The food in Vienna

The rolling pill desk

I'm home this week. The woman has gone to Portland for a face-to-face with her girlfriends, so I am suffering through a Father's Day with my best friend under the circumstances -- myself. It's not so bad. The kids have called, and there are no control issues over the TV. I treated myself to breakfast at Simple, and got seated right way. Scrambled eggs, potatoes, sausage, just the stuff I like.

At Mom's yesterday I found her lined up in the penalty box with half a dozen other ladies, and immediately I thought of the old-folk's home horror stories you hear where people are lined up and systematically sedated. I don't think it happens at her place -- but how would I know? I tell myself it was a staffing problem -- hard to keep track of all the needy residents unless they're right in front of you.

Mom, in any case, was her normal self, which provides, possibly, a questionable contrast to sedation. We went down and checked for mail, and then went out on the plaza for a taste of the sweet lovely air. There were boats in the glistening harbor, and we sat for a few minutes -- but then suddenly she wanted to go back in.

At dinner, Fred, the man who lost his wife, Eva, a few weeks ago, ate at his little table with one of the nurses. She said "How do you like the meatballs?"

"I've eaten better in Vienna and Paris," he said.

*

Today, church. She was sleeping in her chair in the hall when I got there and didn't perk up through the entire service. Didn't even mouth the hymns, couldn't keep track of her place in the liturgy. She tried to stand at one point and I grabbed her arm and said, "Sit down." She defiantly pushed herself all the way to her feet, and I pulled her down and said, "Sit down. You're going to fall in church."

She gave me the coldest, angriest look I've seen on her face since I was an unruly kid.

She tried one more time on the way to communion. I pushed her shoulder down and said again, "Sit down."

We had quick coffee, then I brought her up and got her into bed. She had nothing left.

*

We close on the sale Wednesday morning, and the purchase Wednesday afternoon. We move on Friday. I am worried about my bike. Bring it up to the room every time? Leave it locked to the rack in the garage? But then I'd have to take off my tool bag, my front bag every time I come and go. Whatever it will be, it will be an impediment to just hopping on and riding, like I do here, and I just really hate it.

That, and I will miss living in Wauwatosa. After reporting on it, living in it, it is mine.

The Village

Totally upbeat

Kitchen and dining room

Our condo sellers invited us over for chat and furniture measurements. We also met our soon-to-be neighbor, a 90-plus-year-old Italian woman named Helen, who came over all dressed up in a blue frock. "She plays loud Italian opera, but we only hear it out in the hall," said Carl, our seller.

It was as we remembered it, neither larger nor smaller, just as nice, and, you know, one could imagine oneself living there. Our loan has been approved, and we close in 10 days. And we still have a heck of a lot to do.

Took Mom to chapel this morning. She was upbeat -- higher, really, than I'd seen her in a long time. Her muttering often made sense, and even when it didn't, it passed well for lighthearted banter. "Oopsie-doopsie," she said when we had a momentary wheelchair snag. She sang all the hymns, spoke the liturgy, said the Lord's Prayer. Watching her, she looked brave, unabashed about her frailties, as if to say, "Think what you will."

I said, "Mom, you look good."

"Do I? Well, thank you."

"You always look good, you know."

She tisked, but is still vain enough to accept it as her due.

So I wonder at this resurgence after so much difficulty. Maybe she's come to accept the place as her home. Or, maybe her mood has become detached and rises or sinks independent of her physical and mental states.

I'll take it.

Living room and porch

Piano not included

Bedroom, obviously

My lair

Memory -- I mean Memorial -- Day

Over the highway

They do nice things for bicyclists out here in the hinterland, you have to give us that. A perfect day  today, and I took full advantage. Warm air, but cool when you were moving, almost no wind.  I thought not once of my mother.

She is not uppermost, lately, in any case. It is the house sale and the condo purchase. We have been shelling out money much faster than we can make it, and scrambling to meet deadlines. Every so often when we come up for air we feel a little fizz of excitement, and I am less often weighing whether the loss of two months of the life I like will be worth the rest of my life in a condo. Gawd.

I saw Mom Thursday, Saturday and Sunday (yesterday). She is sinking into a confusion that makes it harder for her to keep track of my visits. I can't take an optimistic view of this. We went to the 10 a.m. chapel service yesterday and by 10:07 she was sound asleep. I prodded her awake and asked her if she wanted to lay down, and she muttered that she did, and we went up and got her into bed and she slept so soundly that she didn't start or panic when I left.

Still there are moments. She combed her hair in the mirror before church -- flipping it, touching it, looking left and right. They were the exact movements I've seen my whole life. No diminishment in this. You may suspect your mind isn't right, but, dammit, you can at least look like it is.

Turning out for Memorial Day 

Good news, bad news, no news

What it is. 

Hey friends. It's been almost a month, and I just really haven't had any time. The house is nearly empty of our stuff and restocked with "staging" furniture, so it's like living in a museum. Or, say, a window display at Nordstrom.

We put it on the market at about 5 p.m. last Thursday. There were 30 showings in 24 hours, and at the end of it we had an offer over our asking price. Bully! But we have to shore up the chimney (maybe you can see that it tilts a little bit), and do something about our back porch windows.

We have an offer on a condo downtown, but we've been back and forth with the owners (through attorneys -- how do I get into that racket?), and so we'll know more in a couple days. The owners are, I think, excessively risk-averse. Julie and I are living and breathing it at the moment.

And Mom, sigh, Mom. I've seen her less lately -- just twice a week for the last couple weeks -- and my visits have been shorter. Today at chapel she was perky and chatty, pointing out people she knew, but inside of 10 minutes her frozen face had returned, and finally I asked her if she wanted to leave, but no. So we stuck it out.

We made our Bistro visit short -- the bathroom called -- and I left her at the lunch table upstairs. She tries to wheedle out of me where I'm going, what I'm going to do, and I just say I got a lot to do, and she relents and thanks me for coming. It's a little formal, somehow, and it hurts just a little bit.

I think she's reached a state of stasis, or, you might say, found a cruising altitude. Not very high, very little turbulence.

A woman who ate in Mom's small dining room died recently -- Eva. She and her husband used to  speak German over dinner. So now he eats alone. He's got a boyish face and build, a nice man. It's strange because he was the one receiving higher care, and she lived in the independent wing in her own apartment. There's just no logic to any of this.

This is how I found my car when I got down to the parking lot:

So much fun.

Four full courses

Lots of Mom this week. She's been pretty good. Julie went Wednesday and they had a fancy dinner event at which they ate:

That's lamb and shrimp, potatoes, carrots and an orchid, which I think was strictly decorative. Entertainment was provided by an opera singer from the Florentine.

The picture doesn't show it, but the room was packed.

I went Friday, and today, Saturday, took her to a student string recital. So she's had a week full of culture. She can't watch TV, she can't read, she can't listen to the radio, but live music keeps her awake.

We found, in our endless packing, a diary she'd kept 20 years ago, when we'd left the kids with them for a week while we went away and had fun. Ahna was 7, Ezra 4, and she and Dad took them to the zoo, to parks, swimming in the pool, and twice to deliver Meals on Wheels to the shut-ins. She wrote that she read them the story of David and Goliath, and Ezra put rocks in his pockets, just to be prepared.

So I sat and read the diary to her -- she was amazed that she had written it -- but she kept stopping me, saying we had to be ready, we didn't want to miss the people, the people who were coming.  She couldn't say who this was, and I could only guess that in her family- and friend-crowded life, there was always someone coming, someone she didn't want to miss.

But it was also an expression of her anxiety. She can't sit still. There are only so many things you can do with her, and it will be sad if this overtakes her entirely and we lose the reading.

The best-laid plans

Packing

The house is thoroughly painted. As soon as we get it empty we'll put it on the market.

I biked to see Mom Saturday. It was a complicated plan -- visiting her, then leaving to view a condo, then returning. I thought, well, she gets two visits for the price of one. So I read her her devotions, then poetry from her poetry book. She says: "Stop now. I want to talk."

"Sure," I said.

"Yesterday," she said.

I waited. Waited some more. "Yesterday? Did something happen yesterday?"

Her eyes were fixed in the distance. She seemed about to say something. Once. Twice. Three times. I could see her searching, searching. She finally said, "I can't remember."

She wanted to lay down, so I got her into bed, put the bed alarm on. An aide came and said she would keep on eye on her. All was good.

So I left and walked to the condo viewing, just three or four blocks. Julie was there, the realtor. We went to three different buildings, all within a few blocks. My phone rang and I turned it off. Then, as we're heading back to Mom's, I listened to my messages.

"Just a minute after you left, your mom got out of bed, trying to find you. She fell. She's OK, I think. She hit her head and there was blood. We sent her to St. Mary's, just as a precaution."

I should have felt pity, I suppose, but it just made me mad. I was on my bike, we had a dinner plan with friends -- it was going to be such a jolly Saturday. Will she ever -- ever -- understand that she cannot walk without help?

Julie went to the hospital -- she's a keeper -- and I biked home. We had to cancel the dinner plan and we ate, just the two of us, in our empty kitchen. Mom got four staples to close her cut.

And, as penance for our various sins, Mom and I went to chapel on Sunday.

Isn't moving fun. 

A good Sunday

A long church service today, and Mom was great. They had special music from Stile Antico, a British singing group. There were a dozen members and they sang a cappella, music from the 14th, 15th, 16th centuries, a blanket of woven chords -- gorgeous.  Mom was right into it -- perched forward in her chair, singing with the hymns, responding to the liturgy.

We went to the Bistro and sat at the big table, a first. All the "cool" people sit there and hold forth. Mom was quiet, as she almost always is. She tucked into her apple pastry and seemed content.

I brought her up, and she wanted a rest, so I got her into bed. Immediately she says, "I have to go to the bathroom." So I let an aide rescue me, came home and paid her bills.