After nine long days, the stinky brown haze is gone from Portland skies. Nine days of smoking twenty packs of cigarettes a day gives me renewed appreciation for breathing. I promise I will never again take fresh air for granted. If I were truly a good global citizen (which I'm not), I would immediately stop driving my gas-powered combustion-engine automobile. I would stop buying and burning fossil fuel. I would park that Focus at the curb and live in it. I haven't done it yet, but I reserve the right to do that in the future. The time may be coming sooner than I think.
What would put paid to 2020 so we can be sure without a doubt it was truly the most king hell bummer year of our lifetimes? (It's not over yet, whoops, be careful what I whine about.) Hey, I know. How about an earthquake? L.A. just had one. Or another hundred-year storm like the one that decimated Portland on October 12, 1963? Maybe a fire in the Gorge, like we had in 2017? It's still fire season—more wildfires are likely. More riots? Yeah, that's too easy: Now that the smoke is gone the protests are back. More police shootings? I hope not. How about a long drawn out election night, one that lasts for weeks? Maybe a flood? I know, how about a derecho? Jiminy crickets.
At this point, I would not be surprised to see hordes of locusts swarming over Mt Tabor or armies of ants commandeering my kitchen. I've heard that people are part of nature, but I'm beginning to have my doubts. I suspect we severed our claim to that haven back when we invented the internal combustion engine and spawned a bunch of oil tycoons. It's hard to turn your back on prosperity, even when you know it might kill you. So now that we aren't part of nature anymore, we must be against it, and thus we are fair game for anything nature might do to eradicate humans from the planet. It's a good time to be a virus.
Speaking of viruses, so far no Covid at my mother's retirement home. Nevertheless, we are moving her to a smaller place next week. I'm not sure she knows what is happening. I've got a countdown clock going outside her window—a number on a little card indicating how many days to moving day. Tonight it was four. Four days left. Four days until I find out what I'm really made of. I think I can do it. I keep reminding myself I successfully took her for Mohs surgery and got her back safely without turning the clinic restroom into a toxic poop waste dump. I made it through nine days of wildfire smoke, shuffling through the haze to deliver gluten-free bread upon request. I've booked the movers. I've paid the deposit on the new care home. I've made a plan, I've written a list, I've made the proper sacrifices to the gods that care for demented old mothers. My secret fear is that my mother thinks the countdown numbers on her window are the number of days she has left to live, that her internal battery will wind down and when the movers come, we will find her stiff and dead on her stinky old couch.
Speaking of stinky old couches, Mom has decided if she has to choose between taking the bed or the couch to the new place, she'd rather have the couch. It apparently has more "comfort spots." It's hard to argue with comfort spots, even if the couch is ten shades of grime grayer than it was in the Christmas photos from 1998. She doesn't care what it looks like. At 91, she should be able to sleep on whatever she likes, eat whatever she wants, and say what's on her mind, even if it makes no sense.
Tonight she told me she'd been to this new care home before. I wasn't sure what she meant. That seemed unlikely.
"You took me there," she said. I could hear her plainly through the baby monitor.
"When was that?" I asked.
"It was a nightclub of some kind."
"Oh, like, dancing?"
"What? I can't understand you." I'd just coached the Sunday night aide on how to replace the batteries in Mom's hearing aids, so I know she could hear me. I didn't think it was the baby monitor. The tall blonde-haired aide seemed to be able to hear and understand me okay as I gave her directions on how to open the hearing aid drawers and peel off the sticky labels on the tiny batteries. I must conclude it was Mom's brain misfiring.
"Dancing?" I said. "Music?"
"Yes, music."
"Dinner too?"
She looked thoughtful. "No, I don't think there was dinner."
The care home she's going to next week looks a bit like a three-layer cake. It reminds me of the old River Queen, a floating restaurant we used to have near Swan Island in the Willamette River. I went to my high school prom on the River Queen. I made my long two-toned halter dress out of slippery orange and yellow lining satin. It kept coming untied at the waist while I was dancing with my boyfriend Steve.
I don't know where Mom's memory went but mine definitely went someplace I haven't been in a while.
