (Hi! I was just passing through, saw your journal sitting there and decided to read it ~ very nice! Stop by and read mine sometime! I leave it on my dresser at 4037 Maple.) All was peaceful and unremarkable in Patio Land.

Then I got a computer. Before I knew it, I had neither the time nor the inclination to do anything as labor intensive on weekends as to go outside and play; not when I could stay inside, plop down in a comfy chair and stare, dry-eyed and mesmerized, at the seductive white light of the monitor all day. As for writing in a quaint little, handwritten notebook,well; what's the point, really? I rarely go back and read the things; they just pile up on a shelf, or in a drawer somewhere.

(I imagine them being discovered someday by archaeologists, or detectives working the case of my mysterious disappearance ~ who was this brilliant, beautiful and obviously gifted woman who died all alone in this neglected tenement house, surrounded by old newspapers, coffee cans and cats? they'll wonder. Perhaps the lead detective will fall in love with me, like Dana Andrews fell for Gene Tierney in the movie Laura....) But I digress. Besides, if it isn't happening online in 2005, it isn't happening at all.

So last week I bit the bullet ~ went out, cleaned off the forlorn little table ~ or rather persuaded the gallant and only slightly complaining Hubs to do it for me, and a good thing too ~ I don't want to say its been a while, but there was an honest-to-god snake living amongst the debris. Talk about a bad omen.

The session went poorly but heroically I soldiered on. And as I wrote in my low-tech little notebook, I realized how much I missed this ~ sitting quietly on the patio, hearing the breeze rustling the leaves, the sound of laughter and voices drifting in from neighboring yards, the rumble of a distant train. A moment of serenity in the cool and open air. A crow squawked angry protest at an indifferent universe, and reminded me of... me. I sipped my wine and stared at the (so far very bad) painting and understood how much I needed to do this again. To sit. Listen. Be quiet. Be.

when lefties lose it

Like all clear-thinking liberals, I am convinced that 51% of the American public voted for bush just to antagonize me. The past two elections have all of us on the left feeling bruised, bloodied and unconscionably bullied by our compatriots, and the ensuing depression and impotent rage has us popping more pills than Rush Limbaugh at a PETA protest.

Not surprisingly, many of us are similarly persuaded that all those republican bumper stickers that seem to adorn every single automobile in my quiet suburban and Bill O’ Reilly-fan-infested neighborhood …are put there solely to besmirch our most fervently held beliefs and to question the nature of our emphatic but rational patriotism. Unfortunately, it appears some of us have become quite unhinged by the strain of remaining stoic in the face of all this rampant oppression. From the Associated Press:

Man Blames his road rage on bush bumper sticker

Tampa, Fla -- A man apparently enraged by a Bush-Cheney sticker on a woman's sport utility vehicle chased her for several miles and tried to run her off the road while holding up an anti-bush sign, police said.

"He told our officers that he just got mad at her, so he went after her," said police spokesman Joe Durkin.

Nathan Alan Winkler, 31, was freed on $2000 bail early Wednesday on a charge of aggravated stalking, which carries up to five years in prison.

Winkler could not be reached for comment but his father, John Winkler, said: "I know that he's very anti-Bush. But I don't see him doing anything like that. He's the least aggressive person I know."

Winkler told police he got upset with the woman, 35-year-old Michelle Fernandez, after she made an obscene gesture, Durkin said. Police said that as he chased the woman's vehicle, heheld up a smallsign that read: "Never forget Bush's Illegal War Murdered Thousands in Iraq."

I hear you, Nathan, and I feel your pain. Or I would, if it weren't for all those antidepressants. Why, just the other day I was forced to ride for an excruciating mile or so behind a brand new Toyota Land Cruiser that not only screamed BUSH/CHENEY'04 at me from several locations, but also had a 'Clinton' sticker wherein the 'C' was replaced by the old Soviet hammer and sickle motif (mind you; this was a brand new vehicle ~ when in the name of Ronald Reagan are they going to let it go?). It also boasted a "GOT GOD??" inspirational message and, just for good measure, an admonition to "BOYCOTT THE FRENCH!!" Really? Still? Mon dieu! Talk about holding a grudge.

But Nathan, my man, did I get out of my car and proceed to beat that bozo boldly about the bumper with my fresh baked baguettes and the bottle of Beaujolais I just happened to have under my back seat? No, my fellow angry American, I did not. And do you know why?

Because they were my dinner, that's why! Honestly. What a question. But how clever of you to have a little sign handy to wave crazily at similarly misguided motorists of the opposing lunatic fringe.

My fellow lefties, the answer is clear. We need to take back our country, one bumper sticker at a time. We need to get us more signs. Or more Prozac. Probably both. This is war.

still stylin'

My mom went out to dinner the other night. She had a wonderful time, and it was a joy to hear her sound so happy for the first time in months. She’d had a fall a few weeks ago, always a concern for a 91 year old, and although she’d broken no bones, she’d been in pain and ailing ever since. But this week she went out with my brother, his wife and their two sons to celebrate her grandson’s 14th birthday at a local family style restaurant. There was wine and pasta and a chocolate cake with candles, and to hear my mother tell it, the post- Oscar parties should have been as lively.

“I wore my Chinese Robe!” she told me delightedly.

Mom’s ‘Chinese Robe’ is now her favorite ‘Saturday night date’ outfit. It has a Mandarin collar, wide bell sleeves and a vaguely oriental pattern in fuchsia, cobalt and yellow. She wears it with little flat gold-toned ballet style slip-ons. It’s extremely attractive. But it’s still a robe.

“Mom, now why would you wear a robe out to dinner?” I asked in the manner of a 12 year old girl whose mother has just shown up at a local PTA meeting in acid washed jeans and a hair net.

"I don't care!" she replied firmly. "It's my favorite. It's comfortable. And it looks nice on me."

*~*~*

When she was young, my mother was a dance hostess at the Arcadia Ballroom in New York. She was petite and delicate featured with dark, chestnut colored hair, clear pale skin and sky blue eyes. I have a dress she used to wear, and although I doubt it's from this particular period, it is typical of her style. It's a tomato-red satin crepe de Chine, overlaid in lace of the same color. The collar is wide across the shoulders and narrows to a V at the small of the back. Cut on the bias, it has cap sleeves, a fitted waist and a full skirt ~ the kind that swirls straight out at a dancer's pivot. The kind that twirls for the pure pleasure of it's own sparkling movement. The kind that Ginger used to wear when she danced with Fred for the cameras.

The fabric is sprinkled throughout with the tiniest of rhinestones; when I was young I thought they were diamonds. It still bears the hand sewn label of the private dressmaker my mother used to use in Manhattan. It is easily the most beautiful thing in my closet, and the only garment I have that positively insists to be called a 'frock'. Just slipping into that dress is enough to make one feel like Ava Gardner sashaying into the 21 Club, late for a date with Sinatra; all French perfume and gold hoop earrings, rustling silks and Dom Perignon. Exuding womanly mystique and sex. Unabashed femininity. I love that dress. I've never had the courage to wear it out anywhere, although I tell myself someday I will. The sad little truth is that I haven't got the verve to pull off a dress like that.

But she did. In a dress like that, she was a knockout. In a dress like that, she could slay dragons. The last time she wore it, she told me, she attracted wolf whistles. She put it away and never wore it again. Ladies, even beautiful ones, do not want that kind of attention.

*~*~*

Now this beautiful, stylish woman wears housecoats out to dinner. As she says, she's 90, it's comfortable and it really does look nice on her. So if Britney and Paris can paint the town red in what appears to be their underwear, who am I to say my little mom can't show up at the Olive Garden in her Chinese Robe for a little rose' and a plate of spaghetti? If anyone can make it work, she can.

The last time we out shopping, a lady approached and gently touched my mother on her arm. "My, you have the most beautiful blue eyes!" she exclaimed. Mom looked up from her walker, smiled sweetly and said "Thank you." She looked back at me, crinkled her nose, shrugged her shoulders and smiling, walked on.

Yeah, Ma. I get it. It isn't about the clothes at all. Never was. It's about who's wearing them. And baby, you still got it.

I'd whistle, but I know how much you hate that.

art appreciation

"funraisers" by Sandra Jones Cambell

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

three smart Women

of serious mien

In need of culture felt

So into a car, open-topped

They cruised

For art, their hearts to melt

But first a bite! They thought themselves

And perhaps a dollop

The Terrace was lovely, The food not good

But the drinks ~ they packed a wallop

A gallery or two they thought

And then perhaps a claret

For art , we know, will cleanse the soul

And so perchance the palate

Yay ~ on they wandered, room to room

To bistro , bar and patio

Till, hark; a tavern! they have art!

And the music made them glad-io

they spoke in Arabic along the way

or so the town drunk told them

they laughed and ate and pondered art

so there! Thou das't not scold them!

what lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why

It’s been raining in California for days on end now. Uncharacteristically fierce, thundering storms with powerful gusts and downpours. I’m a melancholy thing by nature, and in general find comfort in these blue gray days of seamless sad serenity. I look forward to, and inhabit them; it seems to me the only time when my interior and exterior worlds rest peacefully side by side; for this brief period of time, at least, unified.

But these storms have brought deadly landslides and unaccustomed sorrow to this land so blessed by nature, and the pleasure of solitary afternoons delving into books by the fire has proven elusive. I’ve been thinking a lot about creativity, and the things I’ve left undone. A poem keeps running through my mind, in particular the line, “…but the rain is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh upon the glass and listen for reply…”

I keep thinking too that I had planned a painting inspired by this poem, which I'd begun sketches for a long time ago. This canvas is fully realized in my mind in shades of gray and mauve and indigo, with slashes of deep scarlet, created in rich oils applied with a thick impasto brush. It is beautiful and evocative, residing there quietly in my mind's eye. It beckons at moments like these, and chides. As do so many things I have left undone. And unsaid. The roads not taken. The challenges un-embraced. The losses so long unmourned.

The rain is full of ghosts tonight.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

* ~ * ~ *

6 degrees of trepidation

Monday, January 31, 2005

I haven’t been around for a while because I’ve been busy trying to find just the right shades of brown to put back in my lately graying, formerly blondish-brunette sorta hair. The reason I was doing so was because I was going to a slumber party with five other gals and wanted to look, if not my best, at least presentable. I met the gang at Trish’s house late Saturday afternoon. I knew Trish, who knew Robbie and Andrea, who knew DiAnne and Carol. Some of us had never met before, except through our journals. Everyone knew Hunny.

I’ve always thought of my journal as an abstract piece, a breezy little bit of me that I could send out into an unknown universe without consequence or cause. Like a Navaho sand painting or a Buddhist mandala, I thought of these pages as ephemeral ~ objects created to a specific purpose; which, once completed, had fulfilled their objectives and need exist no longer. Such pieces are always anonymous, for the identity of the creator is unimportant ~ it's the act of creating, as meditation, ritual or prayer, that gives the exercise meaning. It's one of the reasons I've never backed up the files; it seemed somehow to cheat that sense of writing on the net as temporary and immaterial; a kind of great cosmic shout out that, once expressed, required and expected no other result.

In the year or so that I've been reading and writing, I've come to know, or imagine I know, other wandering souls who, for one reason or another, have felt the same communicative impulse. And I've thought of my virtual world in here as complete and separate from my actual existence because, well; up until recently, it always has been.

We all give up a certain amount o f privacy in these exercises ~ some more, some less ~ but every one of us lays bare an element of ourselves to a unknown, untested, and potentially hostile cyber-world. We present ourselves as genuinely as we can, and reach out and invite others to get to know us if they will. And they do, but always at a remove; like tinting one's hair, what is presented is always a matter of choice, and to step outside of this artificial construct is to sacrifice a huge element of control. It leaves us all vulnerable, and requires a certain amount of trust in what is, to a large extent, a self-selecting but disparate group of relative strangers.

My fellow slumber party girls were wives and mothers, professional women and friends, and I was truly moved to meet in person the beautiful young women behind the gauzy drapery of the internet. My only regret is that there was not enough time to get to know them better on an individual basis. Maybe next time. Maybe in their journals.

As I write this on Monday, it's a glorious day in California ~ the sun is shining, the wind is blowing and the girls are loaded up in Robbie's blue convertible and headed for San Diego ~ elusive, ethereal still, but intangible no longer.

open letter to george bush

Dear George,

You don’t mind if I call you George, do you? I know you’re a folksy kind of guy, a real ‘man of the people’ as they used to say at Yale. Around here we usually refer to you as ‘The Idiot Boy-Prince,’ but it’s an awkward term and doesn’t roll off the tongue. So I’ll just call you George, and you can call me anytime.

First off, kudos on the election, man. None of us believed you had it in you, I swear. Imagine; a failed businessman and a rich man’s son who dodged the draft, can barely read his own press releases and who needed an electronic device planted in his ear to be able to respond to questions during televised ‘debates,’ actually winning over an intelligent, informed, Viet Nam war veteran who not only can read but can respond to questions with considerable thought and intelligence! Not with brevity, though, more’s the pity. If there’s one thing the American people won’t tolerate it’s a leader who thinks and speaks at a deliberate pace, right George? Heh-heh-heh.

And rushing all those electronic voting machines into service, even though the experts told you that they could be hacked by any clever teenager with a Compaq and 30 seconds to spare? You know; the e-machines owned by your buddies, including the one who promised to “deliver Ohio to George Bush?” Did they ever!

Of course, it was the fact that your boys Rove, Wolfowitz et al managed to convince all those red states that we’re in the midst of a Holy War between the good people who watch PAX TV and the truly fabulous people who watch ‘Will and Grace’ and that the future of marriage and meatloaf depended on the outcome that really did the trick. "Idiot Boy" hell ~ that was genius! Can’t find any Weapons of Mass Destruction? The alleged reason for going to war? Psshaw. Like Jon Stewart said, it’s about dudes kissin' dudes, baby! And Britney Spears’ right to marry any trucker she meets. And Donald Trump’s new reality show, “Who Wants to be My Next Wife?”

But by now you’re wondering what my point was, and come to think of it so am I! You’re just so easy to talk to, George; that’s why so many voted for you; they said that you’re the one they wanted to have a beer with; not some guy who would talk to them like he was actually smarter than they were. Like that’s what you want in a President! Sheesh!

Anyways, here’s the thing, George. Let’s just say that 51% of the American people voted for you. That means 49% of the voting public voted for someone else. I know it’s hard, so I’ll do the math for you: you won by a scant 2% of the vote. 2%. That’s not a mandate; that’s a margin of error. So that sweeping hurricane of mass destruction you’ve got planned, including: obliterating social security, eliminating taxes for the wealthy and imposing them on the poor and middle class; dismantling all environmental and consumer protections, institutionalizing torture and negating civil rights protections and advancements made since the 1950’s, to name just a few; well, you just haven’t got the right to do it. Period. We’ll fight you, George. And this is why:

1,370 American soldiers have been killed, 10,000 soldiers injured and at least 100,000 Iraqi people are dead in a war that is so shrouded in propaganda that we never see the coffins coming home. You and your cronies spent $40 million on smug, self-congratulatory black tie keggers while good men and women, many of whom voted for you, wept over the loss of wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters.

And still, in your inaugural speech you had the astonishing gall to ask our youngest citizens to believe the “evidence of your eyes” and “make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants.” As your own shining daughters of privilege looked on, wearing designer gowns and carefree smiles. You didn’t mention when they’d be leaving for boot camp.

Shame on you, Mr. President. Shame on us all.

Sincerely,

aloha and don't forget to recycle

”Aloha!“ she sings brightly, her voice high and sweet as a child’s. She learned the word when we took her on a trip to Hawaii some ten years ago, and she prefers it now to ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’. So do I.

“Join me,” she says.

She is lying on her back on the bed, her knees drawn up to her chest, her eyes closed, rocking gently. I lay down next to her and draw my knees up.. She leans over to rest her head against my shoulder. I close my eyes and smile. Separated by miles, we don’t see each other often enough to take such moments for granted. We keep finding excuses to touch each other, although we don’t really need any. We are too well aware of time as a gift and that every goodbye could easily be our last.

She takes my hand. Her fingers are long and smooth and cool as polished stone, comforting to the touch. They are like marble.

“Mom, you have no fingerprints,” I say.

“No. They must have worn off.”

“Great! Now you can commit the perfect crime.” We ponder the possibilities.

“I could rob a bank,” she ventures. We consider.

“Well, I was thinking more along the lines of a fabulous jewel heist. Or the perfect murder.” I think of my nasty next door neighbors.

“Oh, no! I don’t think I could kill anybody.” Hmn. Too bad.

“OK. We’ll do the bank thing. We certainly need the money. I could drive the getaway car. But see, that’s a problem; it’s not the execution of the theft I’m worried about ~ it’s the getaway. You’re not exactly Speedy Gonzales, you know. Fingerprints won’t matter; they’d nab you at some point during the 45 minutes it takes you to wobble to the curb.” We laugh.

She uses an aluminum walker all the time now. She has spondylosis, among other symptoms of advanced aging. Her spine is losing fluid and fusing; her posture forms a permanent U-turn. She faces the ground when she walks. She hates this infirmity; it embarrasses her. When her synapses aren’t entirely firing, she thinks she’s being recycled.

“What’s that thing that I am?” she asks, not for the first time, as we’re looking for a parking space at Randall’s Market. “Recycled? Get my sticker out of the glove compartment so we can park in ‘Recycling’…oh, no. That’s not the right word… what word am I looking for?”

"Handicapped, Ma. The word is 'handicapped.' But I prefer 'recycled.'

She smiles. "Yeah. So do I."