Last night I dreamed I was about to undergo a lengthy dental procedure. I asked to use the restroom first; they gave me the door code but I promptly got lost in a mall, searching through smeared glasses for clean toilets. Then I lost my car. I wrote the dreams down in my journal while I waited for my eggs to overcook. Then I practiced my Spanish (me gusta dibujar y pintar). When I tried to salt my eggs, the salt was clogged by moisture from coming out the little holes. I poked them open with a toothpick. I do this every morning in winter. The cupboard doors don't close, and the cutting board balks at being pushed in and pulled out. Anxiety and moisture rule at the Love Shack.We had a windstorm last night but it didn't keep me from sleeping. This morning while I wrote, the only sound was the intermittent whooshing of the space heater that heats my main room. Sunday mornings are usually pretty quiet around the Love Shack. I hope someday to move to a place that is quiet most of the time, not just on Sunday mornings. I would like to live a few blocks off the bus line. As long as I'm envisioning my perfect habitat, it would be great not to have to hear people snoring, peeing, or having sex on the other side of thin apartment walls.
I dread what is coming, and yet I know it is the price of admission to freedom. I don't feel brave enough to witness the daily dissolution of my mother's once competent life, yet I show up and witness it every evening at six fifteen. I restock the gluten-free bread and cookies, the rice milk and gluten-free Cheerios, the cigarettes. I write the checks for her pull-ups, wipes, and medications. I watch her bank account slowly dwindling. Her dissolution scrapes at me, too, even though I'm not the one nearing the end of life (as far as I know today).
A couple days ago I visited my mother during the day to be present for her appointment with a foot care nurse. Mom was sacked out on her couch when I arrived. She popped right up when I came in. We sat and watched day time TV while we waited.
In a few minutes, Sandy arrived. Sandy (not her real name) happens to be a family friend; in fact, she used to live three doors down the street. She was one of the gang I grew up with. Her cousin Kim lived next door; Kim was my best friend. Sandy was one year older, one of five girls. Sandy became a nurse, and then transitioned into providing foot care for seniors. She lugged a big box and a bag of gear into my mother's apartment. I moved the coffee table out of the way so Sandy could kneel on the floor in front of my mother.
She peeled down one white tube sock, exposing my mother's purple foot.
“You have very straight toes!” she said, smiling up at my mother. “You know this is fungus, right?” I looked at my mother's bulging big toenail in squeamish horror. Was I supposed to be checking her toes?
“Don't they check her feet here?” I wailed.
“Most places don't do a good job of checking residents' feet,” Sandy replied. I wondered, is that supposed to make me feel better?
While she trimmed my mother's toenails and filed down her two hideously enlarged big toe toenails with a Dremel, spraying toenail dust into the air, we chatted about our families. She asked about my sister (in France) and my brothers (working full-time). (“It's all on you then,” she noted, to which I nodded gratefully). I asked about her parents.
“I do my mother and father's feet once a month,” Sandy said. “Dad is ninety-seven.” I pictured her on her knees attending to the feet of her mother, the 4-H leader who taught Kim and me how to sew and thus gave me the skills that enabled me to spend ten years doing something I despised. I had several thoughts: Wow, I thought my parental payback scenario was gnarly, and Oh lord, what if my mother lives that long?
“You heard Nellie's husband died?” Nellie was one of Sandy's older sisters. I didn't know most of her sisters well. Her oldest sister tried to teach me piano for a while, without much luck. When I was ten, Sandy's next older sister, Layla, explained the rudiments of sex to me as she pedaled her bicycle with me on the back fender. (I didn't believe her; did I mention I was ten?)
“I'm sorry to hear that,” I said, watching Sandy scoop detritus out from under my mother's toenails. “Would you be able to trim her fingernails as well?”
Eventually the mani-pedi session drew to a close. I wrote a check from Mom's funds. Mom walked us both to the front door. I told Mom I would see her later. I helped Sandy load her gear into the trunk of her car. We exchanged an awkward hug. I wanted to bask in the remnants of our safe childhood a little longer. But we've both changed. And childhood was never all that safe.
Sandy turned left. I turned right. Mom waved from the window as I drove away.
