“I'm putting things in boxes,” she replied.
“You were supposed to call me when you woke up.”
“I forgot to write it down,” she replied.
“I'm coming over.”
“Let me come get you!”
“No, I need the exercise!”
Now that I am carless, we have this conversation at least once a week. I've stopped trying to explain my actions. My explanations don't stick. Although her memory seems to be selective. Today we met a nice man named Bill who held the elevator for us. Mom told my younger brother about Bill. She apparently remembered everything Bill had told us about himself (moved in last week with his wife, lived in a condo downtown for eleven years, still living out of boxes).
Back to the story. I dressed in lightweight gear, shouldered my backpack, and walked over to her house (roughly a mile and a half) in muggy heat. My plan was to help her pack and take a load over in her old Toyota Camry.
When I arrived, she was gamely stuffing things into boxes with not much care for what was in each box. I watched her for a minute and then pulled her car out of the garage, backed it up to the back patio, and loaded a few boxes into the trunk. When I went back inside, she was in the dim bedroom, peering into a shoe box, muttering something about having shoes she's never seen before. I looked at her shoes. They all looked the same: black leather slip-on loafers from Naturalizer. I opened up a dusty box: well-worn 50s-style black suede pumps.
“I'll never wear those again,” she said firmly, shoving the shoes into the box with the slip-ons.
“Then why are we moving them to your new apartment?” I asked.
“I don't know.”
We drove over to her new place, a few miles away, and she told me where to park. I unloaded the trunk and the back seat. She held the door open. Then she held the inside door. Then Bill showed up and held the elevator door. All the doors started pinging at us for holding them open.
“They ought to have a freight elevator!” my mother said for the millionth time.
“It's unlikely they will put one in now, just for you, Ma,” I said.
She opened the door to her new apartment and found something to hold the door open. I loaded bags and boxes, walking back and forth from the elevator lobby to her apartment. I said hello to two different old ladies who were strolling the hall, one with a wheeled walker and one with a wheeled shopping cart of the smaller variety, the kind I had intended but failed to purchase.
Back in the apartment, I set a couple small shelves in the walk-in closet and started unpacking the sheets that had been stored on them back at the condo, until my mother stopped me.
“Those sheets are for the twin bed,” she said.
“Then why did we move them?” I said. “Your bed is a full-size bed.”
“Well, I still have a twin bed at the condo!”
“Yes, but you are giving that bed to Reggie,” I reminded her. Reggie (not his real name) is my 60-year-old brother, who apparently got dibs on the twin bed in the guest room. I looked at the stack of flowered sheets, pale green and pastel pink, thinking, yes, Reggie will enjoy sleeping on those.
“I'm going to unpack the bathroom stuff,” Mom said, disappearing around the corner.
I repacked the sheets and took the box to the door, along with the boxes we'd emptied.
“I'll sort this all out later,” Mom said as I watched her shovel lotions and bandages and deodorant and toothpaste into cabinet drawers. I turned and admired the perfect white tub.
When she was done with the bathroom, we unloaded the one box of kitchen gear and food she had packed. I set it all on the counter, thinking it was impossible to organize the kitchen with one box of miscellaneous utensils, five half-opened bags of cereal, a can of water chestnuts, and some bread crumbs. As I shoved it against the wall, I realized I had moved all these cans and bags after the mouse meltdown last June. (See a previous blog post.) When the box was empty, we went down the elevator and out to the car.
“Shall we make another trip?” I asked as we were heading away.
“No, I don't think so,” she replied. I drove us to my apartment, and she took my place in the driver's seat. She fiddled with the mirrors, although I'd left everything the way it was.
She blew me a kiss and took off down the gravel road, sideswiping a yellow recycling bin and an empty green yard debris garbage can on wheels. Bam. They rattled but didn't fall over or get dragged, so it's all good, right? She didn't slow down. I'm not sure she realized she'd hit them. I stood watching her go.
“Drive safe,” I muttered to her tail lights. Tomorrow I expect we'll do it again. Hopefully sans recycling bin abuse. Saturday my younger brother plans to rent a truck so we can load up some furniture. Then the fun will really begin. Stay tuned.
