What was

Bike snacks

The last night of our trip, in Appleton, Julie, me, and our friends KE and KG shared mom stories over drinks. Their peculiar personalities, their peculiar health problems. Both the Ks are going through the same things we are. Declining moms. It's a pandemic!

We got home yesterday afternoon, and mom called at 6:30 last night wondering what "your schedule is," i.e., when am I coming over. I said I'd be there tomorrow (today). I got there about noon, and found her fresh from the pool. "I feel brand new!" she said. And she looked it -- scrubbed and shiny. We chatted a few minutes and then went to to the big activity room for the Memorial Day "picnic," which had been moved inside because of the  threatening weather. We got brats, chips, potato salad, cole slaw, broccoli salad -- the works.

Mom ate messily, but with relish. We were joined at our table by a couple who live in the tower apartments. They were urbane, and we chatted about Wauwatosa, where the woman had grown up. The couple said Mom was lucky to have a son living so close, who visits often. They exchanged histories with Mom (and me) on how they'd come to live at the place, and how they liked it. The couple, a year in, loved it. Mom, a year and a half in, said it was "OK."

"I'm lonely," Mom said.

She'd had my Sister L with her for most of her waking hours for four days, my brother-in-law for at least a couple days/visits, and her good friend from back home Sj, had made two visits in three days, including yesterday afternoon, bearing ice cream. And here I was, sitting right with her at the time.

It is hard not to be cynical, to call this a willful cry for pity. And it is true that people at the place say they're worried about her because she seems lonely. But it's not that she seems lonely. She says she's lonely. She seems mostly fine. She goes swimming, she talks, she eats, she joins the group games. She recently went on a group tour to the museum. She does things; she enters in.

So, let me try to be charitable. What she misses, I think, is her former life. Her husband, her kids at her feet. The days when she was the center of a small, vibrant universe. These are serious things to miss, for sure. But, after a while, most people accept and move on. Don't they? Do they? They never forget, they may never stop mourning, but they don't hold those around them hostage to what was. Do they?

But she has Parkinson's, where logic holds no sway.

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She made me lay down on the bed with her today. She asked me about our trip, What did we do? Over and over again. And what did Julie do? Over and over again. And, how was Julie's mother? "She sees no one, and she wants to see no one."

"I wish I was happy with no one around," she said.

I guess I do, too.

I let slip that Son E was in town.

"He better come and see me," she said.

He did.

Aboard the Badger