Dog days

Now that the maternal parental unit is ensconced in her new digs, I have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. It would be too easy if all the stress was over. Finally, on Wednesday the family grapevine lit up: Mom thinks she's had a stroke. Naturally, my first thought is, after all we've done for you, you go and strokes out? True to form, I can make anything, even someone else's disastrous health problem, all about me.

Being carless, I waited on the phone rather than rushing (which would consist of walking or riding a bus) over to the retirement community, as if my presence would solve anything. It sounded like a crowded bus station through the phone: my brother's wife Deanna, a family friend Shirlene who is a nurse, and in the background, my mother's voice, loud and clear. That is not the voice of a stroke victim, I thought to myself, as Shirlene offered to come get me and drive me over to Mom's. Because somehow it was assumed I would want to be there to add my two cents to the pandemonium.

I declined the ride and walked over after I finished eating my breakfast. You can't tackle old senile mothers on an empty stomach. When I got there, everyone else was gone and Mom was snoozing on the couch. She woke up when I opened the door (I have a key).

“Shirlene said I was dehydrated,” she said with a little smirk.

I did my typical eye roll.

“I'm waiting for the cable guy,” she said. “I've been waiting all afternoon!”

“It's not even 1:00,” I said.

“Wake me up when he comes.” She laid back down on the couch, on her side with one elbow bent and her hand in the air. That can't be comfortable, I thought, but hell, for all I know she usually sleeps standing on her head. This might be a down day for her.

She woke from time to time, whenever there was a noise. The dryer buzzing. A car alarm echoing somewhere across the quad. Each time she was irate to find the cable guy had not yet arrived.

To be fair, she wasn't interested in watching television. She wanted her landline phone. The apartment building uses the cable company for telephone service. She'd been without a proper phone for four days, and she was ready to toss her little pay-as-you-go burner cell phone out the window. No matter how many times I reminded her, she couldn't seem to remember that to hear me talking on the other end, she had to hold the cell phone to her ear. I don't know, you figure it out. Maybe if they made cell phones look like brick-size cordless phones, she would get it.

Eventually the cable guy showed up and installed her phones. When I left, at her bequest, I took her car. Wheels! Zoom, zoom.... but I didn't need anything. Nowhere to go, really, nothing to buy. I drove home and parked it. The car sat on the street outside my apartment all day Thursday.

Friday morning, she called. “Can I have my car back?” she said, just a tiny bit belligerently, as if daring me to keep her key.

“Of course you can have your car back,” I said. I drove the car over and parked it outside the driveway at her building. She was outside on a park bench having a cigarette. I watched her walking toward me, a diminutive stick of a woman bearing no resemblance to the mother I used to know.

She took the car key happily, and didn't offer me a ride home. I didn't ask for one. I walked home under partly sunny skies.