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.