Let It Rain

The water is a steely gray here in Margaritaville this morning. Like my brain. Or my murderous heart.

My mom's alarm clock went off at a few minutes past midnight. One of those beeping clock radio alarms that sounds like the warning for the end of world. Does the oxygen machine make that sound if someone stops breathing? This was what I wondered as I dashed down the stairs. The possibility for beeping is far too prevalent in modern life. Carbon dioxide alarm? Security system letting me know the power is out? Smoke alarm battery? Freezer door? Fridge door? Even the fucking wine refrigerator beeps if the door is not closed tight. Danger, danger, danger your wine will not be chilled to the proper temperature.

"I didn't touch it," my mom said as we stared at the offending keeper of time.
Whatever.

I did not sleep. Thought about packing for my trip. Thought about my folding travel yoga mat and wondered if it would fit it my back pack and if it could double as a sleeve for my laptop. Now there's a first world problem for you. Or I might be a genius. I thought about flying. I will spare you those thoughts. Thought about gin. Thought about how disorienting travel is for my mom and felt suitably guilty. She keeps saying my brother is going to drive her to Iowa from Maryland. I keep explaining. (while thinking about gin.) I try not to correct my mom about a lot of stuff. Just roll. But sometimes it's necessary to say over and over again, "Nope. We're not leaving tomorrow. Nope. Don't pack your toiletries yet. Nope. You're gonna sleep in your bed TWO more nights." Who wouldn't think about gin.

When my kids were young and we traveled and the Someone would keep me hanging saying he didn't really know if he'd be able to go because of work, I would ask myself if it was really worth it to plan a trip. To go through all the prep and planning and pet sitters and blah, blah, blah..

It was worth it every time.

My Secret Life

 Some people make gin in their bathtubs. I mix martinis at my bathroom sink.

Then I pour two ounce portions into empty jam jars and hide them in a secret place behind a locked door. Then I hide the key. I can't tell you where. If I told you, I'd have to kill you.

When 5 o'clock comes around, I unlock the hidden stash and bring a jam jar down to the kitchen and pour the two ounces into a martini glass and serve it to my mother. She's living a mere shadow of her former martini-fueled life and she doesn't like it. But I'm rather fond of her not falling over.

Here's the recipe. Just in case you'd like to mix up some secret martinis. You can have more than two ounces if you want. But don't blame me if you fall down.

Self-Portrait with the Dead

I didn't set out to make a selfie. Dan's memorial was just so pretty I ran around taking photos of everything. I look hunched up and sad, and that's how I feel these days. Like the couch is made of flypaper and I'm a bug who can't get off. Until I'm forced to manufacture some kind of dinner for my mom. Last night was an embarrassing array of no-effort leftovers. Tonight I'm making lentil soup if I get up in the next ten minutes.

I've been in the weirdest state of mind. Like I could sit all day and Google how to bring a person back from the dead and then actually read the shit that comes up.

It's fixing to rain here. I like the feel of it. Like at least the weather is doing something.

And now I'm doing something too. Soup. I'm making soup. I'm making soup. Well obviously, I'm not. I'm typing. But now really, I'm making soup.

*****

I made soup. I chopped up an onion and some celery and sautéed them in olive oil. I added chicken stock and seasonings and lentils. We'll have soup and some sliced avocado and persimmons, and could anything be better? I'll toast some french bread and butter too.

I just made my mom her 2 oz. doctor-permitted martini and if all goes as usual, she'll soon be having a pre-dinner conversation with her dead sister and who knows who else. She's got a talent for talking to the dead.

God, don't you just wanna come over here?

And did I mention that the non-alchoholic gin arrived? I'm going to have some with a little ginger beer--which y'all might think is ass-backwards. Like maybe I should be the one drinking and not the 90-year-old. Truth be told, I'm pretty sure she'd know the difference and be pissed as hell about it, and I really don't feel I can drink while I'm responsible for her. Any minute I could be following the ambulance to the hospital, then acting like a fool when I can't remember shit when the paramedics or the doctors question me about this and that. That's how I am stone cold sober under pressure.  I can act like a drunk with no help at all from a little fermented bunch of berries. 

Report from Pillville: How to operate a Lazy-Boy recliner with your feet/ how to stay on your feet

"You're one tough cookie," the ER doctor told my mother on Friday evening. She was flattered, I think. So when you're tough, you try to wheel your wheel chair with a broken hand. You don't let anyone help you screw the cap back on your bottle of Ensure even if it's incredibly awkward doing it left-handed. And when you're in your recliner in the sanctuary of your room, and it's pointed out to you that the control lever is on the right-hand side and that you shouldn't try to manipulate it because your hand might be further injured since it's not yet in a cast, you don't call for your daughter or your granddaughter to help you when you want to get up. No. You're a tough cookie so you somehow fling your ninety-year-old leg over the arm of the chair, and with your ninety-year-old foot you get that damn lever to put your foot rest down. Yeah. Fuck yeah.

that's my mom's room there to the right--and a glimpse of the foot-operated recliner

God help me. This is the second night of the two-ounce martini. The second night that she's home. The second night that I will be sleeping in this nifty little bed right outside her bedroom door. And it's okay, really. I suspect that in a few days after some physical therapy, she'll be strong enough to get herself out of bed.

I'll be arranging for a caregiver so I can carry on caring for myself and the needs of our household. While I wouldn't describe myself as a tough cookie, I'd say I'm good at talking and thinking things through, and that I'm resolute.

It also helps that my fridge looks like this.

That's homemade sangria and homemade chutney made by friends. And there's still leftover pie. It also helps that daughter C researched and found a home security camera/baby monitor that will come in handy when I move back upstairs to my own bedroom. It helps that daughter M may be able to work from home (meaning here) one day a week. It helps that I have just ordered a bottle of non-alcoholic gin which may enable me to dilute the teeny martini. Yeah, so we might just all stay on our feet.

So let's celebrate that. And please visit my other blog, and let's celebrate the end of National Adoption Month too.

Wherever I go, there he isn't.

It was a long flight but we made it.

This is the 2nd trip I've taken since Dan died. It's funny how both times I haven't expected to miss him while I travel. Change of scene and all that. But that's not how it's gone.

When I went back to the alumni weekend for my MFA program, I felt his absence immediately. He'd gone there with me for my graduation, and it was almost as if I could see him every place he'd been over those few days.

 Dan never came with me to Maryland to visit my mom at my brother's place when she lived out here, but I always talked to him on the phone when I got here. Right now, we'd be talking. Me on California time while everyone else here has gone to bed. I'd be telling him how my mom is and how I have a giant lump on my arm because of an idiot crashing into me with a computer bag. I'd be confessing that I had 3 gin and tonics on the plane and telling him about the novel I'm reading and why he would like it. I'd be telling him I miss him, and he'd tell me that things were great with him except that his girlfriend was out of town, and  he'd remind me to send him my return flight info, and then he'd be there at the bottom of the escalator when I landed.

Life will just go on like this, I guess.

In happier news, my mom is the queen of traveling. Sat in that middle seat and just rolled with it. Ate her cookies, drank her coffee, read her magazine, watched the guy across the aisle who somehow got the flight attendant to bring him five bottles of whiskey and a beer. All at once. And a glass of ice. I thought that would get interesting, but it didn't. We both snoozed a bit. And here we are.

Report from Pillville: The hospital bed, the wheel chair, the companion

photo of my mom after her birthday trip to Maryland last September

On my second day of trying, I believe that a hospital bed is working its way through the bureaucracy to my mother. It may or may not be accompanied by a hospital bedside tray table. The transfer (or is is transport or transit?) wheel chair is another story. Medicare does not seem to provide those--or maybe they do, and the agency in my area that "won the bid" is just too dysfunctional to provide one. Anyhow-- I bought the damn chair so I can get my mother to Miracle Ear (oh, if only their hearing aids were actually miraculous) on Wednesday. The trek through Sears to its remotest corner where Miracle Ear is housed is another of the inexplicable inconveniences of old age--and will be impossible if she's having a bad day.

I have a phone call in to an agency that provides a free 1-hour consultation with a lawyer to help me figure out the ins and outs of paying a companion for my mother since the IRS information sheet on paying a domestic employee is devoid of plot and character and poetry, and therefore cannot be read by me. I have an email into the CPA that does my taxes regarding the same issues, and meanwhile I'm concocting a story whereby we just pay this wonderful woman under the table in cash, and I cook the books here in Margaritaville to "prove" that we've been ordering expensive take out every night on my mom's dime. If she has to eventually go into a nursing home,  food would be a permissible spend down of her savings, and making it look like we eat caviar and lobster (so easy to chew!) every night seems preferable to actually figuring out withholding and Social Security and how to file Schedule H with her taxes when her income is so minuscule that she hasn't filed taxes in years.

Oh, and I have to check something about accidents and domestic employees on my homeowner's insurance policy, but it's too late to do this this evening, so I think I'll just get drunk. My sciatica which was kicked up a week or so ago by lifting a regular wheel chair in and out of my hatch 3 times is killing me. So yeah, I'm calling out for some caviar right now. If you want to come over and join us, give a call so I get enough for all of us. Oh and yeah, there'll be martinis, too. We're switching to the expensive gin.

Countdown to Baltimore

In a few days my mom and I will be traveling to Maryland for her 89th birthday. The pill boxes are filled. The oxygen concentrator is scheduled to be delivered to my brother's house. We will take with us 4 empty suitcases so she can bring back the things that could not be packed into the car when M and I drove her out here last summer. On that trip her oxygen machine rode in the back seat with her.

Alas, M will not travel with us this time. She will stay home and take care of the house and the ancient cat.

I wonder if someday my children and I will live near one another so that a birthday celebration can be attended by all, requiring only a short jaunt by car.

Meanwhile I must return to my calculations so that I may determine how many of those little bottle of gin to bring on the plane. Let's see...divide the number of miles by the total of the ages of the people who will be drinking the gin....

photo credit for the wonderful picture of my mom: The man who loves me and his iPad--taken just last night.

Dear Monin, You just might change my life

My mother is not an alcoholic in the way that we normally define alcoholism. She rises at a proper hour. Has her un-spiked coffee. Prowls around in her p.j.s a bit. Tidies the kitchen, maybe folds a little laundry, feeds the cat, reads the paper. Throughout the day we discuss the news, perhaps go to a doctor's appointment, take a walk, chat about birds, or what photos family and friends have put up on Facebook. It's a reasonably productive day for an 88-year-old who's got a laundry list of maladies.

If I had a cuckoo clock, those five cuckoos would send me running in Hitchcockian terror. Five o'clock is martini time. She pre-mixes her brew. Keeps it in an old Gordon's bottle in the fridge. It's ready to pour. And pour. And pour. I schedule nothing for myself after 5 p.m. A short walk around the block for sanity just after dinner if I really feel that I'm about to go out of my fucking mind from enduring the previous 21/2 hours of word-slurring, nonsense, tipping, and careening.

Oh, yes. I've asked her to cut back. Talked about the ancient liver not metabolizing. The neurologist told her that her biggest fear should be trauma--i.e. falling. I've reiterated. But, no doubt, one day she will fall. And I will bet you a million dollars it will be after 5:00 p.m.

There. I've had my little rant.
Now, has anyone out there in cyber-martini-land tried the Monin gin syrup? It's non alcoholic. Can I get away with thinning out the Gordon's with this stuff? Mind you, this is a woman who does not want her martini shaken over ice. She wants to taste the gin.
Oh--and how can I get it from England for a reasonable price? It doesn't seem to be marketed here. Maybe Monin has plans for Coors syrup in the U.S., but that's not going to help me.

Report from Pillville: the Pacemaker

"I need a pacebreaker," the man who loves me exclaimed some time ago. We were, no doubt, discussing our mortality or some related profoundly romantic topic.

My mother, on the other hand, has a pacemaker. Now that she lives with me, it's partially my responsibility to maintain her pacemaker, so off we went today to the cardiologist's office for a test with the guy from Medtronic. After offering my mom a seat and introducing himself, he proceeded to attach a box-like monitor to her chest. A few moments of studying a computer screen ensued, and then he proclaimed that the pacemaker was working just fine. And that it was only "pacing" at 1%. Which kinda makes me wonder why she needs a pacemaker. In any event, the thing is good for at least another four years. My mom will be 92 if she's still on the planet four years from now. Her pacemaker will be out of juice, and she will require surgery to implant a new one. I really don't have the energy or the desire to think very far ahead these days, but if I did, I might lose a little sleep over this one. Isn't there some way to just plug her into a charger?

It's young people who design these things, no doubt. Surgery? Sure! Then let's go out and party.

In any event, getting a pacemaker implanted is probably less tiring than getting a flu shot--or so it seemed today at the local CVS. Here's a clipboard. Stand here and fill out all these forms. Stand here some more, while I punch a jillion keys on my computer and wonder why something is not working.
I asked if there was somewhere my mom might sit down. Yes, of course,  there was an area with chairs--halfway across the store. And yes, bring the forms back to the counter. And yes, walk back over to where the chairs are to get the shot. The woman walks with a cane (and a lovely new English chestnut cane it is) for fuck sake. Slowly. And I doubt that she's the only senior to come in for a flu shot. Move the chairs, people. Make it easy. Is your mother in our system, the white coat finally asked me after several more minutes of tapping away at her keyboard after my mom had hiked over to the chairs. Does she get her prescriptions filled here? No, I said, but she buys her gin here.

And yes, that was why we chose CVS for a flu shot. 20% off on your next purchase!!! Well, that didn't go smoothly either, but in the end, thanks to a couple of diligent employees working the check stand, the saga ended happily. And we got an second 20% off coupon for the next gin run.

I arrived home feeling like I'd consider having a pacebreaker installed, but the smell of gin always cheers me up.

Love, Money, and Mink

I recently took my mother back to the apartment where she used to live with her sister until health problems forced them both to move a couple of years ago. Because the place is in the basement of my cousin's house a lot of their things are still there, time-capsuled as if they might someday return and resume where they left off.

"Do you suppose this gin is still good?" my aunt might ask as she leans down from her wheelchair and peers into the cabinet.

"Of course it's good," my mother would respond, opening the fridge. "But I don't know about these olives." They'd discuss the pros and cons of a martini without olives then, but they'd make the drinks anyway and sit at their table, a cumulous cloud of smoke forming under the low ceiling. They'd sip. And talk about how good it was to be back. 

Could happen. But probably not. My aunt lives in a nursing home now, both legs lost and her memory chasing after them.

What did happen was that my mother opened every drawer and each of her  little wooden boxes (many of which most likely came from thrift store or trash picking treasure hunts.) She looked through her closet and her jewelry box and stood in front of her bookshelves . "Take this," she'd say when I exclaimed over something. "It needs fixing, but..." We found earrings that have been in her jewelry box ever since I can remember. She still had the little golden expandable chignon-style hair clasps that I used to set on top of my head as crowns when I played dress up, her father's watch chain, and the crystal rosary in the pouch personalized with her name in gold across the white leather that her mother presented to her as a wedding gift.

I thought I was familiar with each and every one of my mother's treasures, but there was a surprise. "Is that mink?" I asked. The fur was soft as a kitten's, not marred at all by time, although the satin rose was maybe a bit faded with a hint of fray.

"Your father gave that to me for Christmas the year I asked for a mink coat," she said.  

My parents never had any money. The way I remember it, the only thing they ever fought about was money, and that was because there wasn't  any. I was touched by the story because my father heard what his young, poor-all-her-life wife wanted, and with, I imagine, a rather stylish sense of humor, he delivered mink.

And now the mink and satin rose is with my mother at my brother's house where she lives with him and his girlfriend.  My father has been dead for almost thirty years, and my mother looks back almost as much as she looks forward. Tucked-away treasures bring the past and the present together. I like that.

What I Know About Gin

Gordons: You can make this at home yourself. Lighter fluid. Rubbing alcohol. Cheap perfume. Whatever ya got. Remember to add a couple of juniper berries.


Beefeaters: Cute label.


Tanqueray:  "You say, 'What did you do with him today?' And sniffed me out like I was Tanqueray. You know I'm no good."


Bombay:  Pretty decent.


Bombay Saphire:  Pretty and Decent.


Boodles:  I'd walk into any gin joint for some of that.


Hendricks: Smells like roses. Warning: sense memory may kick in if you once had a rose garden.