Rainy Sunday

Wisconsin Memorial Park

Well, I'm sick of the weather. Cold and rainy here today. We are home in nesting mode, washing clothes, mopping up the bathroom floor that flooded, filing papers, such fun.

Took Mom to church today, Palm Sunday, and the sudden outbursts of the choir's St. John Passion kept us awake. Mom and I were both shocked that the service lasted just an hour; it seemed longer and larger somehow.

When it was done, Mom asked, if I was here without her, would I go upstairs for the first-century meal that was offered-- dates, prunes, boiled eggs -- and I said I would not. So we went to brunch at her place.

I had pancakes, Julie had salad, and Mom had the navy bean soup and a sweet roll. She'd ordered it with confidence as something that would just hit the spot, then after about five spoonfuls said she'd ordered the wrong thing and tried to pawn the soup off on us. I don't think the soup was bad, it's just her lifelong habit of ordering what she thinks she should have, rather than what she wants. It's one of the lovable, annoying things about her.

Not that we all don't have lovable, annoying things.

Our conversation over cottage cheese yesterday sticks with me. We started talking about Mr. Cook, who for probably 20 years came over almost every night for dinner. Mom would call him up, or Dad would stop by, or sometimes even Ole would go get him. "He was so easy to have around," Mom said. He'd been a drummer in a military band, and would tap out little rhythms and sing quietly with a glint in his eye, "Potatoes are cheaper, tomatoes are cheaper, now's the time to fall in love."

"This was a mission for you, Mom, a way you served," I said. She briefly looked pleased, then shrugged it off.

Then we went deeper. The constant flood of people in and out of our house was nearly dizzying, and she made huge meals and accepted all comers, no matter whether they knew each other or not. Cook, Ole, Kenny, Greta, George M, Reza from Iran, a deaf boy named Paul (who lived with us for a week or two and once locked me out of the house), two Vietnamese pilots, a woman whose husband was a soldier in Vietnam (she wrote to him every day and did a lot of ironing), Bruno from Brazil (our most successful guest; "he was so cute," Mom says), friends of her kids who often would come just to see her (she'd have them fold clothes or set the table), and, among many others, the most tragic, I think, L the pregnant girl. She might have been 20?

I think now: Why was she at our house? Who was she hiding from? It must have been the late 1960s, early 70s, and her boyfriend, father of the child, thought that having a child out of wedlock was "no way to start a marriage," so they had it adopted, then got married, then, presumably, went on to have other kids.

I wonder if there has been a day in her life that L hasn't thought about that kid.

Cottage cheese

The Cranberry bike rack

Mom called this morning saying she felt lost. She was on her cell, which she only uses with help, and I could hear an aide in the background. She wanted to call my sister for her birthday, but didn't seem to know how to do it, and after a few rounds of deepening confusion, I had her put the aide on the phone, and told her where the key phone numbers were posted -- right by the bed, in big print -- and asked her to tell my mom I'd be there at 3.

So I went by bike. On the bike, it's easier not to worry about her, and I had a good ride. She was waiting in her room -- standing, putzing -- and when I said, "Mom?" she turned to me and said, "Oh good! You're here!"

The first thing she said was, "I'm feeling lost," and "All of my friends are gone." I took a guess, "Dar? Carol?" She said Yes. They are hanging out together, doing things together, and Mom can't keep up. "I feel jealous," she said.

She wandered to the dining room while I looked over her papers, and when I found her, she introduced me to the aides, "This is my son, Jon," her hand outstretched at Jon. Jon the new dishwasher on the "The Price is Right." Of course, every time I come I am reintroduced, sometimes as her brother. Once, even, she called me Nels. But to the aides, this is a mild case, and they just say, "We know Jon," and smile.

When a resident wandered up to meet a friend, Mom gave her big, used-car-salesman smile and introduced herself. "I'm Mary." The woman, E, knew her, had met her when Mom moved in. But to Mom, this was all new material, and when the conversation ended and Mom still stood there smiling, I took her arm and said, "Let's go downstairs."

We bought the cottage-cheese cups topped with raspberries and granola. Mom said it needed something, something like syrup, so I went up to the counter and got a little cup of pancake syrup. We poured it into our cottage cheese and it tasted a lot better.

Out of the past

The Cranberry dining room

Been a busy week, with my sisters and I buzzing emails back and forth full of Mom matters large and small. People emerge from her past and we have trouble fitting them into the larger picture and knowing how to play them. Mom, in this recent case, showed a flash of the decisiveness that has guided her through this last decade, and said she would call. The fact that she had only a brief conversation was less important than that she took the reins.

I went over last night and she was bright-eyed and energetic. She even looked up from her brownie and mint ice cream dessert -- her most favorite thing -- to comment on some small item, and said it loud enough to be heard.

I talked with Jim, who always makes sense. He was a photographer -- did annual reports and other corporate work. He remembered a client, a CEO, who didn't like to have his picture taken, so after Jim got one relatively good portrait out of him, in subsequent years he would just place in a different-colored tie, and people would say, "My he looks good."

I said I work with photographers, and that photo specialists in journalism -- who don't write too -- are a dying breed. Any Joe Reporter can take a photo -- not a good one, maybe, but still -- and of all the photographers I've ever known, only a few could recognize the elements of a sentence. I said all photography now is digital, and Jim derided it, and said he was happy to have retired before he had to use it.

Mom turned to me, in the middle of conversation, and said, "I feel the need of a plan. I've told you this before -- or maybe you're just going to tell me 'you're just going to live here.'"

"Do you like living here?"

"Yeah, I do, in a way."

Is this progress? A mood?

I know this much: she'd exercised that morning, and then she'd gone to a Lenten service at the Episcopal chapel on the first floor, and then the group of them went to Taylor's for lunch. Right there -- right there -- more engagement, more activity, by 1 p.m. than she'd have had in a week back in Ann Arbor. So, what is the plan she seeks?

We went to her room and did our little rituals -- went through the mail (very little lately), and checked on her finances. For a few months now I've been sitting down on the couch after the rituals and just chatting with her. We talk about the people in her world -- her children, her grandchildren, my dad.

She's also a consumer of local gossip, and returns to certain themes regularly. There's the story about the older married man in the place who had an affair with a young employee, and his wife promptly moved out and of course was furious and told everybody. I'm not sure that this is true, but it's a pretty good story.

The choral response

The postlude

I arrived at her place at 9:40, and had to go and find her. She was in her room, dressed, but in a state of stasis, seeming not to know what to do. I had to help her put her coat on, not just with one arm, as usual, but both. She was slower and more frail than ever, and all morning I wondered how long it would be before they would move her to skilled nursing.

We got there, found a handicapped parking spot near the entry, and found our seats. The quarterback was in his usual seat, one row ahead of us, near the far aisle, and she pointed him out. The service, the music, the words, the benediction, the choral response, and then she says, "Now where is my football player?"

"Let's not bother him today," I say.

I find her a seat in the lounge, and go to get us some snacks. When I return, she is impatient with the snacks and says, "I think I see the football player's wife!" She gets up to investigate. I try to dissuade her, but Julie arrives and says, no, the football player's wife, a choir member, is away today.

I suggest we leave, and fetch her coat. I help her put both arms through, and, walking with her down the hallway, we see the football player, still in the narthex, chatting. Mom glances over, but I steer her firmly out the door. In the car she says, frostily, "Well, I'm sorry. I embarrassed you, I guess."

"It's not that," I say, though it is. "It's just that you and he have nothing to say to each other, and to talk to him every week is too much."

She denies that she has talked to him every week, and she's right. But she has a no-boundaries, no-holds-barred social method that has only grown bolder in this new environment, and it aggravates me, and I just don't know how to handle it.

At brunch, she said the quiche was tasteless, and didn't even eat all her bacon.

Amendments and dependents

Sorry I've been away. I spent four hours over two days with the tax man, amending, reconsidering dependents, and tinkering, tinkering, tinkering till I was nearly blind. What a nightmare. I missed a reporter's going away party Friday and went straight to my writing group. Yesterday, then, I skipped my normal Saturday visit to Mom and spent all day on the bike, up to Fond du Lac, where Ms. JV picked me up on the way home from her mom. They're everywhere!

Mom called me only three or four times in the last couple days, showing admirable restraint. But her call of Thursday was a classic instance of the Guilt Special.

It's about 3:30, and I'm driving home.

"Hi Jon. Where are you?"

"I'm in the car Mom. Driving home."

"And then what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to work on my taxes. Then I'm going to take them to the tax man."

"Oh."

I ask about her day, did she get to the fitness center, what she did. She said she made it to exercise, but the rest of it she can't remember.

She says again -- having forgotten, or hoping for a better answer -- "So what are you going to do when you get home?"

"I told you, I'm going to do my taxes, then take them to the tax man. He's open till 8."

"Oh."

She's not asking for a visit, but she's testing my schedule, trying to find a weakness, a spare hour I can't account for adequately. If I were to say, "I'm just going to stay home," which is often the truth, I feel like she doesn't think that's a good enough reason not to be there. That may not be how she feels, but her children have all experienced her crushing disappointment at an early departure, or a visit canceled, or a big snow that has kept us away. As dotty as she is, she has a razor-sharp memory of who has visited, who has called, how many times, and who is due.

The most poignant moments are the instances when she'll call me up and invite me to lunch or dinner. "You want to come for lunch? We'll go to the fancy place." She says this as if I'm her best friend, like S or E or M or V, and this is just the perfect, most irresistible offer.  As if I'm going to say, "Why, Mom, such a great idea! Yes, I'd love to! Why, I was just sitting here thinking 'What am I going to do with this day?'"

My visit days are Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, with slowly expanding leniency, and if it's not one of those days, I politely decline.

To church now. Sigh.

The Eisenbahn Trail

Not too bad

No news for a couple of days -- my crunch days at work. Then she called yesterday afternoon -- actually her friend D called, and put Mom on the line. So I wondered, can she no longer use the phone?

When she got on, her voice was thick -- sounded like she'd been drinking, though she hadn't. She said she wanted to be able to call me, and I said she had me. She complained about not knowing how to use the phone, and I told her she'd done fine with D, or ask one of the staff people, they'll help you.

Then the reason for her call, apparently: "We need to talk about where I'm going to be. I'm not staying here forever!"

That same old thing. I was frustrated enough that when I got home, I called a couple sisters. Siri said she called her almost every night, and Mom had said she wanted to move there. Kari pointed out that, except for college and a year after college, she'd only ever lived in a family at home, "with blood relatives." And that Mom had said she was OK, but what she wanted was to be with one of her children.

I wish very often she'd had career, knew the demands of work, had developed outside interests.

I went to visit her tonight feeling quite beaten down. I was, kind of, in crisis, thinking I have to cut back. But when I got there we had a nice evening. Interesting conversation with J, probably the smartest woman there, with intermittent bellowings from A, whose husband, she will not let you forget, was a OB Gyn, and who was killed in his 50s by a falling tree -- in the backyard, a professional had come to cut it down, and it fell the wrong way.

We went to Mom's room and chatted, read emails, and even watched a little TV, then visited her friends D and C, who were having computer trouble, and then back to Mom's. For so late in the day, she was remarkably with it. I think talking to Kari, earlier, and Siri, too, maybe that day, but at least yesterday, was part of it. Her children pouring attention at her is like a beneficial drug. I stayed till she was so tired she was going to lay down. It's the easiest way to leave.

The quarterback

The Oak Leaf Trail

To church today with Mom. She looked good. She almost always dresses nicely, and is as thin now as she always hoped to be. It's only her baby-step gait and her scattershot memory that give her away as a person in need.

She gently called me out after the service for sleeping during the sermon -- it's the Nels Olson in me -- and made a beeline for Bob the Quarterback after the service. He was a record-setting quarterback who led Michigan to the 1964 Rose Bowl, and played a couple years for the New York Giants. He still looks like a quarterback, with a kind of calm charisma, and mom has a thing for him.

She said, today, she had to meet him.

"But you've met him several times," I said.

"I have not. I've never met him."

"Yes, you have."

"Well I want to shake his hand. I've never shaken his hand."

Bob was sitting with a man who looked vaguely like him, and she accosted him first. He was happy to hand her off to Bob. Meanwhile, I had fled to the hall, unwilling to watch yet another excruciating encounter. I never know whether I should monitor her or just let her go -- and this time I should have stood by.

Julie, coming down from the choir, said that after a brief "Hi, how are ya," there was really nothing they had to say to each other, and Mom doesn't get the social cues. They both stood awkwardly for a few seconds -- Bob no doubt wondering "How does this end?" -- until he finally made his way past her while Mom kind of fluttered in place.

I met up with her in the hall. She wanted to stop into the lounge for a snack and more conversation, which we normally do. But it would have been a half-hour, and I had reached my quota. And, of course, I wanted to get home and spend a little time on her $%#@! taxes before the day was completely exhausted. I ate a quick brunch of quiche at mom's place and departed, and Julie, thank goodness, took on the aftercare.

So where do you want to live?

The Oak Leaf Trail

Well, I drove after all. Had to call AAA to get my car started, but I got there at 12:15. She was waiting in her room, with a wrinkly face just up from a nap. She hadn't had lunch, so we went to Simple and were there at least an hour and a half -- waiting, ordering, waiting, eating, talking.

"I really want to talk to you about where I'm going to live," she said.

I couldn't keep avoiding it. "So where do you want to live?" 

She said she wanted to live with one of her children. 

"If you live with me," I said, "you will sit there for hours all day while we're at work, just waiting for us to come home. There will be no one to talk to, no exercise room, no activities to go to, no one to eat with, nothing to do. And that's true of all of us."

She said the thing she'd liked best was living with Siri, which she did for a month a couple summers ago, when Siri was on vacation. Whatever Siri did, Mom did. But Siri told her, we've all told her, that that was unusual, that there was no one who had that kind of time all year round, even if they could stand it.

We reviewed the last couple years, since my dad died. How, after he died, she was living alone, with C coming over a couple hours a day, while her friends were doing everything they could. But there were long lonely days, and she couldn't quite take care of herself, sank into depressions, and just kind of waited till we would visit. She acknowledged that, but didn't seem to remember it -- remember how it felt. 

She did remember seeing St. John's and thinking it was fine, that she could live here. But now she characterizes it as "living in a hotel. All these people are just paying and living in a hotel."

"They're retired people, Mom. They don't need to work, they don't want to cook, they have health problems. It's a good place for them, it's a good place for you."

She said she'd like to have a job, maybe one day a week. Maybe she could work at Kmart, she said. I said I didn't think she could work at Kmart. Maybe Taylor's, the restaurant at St. John's, would let her lay out forks for an hour once a week, I said, only half-serious. "They have people that do that," she said. 

She's made good friends at St. John's, but she misses her Ann Arbor friends, her lifelong friends. Really, only in a few glimpses have I fully seen the enormity of this change in her life -- she hides it well -- and this was one of those glimpses. 

She seemed to momentarily understand the logic of it -- why she was here -- but this nag inside her, like the bra obsession, will stay there and keep coming out. Logic doesn't quell her anxiety. 

*

So, lunch over, we get back to her room, and she holds out her arms and says, "Where's my purse?"

She'd had the purse in the restaurant, but no credit card -- probably that's lost, too. She fussed over how to pay -- she always wants to pay -- and finally I paid, and then we'd gone to the car, and now I saw myself having to go back to find her purse -- this woman who thinks she could handle a job at Kmart. 

I stalked back out to the car -- no purse there -- then stomped back in, quite angry now, to tell her I was going back to Simple, all the while seeing my biking time, my me time,  dwindling. But like a miracle, the man who'd been out in the hall cleaning said he'd found her purse, and she had it now. 

By now it was almost three hours since I'd arrived, and I made quick work of checking her emails, helping her make a couple of calls, and left. 

I got my 20 miles in. 

Pi Day

Pi Day at the office (a day early; Saturday is 3.14.15)

Our esteemed colleague John Rasche, looking a little pale

Two quiet days. Haven't seen Mom since Wednesday, and I had hope that the matter of the bras was behind us, but she called this afternoon to make an arrangement for tomorrow, and said she thought that after lunch she should probably go to the store to return the bras that didn't fit.

I said we'd returned them.

"Did you return them? Not Julie?" Sparing Julie additional effort is her first priority.

"We returned them," I said. That was the "we" as a collective, sort of like Olson & Vosper Enterprises Inc. had returned them. By which I meant of course that Julie had returned them.

"Both of you together?"

"Um" -- long pause -- "yes."

I put my bike back into commission last night -- a deeply therapeutic rite -- and today rode to work and back, suffering only the right amount. It's about 30 miles roundtrip, broken, obviously, by hours at the halfway point, so it's really not so bad. I rode all winter indoors on a trainer I bought a couple years ago, and could feel that behind  me.

So my plan to see Mom tomorrow was to ride there, have lunch, putter in her room, and ride back. None of this communicated to her, as, I feel, it's not her business how I get there, and my biking makes her fret.

But she said she wanted to "take you out to eat. And Julie." I told her Julie was booked -- zumba -- and felt privately that going out to eat would mean I'd need a car, which would mean I couldn't bike there. Still, I couldn't deny her. Cranberry can be stifling, and the weather has turned gorgeous.

We lately go to a place called Simple, which is two blocks away, and it was that famous Julie who suggested I bike there and take her to Simple in the wheelchair.

So that's the plan.

What I think will really happen is that I will get there and she will say, "Oh let's just eat here."

A little bit better

Lifeline

Mom much better today. I really think the time change -- the loss of an hour -- whacked her out. At dinner with the Cranberry gang, she ate everything she got, and, for dessert, had the black forest cake with whipped cream and cherries on top and the caramel collision ice cream. Again, all of it mashed into a sweet porridge. "Desserts are the best part of meals," she said. She had so much energy so late in the day that it made me think she'd had wine on the other days, when she was calling so crazily. A glass of wine completely shuts her down.

Still, she called yesterday and again today -- even after all those frantic calls earlier -- itching to return the extra bras. Having them in the place just bugged her, in the way that I think only someone with Parkinson's can be bugged. She wanted to go to the store with me to return them, as if somehow this would mitigate the trouble I would have returning them by myself. Quite the contrary. She said, "But you'll return them, right? Not Julie?" I said I would. I guess we'll see.

She was wearing one of the new bras, kind of a sports bra, and insisted on lifting her shirt to show me. Egad. "I didn't fuss with it all day," she said.

We called P, of P and P, and C, who was upset when Mom didn't recognize her on her call of the other day. I got on the phone with P after Mom talked to her. "Tell her we love her to pieces." And C told her, "I'm so relieved. You sound so much better."

Still, she's not getting better. She kept referring to a woman who lives there as "he," and said, at dinner, "We gotta talk something about when I should go home. I seem to be the only one who is not here just forever."

I don't know what to do with that. Just a year ago, with a clear mind, she said she liked the place, it was lovely, she would like to live there. We sold the house, moved all her stuff -- does she not remember?

When I was getting ready to go, she said "The things you get into having to deal with me!" And then "I hope that it turns out OK.",

"What?"

"Returning the bras."

My poor mother

Hoyt Park from the Parkway

Two out of seven bras fit. Not a bad rate, I guess. It took two forays for Julie, and she's still gotta bring the ones that don't fit back. She's a good one, doesn't complain, does this stuff without me asking, never says she can't. 

"Julie came like a thief in the night," Mom said when she called me after Julie delivered the bras on her lunch break. Julie reported she was good then, lucid and talking with her friends at lunch. 

But now, on the phone with me, she was worried about the ones that didn't fit -- how could she get them back to Julie? I said I'd be there Wednesday, and I'd take them. 

There was a lot of noise in the background -- women talking and laughing. I thought maybe she was down in the bistro.  

"Somehow I have to get home," she said.

"Are you in your room?"

"I am in my room, but how did I get here?"

Apropos of nothing, she said a resident named D was coming back. He's loud, and demanding -- he does, I can attest, throw the whole atmosphere out of joint -- and he and the administrator of Cranberry have had words. "Somehow they have to get over it," Mom said. "I can talk to them, I can do that."

I didn't doubt that she could have in her prime, but I didn't think so now.

After one more round on the return of the ill-fitting bras, and a few words with her friend Dar, delivering the same message, we ended the call. I went into a meeting then, and when I came back, she'd called three more times. I called her back, and she said, as if she hadn't thought of it before, she didn't know how she was going to get the bras back to Julie. 

Tough day

March 8, 2015

I went to pick up Mom for church at 9:30. She was dressed, but sleeping sideways on her bed. She woke when I came in, and we chatted a few minutes, but she was groggy and didn't look well. I said she should skip church, sleep some more, and that I'd go to church and come back after, and we could have brunch.

When I got back she was doing a puzzle with a couple of wheelchair ladies, one of whom immediately backed away, professing her ineptitude at puzzles, and suggesting, somehow that I was a champion, a young matador of jigsaw puzzles. Mom lightly scoffed at the woman who said she was bad. "Everybody who comes by here says something like that," she said, and waved her hand at the puzzle as if to say, get going. I thought, Wow, that's the old Mom.

We went down to eat, and she was slower than ever. We got huge omelets, bacon, and diced potatoes that were not quite unfrozen. She pushed half her food to me, some of which I ate, and regretted. Up in her room, then, I checked her email and printed out the interesting bits, made a couple of new pages of her return-address stickers, and we put together a gift for Marie's son, who lost his wife. All during this, Mom would ask me to read something to her, then wander all about, and even leave the room. Then she'd come back and start pulling out letters -- mostly from Christmas -- and ask me if I got this letter or that or the other, all of which I got and all of which I'd been asked about on almost every visit I've made since they'd arrived.

I was there two hours and watched her decline all the while, till she finally said, "I keep getting more and more worried about what I'm going to do with my life. I mean, all these people are just going to stay on and on and on." This is like my dad -- somehow, where he was wasn't where he was going to be, wasn't the home he sought. But I can't say to her, "This is it, this is where you 're going to live." The best I can do is make an avuncular shrug and say, "I don't know, this is a pretty nice place," which I'm not sure communicates any sense of finality. I was feeling nearly crazy when I left.

At home I worked on her taxes, trying to pull all the paper together. I came across a card she'd written with a Christmas check a couple months ago.

"Dear Jon and Julie,

"Thanks for a lovely Christmas and New Years with you.

"This is your gift -- 'twill help you pay for the college bills? -- or whatever!

"Love you so much

"Grama Mary"

Simple lines, but somehow it cried out to me, Love me, love me, love me. I felt cheap having accepted the gift. It felt so much like commerce. It's just family.

Another mom, and a bra update

Razing the Menard's store on Bluemound Road, for Wauwatosa Now.

JV and I went up to Appleton today to see her mom. Took her to Golden Basket, and our friend Dan joined us-- he was in town to see his own aging mother. It's a thing you don't count on, being the parents to your parents. Seeing him was the highlight of what would have been a long, quiet day. We called him later to see if we could stop by to see his mom. "We just finished a puzzle and we are ready for you in Mambone Central."

We invited JV's mom down for Easter -- I offered to go up and bring her down for the service, and Julie would bring her back right away. Or, if she wouldn't do that, Julie offered to go to Appleton and go to Easter church with her.

"I don't want to go. I don't want to travel for Easter. I'll be unhappy if you come here to be with me. I don't want you to come here, so I would go there, but I don't want to go there. I'll be upset with you if you come here."

OK then.

Mom last night was wondering how to respond to the latest death near to her -- Marie Lee's daughter-in-law, Jodi, Gustav's wife, died of cancer Thursday. Gustav is 49. It's really tough. On the phone, Mom and I had a confusing discussion about a gift of some kind. I'll sort that out tomorrow. I hope she catches on to the shift to daylight savings time tonight -- one hour less to sleep and get ready in the morning.

And time now for a

Bra update: Julie returned the ones that didn't fit, and came home yesterday with a half-dozen new ones from Kmart. Sports bras, semi sports bras, old lady bras -- who knew there were so many kinds. We'll bring them tomorrow and see if someone on the staff would help her try them out over the next few days. I don't know how I would have handled this without a wife.

Sources of gloom

No Mom yesterday, and I'll probably stay away today, too. I left work early in the afternoon, drove halfway downtown and walked in, about three miles. It was cold, but not the biting cold of the day before, and I worked up a sweat in my heavy clothes, listening to "Deep Down Dark," about the Chilean mining disaster, a claustrophobic book.

I stopped at the gas station at 12th and Highland to use the bathroom, wending through the crowd lined up to pay. When I came back outside, people were ringed around a little pushing match -- two thuggish kids pushing at a tall white guy. It seemed, at first, like it was just good fun, even the white guy flashing a quick smile -- but then suddenly it wasn't fun. The thugs took his hat, and were pulling at his coat, and he started squirming and pushing and people started shouting, "Leave him alone," and "Back off, back off!" I got my phone out, fumbled with it, thinking to call the cops, but then the scufflers banged into a car in the gas bay, knocking an antenna off the trunk right in front of me.

Now the driver of the car comes out of the store and says, "OK, now you're messing with me." He's a well-built black guy, and knows what he's doing. In two quick strides he's there, grabs the thugs by the neck, both at the same time, and throws them to the ground. He and the white guy kneel onto them and go to work, punching their faces, blow after blow. After a handful of swings the white guy stands and lands a soccer kick to the face of one of the kids, and the driver does the same to the other -- both of them kicking and kicking, blood and, probably, teeth flying.

The tables have turned, and finally the two kids get up and scurry away from the gas station, to the sidewalk, both sides yelling at each other, till the driver hears something he doesn't like and takes off after the them, his girlfriend leaning out her door, crying "No! Nooo!" When the driver comes back, the kids return, standing a distance off, threatening they'll be back, they ain't done with his yet.

There will be a gun before this is over, I think, and trot away, watching as the white guy gives a kind of soul handshake to the driver, thanks him for his help, and walks off, trying to look anonymous

All this, followed by a sophisticated evening with Ms. V at Port of Call. We had the seafood Cobb salad, then attended "The Amish Project," a one-woman show about the killing of 10 Amish girls in Pennsylvania in 1996. It was impressionistic, not quite a story, and I wanted more actors in it. But it was the perfect downbeat cap to a downbeat afternoon.

Dessert

Had dinner with Mom and the Cranberry gang tonight. At the table was Barbara, Jim, Ann, Lynn, Alex, me, Mom, Dar and Carol. Between fading comprehension and bad hearing, the talk is often cacophonous. I find it easiest to tune in to Jim, who's always clear and interesting. He told a story once about a recent trip to Iowa, I think it was -- somewhere. He had to be hospitalized, and was alone and bereft. They moved him to Northwestern Hospital in Chicago, and when he got there, a card was waiting for him signed by all the Cranberry residents. He nearly cried as he said this. He didn't know how they knew where he was. It was a miracle, he believed -- the staff were angels.

Mom told me tonight -- two and a half times -- that yesterday she had planned all day to go to an evening piano recital. "But I was too tired and went to bed," she said the first time. And the second time: "But I forgot all about it." The third time I foreshortened it: "I know, you told me."

We had pork with a nice sauce, stuffing with a little zip in it, diced carrots with occasional raisins. Dar somehow got hold of the bag of raisins and offered them around, saying how good they were. And there was much talk about Kathryn, a woman whom I knew well, always happy to see me.  She was bent over at 90 degrees --only sitting did she look unaffected. She pushed a walker, and used to spend a lot of time smoking out in front. She was smart, and, I thought, aware of where she'd fallen to. Now she's gone to what they call "the hospital" -- I think this must be the skilled care unit. "She's depressed," Mom said once. Tonight, they said, they somehow knew she wasn't coming back. It's all very vague, and the staff, or the administrators, tell them they're not to talk about people who are suddenly gone.

Mom said tonight that a man in Cranberry had died. "George, I think," she said. "He never came out of his room." And I told her, when we got to her room, that Mrs. S's son, 51 years old, had died. He was an attorney that Julie knew. Mrs. S bought the apartment Mom had originally planned to move into (before she was deemed in need of assistance). I showed her a picture of Mrs. S in the building directory.

"It was her? She bought my house!"

"It was her son," I said.

"I want to go talk to her."

"No, don't now, please? He just died a day or two ago. She needs to be with her family."

I read her the obit and printed it out. With the obit and the directory in her hot hands, she cast about for a way to get involved. I said, "Go talk to Dar and Carol." But that was too complicated to carry out. "What should I do, what should I give her?" she asked.

"Next time you see her, why don't you just tell her you were very sorry to learn of his death."

We left it at that.

She said at one point, "There's a lot death you hear of here."

But she did enjoy dessert -- Boston cream pie and Caramel Collision ice cream, which she mashed together into a porridge.

Ya gotta love it

Read my beady little eyes out today. Twelve hours, was it? Another day and a half of it, then I can kick back.

Mom doesn't call me any more on my busy days -- Monday, Tuesday, half of Wednesday. She used to call, forget she'd called, call again, then forget she'd called again. I attribute it to her greater absorption in the doings and dramas of Canterbury -- Cranberry, she says -- Court. I'll visit Wednesday for dinner.

Julie got her new bras today, but they didn't fit.

Church, bras, oxygen

Took Mom to church today. She looked good -- good color in her face, a nice outfit not diminished by her neon green running shoes. Good energy, too -- she was cogent and funny.

Arriving at church, I found a Lincoln Navigator -- just about the biggest car you can buy -- parked in a handicapped slot, no handicapped permit, no wheelchair icon on the plate. I have a handicap tag for use with my mom, and thought of leaving angry note under the wiper thanking the driver for taking the slot to protect the sides of the extra-wide vehicle. Maybe the driver had delivered a passenger needing more help than my mom, but tags are tags! But probably at church one should try to suppress one's the attack-dog instincts.

Back at her place, we ate at the grill -- pancakes for me, pizza for Mom, a salad for Julia. The nurse had called this week and said Mom's bras don't fit any more, so, up her room, the women undertook some measurements while I stayed discreetly around the corner, happy to be excluded. Mom wanted to go the store and get some, whenever that trip is made, but we negotiated that Julie would get a selection and bring them back to her, as she is not quite up to a shopping trip, putting on and taking off clothes in the changing room, etc., etc.

Leaving the place, I saw a woman in a wheelchair by the elevator, whipping a thin plastic cord back and forth, back and forth. It was her oxygen cord, stuck under the wheel of her wheelchair. Multiple ailments! Everybody there has them -- quite possibly, everybody everywhere does. I stopped, thinking I'd offer help, but her face was not welcoming, and it seemed like she'd figure it before too long. Being there, it's hard to know who would like help, and who would bite your head off.