Lunch at Shiny Meadows

Last Saturday, I went to be with Dad at lunchtime, to feed him and keep him company. Mom got to stay home and hang out with Scott and get more lessons on her new MacBook.

Side note: We upgraded her from a lame-ass Dell that sucked viruses out of neighboring universes and spread them across its own hard drive like marmalade on melba toast. Each time it would virus itself into paralysis, Mom would put it in the sadly incapable hands of the computer-fixer in town. The good news: He picks up and delivers, free of charge. The bad news: His wife drives him to and fro because he's lost his license after numerous DUIs. The worse news: He messes around with the Dell, gets it working halfway, brings it back, charges Mom $150 or $200, tells her he's put the "latest high-tech" protector thingy on it. When Scott sat down to work with the Dell to transfer some photos to her new MacBook, he found ZERO evidence of any anti-virus software. Thus, a bludgeoning is in store for Mr. My-Wife-Has-to-Drive-Me-Around-Like-I'm-a-Wussy-Liar.

Now, about lunch:

Dad and I sit at a table with Bill and Bill. Old Bill is a sad little guy, hunched over in his wheelchair, doesn't say much, isn't very coherent. When he does speak, it is one of two things:

1. "Nurse! I need help." (Nurse approaches and says, "What do you need, Bill?") "I'm in trouble. I don't know WHERE I am or WHO I am."

2. A mantra: "Doggone it. Doggone it. Doggone it. Doggone it. Doggone it. Doggone it. (Pause). DON got it. Don always gets it. (Pause) Doggone it. Doggone it. Doggone it."

Young Bill is my sister's age, 61, and was in her high school class. He has terminal brain cancer. He wears a hat over the pink worm of a scar on his head, and gets mixed up sometimes. His speech is halting. Otherwise, very coherent.

We're waiting for the kitchen workers to roll the ungainly metal carts to the dining room. Meals are the highlight of the day at Shiny Meadows, as they probably are at most nursing homes, outdone only by family visits (which can be good or bad) and Bingo games (always good). The push-pull of mental dissonance shows up in two steps. First, the palpable anticipation of the meal. A small eagerness, hopefulness hangs in the air. Very small. These people are so old and tired that even their collective mental hoopla can only muster the electricity needed for an Easy Bake Oven bulb. Part Two is the realization that this meal is the same old crap. A mushy entree, a mushy vegetable and a small sliver of a dessert that presses the sighs out of each old chest as they pick up the bent fork and attempt to dig in.

In the long moments before we hear the clangy silver cart swerving down the hall, Young Bill has become vocal.

Young Bill: I think...I smell...BROCKLY.

Candy: You probably DO smell broccoli. They seem to have it a lot here.

Young Bill: We get...a lotta...STINKIN' food here.

Candy: Yes, indeed. You said a mouthful.

Young Bill: You do know...that the two most...poop-smelling foods are.......BROCKLY and...cauli...flower, right?

Candy: I think I'd agree with that.

(The metal cart rolls into the dining room. Trays are distributed by the kitchen girls. I see the freshly-uncovered plate at the table next to us. There it is. Broccoli. And as usual, it is all stems, no flowers.)

Candy: Bill, you were right. It's broccoli.

Young Bill: Oh yeah? Well, why don't you tell 'em to... take it for a walk. It wouldn't be half a mile...down the road before...twelve dogs would be followin' it. Thinkin' it was...their own shit.

(I uncover Dad's tray and my own and try to assess the possibilities of what Dad will like. It is a turkey Manhattan, and broccoli. And a surprisingly large slice of chocolate cream pie.)

Young Bill (putting a fork into his Manhattan): Turkey just naturally smells...like poop.

Meanwhile, OLD Bill has spied the chocolate cream pie on his tray, pushed away the entree plate, and attacked the pie with his left hand. THUNK, it goes, his curled old claw, digging out a handful of chocolate and meringue. He smashes it into his face, covering his mouth, nose, and leaving meringue all over his chin and even in one eyebrow. This is what he has been waiting for.

Young Bill: Somethin' tells me...this man likes his pie.

Candy: You are the king of understatement, Bill.

As Old Bill gets some assistance from a CNA, and I continue to feed Dad, who is quiet and docile, as usual, Young Bill switches gears.

Young Bill: Henry David Thoreau...he had...the right idea. Walden Pond. THAT was the place to...live.

Candy: You like Thoreau?

Young Bill: Oh yeah. I've read Walden Pond...at least ten times.

He goes on to compare Thoreau to Emerson and I listen and feed Dad and watch Old Bill clean the pie crust down to the bone.
Young Bill leans toward the window, closes his eyes and lets a beam of sunshine cover his face.

Young Bill: Sun. Now that...is nice.

I watch him soak it up. He knows how to enjoy the sun on his face. I feel my own little piece of happiness, extending directly from his. I wipe Dad's mouth with a napkin, and start cutting up his chocolate pie.

Old Bill is being wheeled back to his room, where he will go back to sleep.

One Tiny Moment in a Marriage

Candy: I was wondering...

Scott: Yes?

Candy: Instead of watching that Steelers game tonight, would you be interested in watching a Hallmark movie with me called "A Dog Named Christmas?"

Scott: (after a pause) What's at stake here?

Candy: The future of our marriage.



He was already slicing onions, so the tears just naturally appeared.

Veterans' Day 2009

Celebrated at Shiny Meadows Nursing Home. My sister had the day off from school and got to be there.

The veterans were served their lunch first, and were honored with framed certificates of appreciation.
I don't know how much my dad understood about it all, but I know he was glad to be with Mom.

Affection Takes Many Forms

My sister's son, Rob, knows how much she likes peanut butter pie, although he himself finds it as repugnant as canine droppings. There was a special deal on peanut butter pie at the restaurant where he was eating lunch. $1.00 a slice. So he took a piece to her house while she was at work, left it on the counter, and labelled it in this loving way.

Our Neck of the Woods

We've been in this rental house for almost 3 months now, and it is still barely habitable. The family room, the one with the fireplace that we're hoping to huddle in front of when the vicious winds blow, is still filled with crap. Boxes, unboxed things, stray lampshades. The third "bedroom" is a flurry of clothes and boxes, disturbed only when I go digging through it to find more stuff to wear to work.

Then there's the garage, which is overwhelming. PIcture the warehouse at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Yeah. It's that easy to find things out there. I'm missing a crucial box of books (crucial in that I wanted to teach from a couple of them before the semester ends) ((it's a box of half of my poetry books written by authors with "B" last names)) and Scott is missing some important paperwork. But when we open the door leading to the garage, we reconsider and quietly close it before the angry stacks can make us out in the dim bulb haze.

I swore that Friday would be the day we'd go out there and hunt, but then I came home from work Thursday night with one of the many illnesses that lurks the classrooms and airspace of the Big Giant University like foot-dragging phlegm mummies. Thus, I have spent most of the weekend sleeping.

Meanwhile, Scott is making the most of his pre-new-job time by cooking up some of the tastiest things ever, all fancy stuff like this cod smothered in peppers and sesame seeds and a million other things, baked in parchment paper. It was the best fish dish I've ever eaten. If only my salary were high enough to just employ him as my own blisteringly good chef. But alas, it is not.

My neglect of my blog is unprecedented. I was pulled into the dark forest of my first semester back, and busy to the point of near-psychosis. I have two great classes and then there's the third one. That's another post. Maybe. I don't want to give the monster more power by speaking of it.

We're in the last few gorgeous days of the fall, the ones before the I'm-going-to-kill-you icy winds and ice storms and overall weather that will make Scott have to fight the urge to strangle me for taking him away from Phoenix, where it's just now becoming insanely nice outside. At least I hope he fights the urge.

68 Years Together

This photo was taken at my wedding in June 2007. Dad is, as you know, in a nursing home now. Their 68th anniversary was October 23rd. He doesn't say much anymore, but just yesterday he told Mom "I love you. You're beautiful." She had not heard that from him in awhile. The man still knows his sweetheart.

A Month Passes

Or just a day SHORT of a month since I darkened the door of this blog.

My life has been fragmented and happy and busy and uneasy and strange and OK and rotten and joyful and drenched in grief.
In other words, the usual.

I'm in my old job and I did really miss it, but I can't help feeling that I've just stepped out of a 2-year suspended animation. Like Phoenix never happened. And neither did Mrs. Fossilfuel or living in 116 degree heat or losing Hankie. Or all the other stuff that really did happen. The way my family went TILT.

Recently, a new tilt there. My sister and I have not been speaking for three weeks. It was horrible. I have had exactly one fight with her, ever, 5 or 6 years ago, and it was over in one day. This one? Not even a fight. Just a sickening parting of ways. Long story, too personal.

Tonight, about 20 minutes ago, she and I both, at the same moment, started to cry over missing one another. I went to the computer to write her. She had emailed one minute before. If I hadn't stopped to pee, we'd have bumped into each other in cyberspace. It's always about the bathroom with me.

I'm convinced that God had a hand in this. The timing was too exact. Scott agrees. He says "God called it a draw."

I have nothing big to say. I'm just glad I get to be, and have, a sister again.