Traveling with the Dead

Traveling with my mom wasn't easy. Would her aching body endure the five and a half hour flight to Baltimore? Would she need to use the bathroom when the seatbelt sign was on? Would she ask the person seated on the other side of her a million personal questions? Would I remember all the stuff she needed? Would there be a medical crisis while we were away from home?

A couple days ago I flew to the East Coast  to see my brother and his girlfriend. Reagan Airport in D.C. was where I arrived, but I flew home from Baltimore. As soon as I stepped through the entry doors, I missed her. Isn't it  crazy how you see that lost person out of the corner of your eye, or just rounding a corner ahead of you? My mom was at my side, yet just beyond my reach.

The restaurant where we used to eat is a steak house now instead of a crab place. The table right up front where it was easy to pull up a wheel chair isn't there anymore, so I took a spot at the bar facing a window that looks out into the airport. There's a giant menu right outside, and people walked up to study it while I studied them. It was like an aquarium for people watching as they stood just a couple feet from me, reading the list of things they might possibly indulge in for lunch. In my head I heard the conversation my mom and I  might have had as we discussed one person after another.

I'm sure people watched us too when we traveled together. There were comments on our matching shoes and our silver hair.

Back at home now, I've been enchanted by the moon jellyfish in the marina. It's another world, dreamlike and ghostly.  

Hotel de Pillville: a retrospective

First read this.  The flow chart still makes me laugh hysterically.

Traveling with my mom is easier now that she doesn't smoke. Last night we stayed at an Embassy Suites. I chose the couch in the living room and let my mom have the bedroom to herself. There was some pretty terrifying shouting at the dead around midnight. She was yelling at her twin sister Millie. If I'd already been asleep, I'm sure the noise would have awakened me, heart pounding. As it was, I just got a case of the goosebumps and resolved to fling open the door to the hallway and run if a ghost came through the bedroom door.

Last evening as she was wheeled off the plane with the aid of an aisle-sized wheel chair and three attendants, the logistics of it all blocked the incoming crew from boarding. The end of the jetway was lined with people in navy blue as she was transferred to her own wheelchair. This is my last flight, she told them. I'm coming home. I'm not sure if she actually spoke the words to die. But it was in the air. Not a single person tapped a toe or sighed impatiently. They waited, almost at attention, thanking us for flying Delta, telling her to have a good time, a good night, to rest.

My mom is exhausted. She's still asleep. I have her toast and coffee ready. I'll have to wake her soon. Then Pillville will be hitting the road.

Pillville is Mobile

My mom and I are in the air, flying into the biggest cloud I've ever seen. Flight attendants are taking their seats and I don't even care. All I care about is the half drunk cup of coffee on my mom's tray table. Will it spill? Can I keep it from spilling? I kinda gave up on the pool of muck under the dining room table the past few days. The caregiver and I made a cursory wipe here and there, but I waited until my mom was outside the front door in her wheelchair this morning before I got the mop.

Pillville is mobile. 37,000 feet. In the cloud, literally. Then a hotel for the night. Then a car ride. Then my brother''s house. Then my sister and her husband's anniversary party. Then a doctor's appointment, then the nursing home. Then what?

I take back all that about the big cloud. We're in it and I hate it and I have to go now.

Our Last Night in Pillville

It's been unusually hot here for months in case you haven't heard. Like the weather gods have finally complied and made it possible for my mother to remove her long underwear and enjoy the patio. She has a suntan--which might be a feat that only a few hospice patients manage. We aim to please here in Pillville.

The wind kicked up this afternoon. It's blowing off the ocean and it's blowing harder than it has in months. There's an eerie pinkish yellow gray light out there as dusk settles in. Now the weather gods are saying go. Get out of town while the getting's good.

I wouldn't say the getting is good, exactly. I think the getting is iffy. "I think she'll make the trip," the hospice nurse said. This is what the nurse has been saying for weeks--without the emphasis on the word think. I'm not going to weigh in with what I think. What I think doesn't matter. I'm going to put one foot in front of the other. I'm going to put my lips together and blow.

Report from Pillville: The Balance of Opposites

Photo from this morning's walk along the beach in Ventura--a local artist stacks these stones.

My mom is more frail than ever but feels well.

I'm happier and stronger than I've been in a long long time but feel spent.

Those statements balance one another in a way I can't quite explain. And maybe there's balance too in the fact that my mom is sleeping more and more these days while I am sleeping less and less. And even when I do sleep, I awake feeling hung over. There's no gin involved in this, I swear--at least not for me. She is, of course, still having her martini. The balance of opposites right here in Pillville.

I almost had to sit during my T'ai Chi Chih practice yesterday. Today I opted out of yoga and took a walk. I need the sky over my head to feel the vastness of possibility. I need to be quiet.

I'm in the process of transitioning my mom into a nursing home after more than 3 years of caring for her in my house. I'm filling out the forms for Medi-Cal and Iowa Medicaid. I'm gathering documentation. I'm making travel plans and not making travel plans. I'm formulating a Plan A and a Plan B and wondering if they are mutually exclusive while wondering if both of them will fall away.

I'm sitting on the couch in my living room as I write this, wholly aware of the sound of her breathing in her room, while feeling that I'm barely breathing at all.

My heart is in Indiana with the man that I love and my heart is here, heavy as a stone, and so light it is a tower reaching for the sky.

This morning's walk took me past the estuary. Here it is looking inland--and looking out to the sea, just like me.

The path I was on took me under the freeway, framing a perfect view of the hills,
and it took me across the railroad tracks. Travel plans, vistas, hopes, dreams,manifested through a camera lens-- and if you look closely at the photo below you'll see a white cross in the lower left. I didn't see it when I took the photo.

Report from Pillville: How to plan

1) Fill the pillboxes for the next two weeks as if you are sure they will be needed.

2) Thank M and her friend for cleaning up your mom's coffee spills while you were at yoga.

3)  Thank M and her friend for making your mom another piece of toast when she forgot she'd eaten the first one.

4) Spill your own full cup of a perfect latté all over your stack of journals, your lamp, your end table and the white chair in your bedroom.

5) Clean up your mess, but decide that the slipcover to the chair can be spot cleaned, not removed and washed.

6) Talk to your other daughter on the phone about getting her grandmother to Iowa (or not) about getting her into a nursing home in a timely fashion there (or not) about you staying in Iowa longer than planned (or not).

7) In the same conversation decide to take your mom's wheelchair to Iowa. (duh) Decide that the daughter's husband will pick you up from the airport in Minnesota and take you to the airport hotel so your mom can rest before the drive the next day. Decide to get just one room for the two of you. Joke about hiring an exorcist to eliminate the possibility of middle of the night shrieks and hollers.

8) Throw the slipcover in the washing machine. Remove the towel from the bottom of the lamp. Note to self: be careful when switching the lamp on later.

9) Realize that your mom has picked new wounds into the skin on her arms while you wrote this post. And then wonder why the anti-anxiety med worked the first day of the picking, but doesn't seem to be working now.

10) Wonder when you might see this man you love again. Go over the plans and try to make peace with potential failure of said plans.

11) Realize that you started this post an hour ago.

12) Ponder your goals for today: Unsubscribe  to a few more emails. Pay the overdue water bill. Or not.

13) Make peace with sitting on the patio with your mom so you can suggest more ointment if she starts picking at her skin again.

12) Look forward to everything by planning nothing. Let go. Let go. Let go.

Monday Morning Beach Report and the latest Report from Pillville

Why do I like these gray days at the beach so much?

No place to anchor the eye this morning. Plenty of places to anchor my heart. My two weeks in Alaska were beyond perfect, but I am glad to be back here. 

I've told everyone who's asked that I've spent over 20 hours on a plane in the last couple of days. It was actually 11, but I guess it felt like 20. Maybe I'm counting my mom's hours too. Of course, the whole shebang of getting her to the east coast, coming back so I could leave for my trip, and then going back to Maryland to get her was over 20 hours just for me. Worth it. Worth it. Worth it.

We are back in our routine. Caregivers to relieve me, hospice nurses, pills, interrupted  sleep, yoga, T'ai Chi Chih, martinis, the hiss of the oxygen machine, dancing. I'll let you figure out who does what.

Last night during the dance classes someone asked if my partner and I were newlyweds. "I don't even know his last name," I said. We laughed like 8th graders. Except now I do know his last name.   All of the other couples are long married, I believe. My partner and I leave in our separate Priuses (his is white and newer, mine is red) and the other folks depart, not so subtly watching us as he hands over homegrown lemons, figs, tomatoes. I feel fairly certain that Dan has arranged this fresh produce pipeline. How do I return the favor? Savoring all the joy is the only thing I can think of. Savoring all the joy.

I want to say that you learn how to savor every joy when you hold a person you love as he breathes his final breath. And that's true. I did learn that. But the knowledge leaves me. I don't really know how a person can forget that, but I do. I forget that I ever learned it, and when it comes back to me, it's like an idea I've never heard of. Right now, I'm holding on to it. Hope I don't fall.

On top of it in Skagway, Alaska

Scrubbing the Floor

The air is a liminal state. Up in the air. We say it all the time. At this moment I am in the air in a plane between my life with my mother, tending to her every need and my life without my mother, tending to nothing at all because, for the next almost-month, my brother and his girlfriend will be tending to her. I have left her with them.

It's a project, this vacation, and I've cursed it bitterly. The audacity of it. How dare I--what was I thinking--I paid all this money and it might not even happen--and what if something bad happens to my mother while I'm away.

Fuck it. I can't turn back now.

But I wonder if I will ever attempt it again. My mother was on hospice. Because a patient cannot  have two hospice transfers in a Medicare benefit period, we had to sign her out of hospice or she wouldn't be able to get back onto hospice for several weeks after her return to California. The fancy-dancing to get enough hospice drugs in the interim was, yeah, well, fancy. This morning as I packed to leave my brother's, the medical supply place called asking if they could pick up the equipment today, i.e. the hospital bed, the tray table, the oxygen concentrator, etc. Er. Well, no, I had to tell them. so they're coming tomorrow and already my brain feels a bit fizzy wondering how we will get all this shit back on the Saturday evening that my mother returns. I'm wondering. Not worrying. Because I'm so tired of this shit that I don't have the energy to worry and hospice case managers are houdinis. These women in their pastel scrubs and pretty earrings and perfect make-up are forces. Stand the fuck back. Outta the way. Here comes the hospice nurse. Really.

In a couple of hours I will unlock my front door and return to the former house of moaning. I have no idea what I will do. I might get down on my knees and scrub the grout between the kitchen floor tiles because that would be an excuse to be on my knees and that's probably exactly where I need to be.

Living with My Mother at 37,000 Feet

Here's picture of a dove. Whatever.

There were 20 people cued up for wheelchairs at the Southwest terminal at LAX. There was a roped off seating area and a maitre d' at a podium, taking names. This is the beginning of the future as the baby boomers age. Most of the wheelies were 2 or 3 decades younger than my mother. I am so grateful for my healthy body.

At the gate, there was a culling of the herd. "Who can walk onto the plane?" a chipper young woman asked, scanning the 10 or so wheelchairs at the gate. Her eyes brushed over the top of my mother's white head. When we got to the aircraft door, the young woman who'd wheeled the chair down the jetway didn't ask. She commanded, "Take my hand," she said at the doorway of the aircraft as she handed my mom off to the waiting flight attendant. Bless all these people. They make me want to skip and sing while tossing 20 dollar bills in the air.

We're fairly good at this now, my mom and I, on our third trip east, but once again my mother has said that she's never flying again. It's hard. I could rant about the specifics of that, but I won't.

Already, in the midst of this small torture, we're planning a trip to Iowa for my sister's 40th wedding anniversary. "Should I drive her there by myself?" I asked the charming and kind M as she drove us to LAX  this morning?  M explained to me how NFL teams choose their rosters. "They look for the best of the best overall players," she said. "Or they go for a specific skill set." You need a partner with a specific skill set." She said I should find him and get that road trip in motion.

Okay.

Here I am. A 62-year-old version of gorgeous. I need lots of time to myself to write and think. I do yoga. I do T'ai Chi Chih. I love to walk on the beach. I'm a lazy and healthy cook. I'm a reader. I like poetry. I'm learning to ballroom dance. I'm not getting married unless you're a billionaire. You can like what you like. I don't have to love it. We just have to like each other. And there's that road trip. There'll be a lot of bathroom stops and we'll be off the road every evening in time for a cocktail. We won't get started again until after breakfast. 400 miles per day absolute fucking maximum. Go ahead, tell me your interested. I dare you.

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.

These Are Suitcases

Yes, bathed in the morning light, here lie the implements of travel.

It is quite possible that I'm delusional, but on Saturday I'm planning to fly my with mother to the east coast where we will be fetched from the airport by my brother. The very large suitcase in the rear of the above photo will be jammed to the brim because my mom is going to stay at my brother's place for a month while I take two the smaller suitcases and head off to Alaska with a friend for two weeks.   I do not know the details of our planned travels with  a local chapter of the Sierra Club since my friend made all of the plans and I have yet to read any of the details. Hiking boots. I need those. Rain gear. Yoga pants. Because part of the trip involves a cruise and there will be yoga. And dancing shoes. There may be dancing on the ship. I may dance everywhere.

In order for this to happen, we must sign my mother out of hospice. (Medicare does not allow more than one hospice transfer in any given benefit period.) But the new medication regimen will remain in place, and that seems to be the element that has turned the tide. The tide is such a fickle thing, so I'll focus on something else. Like how I will turn around and fly back here 48 hours after I arrive at my brother's house, so that I can then drive to my friend's house in L.A. and fly with her to Alaska.

Right now my mom is shuffling in and out of her room looking at the suitcase I've set in the hall outside her door. "Socks," she's muttering. Pills, I'm thinking. Who cares about socks?

We're Not in the Hospital or the Morgue

Everything pretty much went according to plan. Getting my mom out of the car and into a wheelchair at the curb at BWI with an icy wind howling. Me with four suitcases trying to find the wheelchair attendant and my mom after we got separated. Walking/wheeling to the very last gate. Running for snacks and water. All the usual airport stuff. We got on board, flew for hours, landed, found another wheelchair attendant, claimed our luggage, got in the town car I'd ordered to take my mom home in comfort.

And then, in free-flowing L.A. traffic shortly after 2:00 p.m., the car died in the fast lane of the 405 Freeway. Stone cold dead-stopped. Folks, we have a problem, the driver said. He mumbled and tried to start the car. I commanded him to put the flashers on. He began trying to call his boss. I called 911. We are in serious danger, I told the dispatcher as cars screeched and careened around us. The person the driver was talking to said he'd send a car to pick up the passengers. I said this is a fucking emergency. Six terrifying minutes passed and I called 911 again just before I heard the sirens. An LAPD vehicle parked behind us, lights flashing. The officer was calm. Do not get out of the car, she said. A freeway emergency tow-truck came. A minute or two later, a CHP officer ran a traffic break, closing down all northbound lanes of the 405. He then escorted my mom to his vehicle as I followed behind.

For twenty minutes or so, we sat in his SUV on a nearby street chatting until the transportation company sent a van for us. Thank you so much, I told the CHP officer as we got out of his car and he helped my mom into the van. It's what we do, m'am, he said as if it was a line in a movie script.

There's nothing like a brush with death for a jolt of energy. I cooked a nice dinner. Did our laundry. I am wide awake. I walked across the freeway with my 90-year-old mother.

"It's too old and cold and settled in its ways here."

my mom with her birthday martini last month

Holy shit.
Sugar hangover.
Jet lag.
Bad tempered at the rudest drivers in the world who sit on your bumper despite the fact that you are already going 10 miles over the speed limit, and when you don't speed up, they roar around you like what they'd really prefer to do is crush you to bits. Not just one or two assholes. It's everyone.

I drove my mom down to my cousin's house where she used to have an apartment in his basement, and for the second time in two years we wandered around opening drawers with dozens of hats, and scarves, and gloves and talked about how we didn't want them. We fingered books, and crochet patterns, and cigarette lighters, and stood there overwhelmed with how much stuff there was.The one thing I did want--a tall and thick brass candlestick--I left behind as I carried the shopping bag of stuff my mom chose.

Stuff.

This trip back to the apartment was the first for me and the second for my mom since her twin sister died. Gone just over a year, it's just plain weird to be back here with my mom, but without her sister. It's weird to be here too without Dan to phone at night. With the time difference, I'd lie in bed here in my brother's dark and quiet house and call Dan and whisper about my day. Today I would have told him how I missed my turn on the way down to my cousin's, but found a good route anyway. About how the way home was much easier until my exit two miles from my brother's house where I found myself in a newly constructed wedge of suburbia that is so fresh that Google maps knows nothing of its existence. Make u-turn. Make a u-turn. Make a u-turn. Uh-oh.

My mom (on the right) and my aunt in September 2013
and
many years ago

But here I am. In the bed where I've slept dozens of times when I visited my mom here. Tomorrow I take her back to California with me. While it's been hard these past two plus years to be so completely responsible for her so far away without any support from siblings, it's okay. I'm happy to be going back and to have her back. Thrilled actually.

Both she and I have agreed that we're not doing this again. It's hard for her. She needs to pack so many things that the average not-90-year-old person can do without. She has her zip-lock bag of toiletries AND a gallon size zip-lock of over-the-counter stuff and take-as-needed meds, and a shoe box of the must-take meds. She has hearing aids to keep track of, essential medical paperwork, her cane, her this, her that. Tonight she stood in her room here staring at her stuff, paralyzed. I stood staring at her stuff. Which was the stuff from California we'd packed for the trip, and which was the stuff that we left behind here on purpose. Wait. Are you taking all these pajamas? Wait. These don't have pockets. You hate pajamas without pockets. That's why we didn't take them to California in the first place.

We all have stuff we need on the plane. She has stuff she NEEDS on the plane. Do I have it all? I hope so.
California, I need you. Cue the Joni Mitchell.

My mom in action on our patio. Binoculars. Good for watching birds, boats....and neighbors.

Freedom

View from the airplane window over the Twin Cities

My brother drove me to the airport in his big truck. This is the guy who once told me his philosophy was to stay calm unless the parole officer was on the porch asking for a cheek swab. "So," he said, "P and I have been joking that we should have you sign a contract to say that you're really coming back to get Mom in two months." He laughed nervously.

"Don't worry," I said. "I'll be back." And then I mimed holding the phone to my ear. "Who?" I said. "Who?" He laughed a bigger laugh. I waved good-bye and walked away.

Freedom feels....like freedom. Yep. Just like freedom. As big as the sky. But I love my mom and I do want her back. The caregiving gig is not easy, but I am absolutely thankful I can take care of her, and I do not want her in a nursing home. And I am humbled by people who've been caregivers for years and years and years. My friend Elizabeth just won THIS award. Caregifted actually provides several days of respite for caregivers who've been caring for someone for a decade or more. So if you've found my blog because you're a caregiver  too, check out Caregifted.

"Freedom, Heyday! Heyday, Freedom! Freedom, freedom, heyday!" --Caliban, "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare

prisoners

Oddly, when C met me at the airport in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, we were both wearing striped shirts like old-timey prisoners. She told me (always the authority on fashion) that prisons might be going back to the stripes because Orange is the New Black has made the orange outfits fashionable.

"We are all just prisoners here of our own device--"  "Hotel California" by the Eagles.

I'm miss quote-y, aren't I?
And who are you tonight?

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.

Queen of List-Making Disappears

Fog on the Beach/Early Sunday Morning

In a mere 15 hours, my mother and I will be getting into a car and heading for the airport for her 2nd annual return-to-the-east-coast birthday visit.

I have not made a list. I did not even realize I had not made a list until I uttered the words, "I have not even made a list," to a friend a couple of hours ago.

I have not made a list. I am the Queen of List-Making. Or recently abdicated queen. 

It's quite probable that an alien intelligence has taken over both my body and my brain. 

My mother, Queen of Pillville, is on a lot of medications. I have, at least, made a list of those for her to take with her to my brother's house. And it's an illustrated list. So there.

It's quite possible that I have not sweated any of the other travel prep because I am delirious with the prospect of my impending freedom. My mother is going to stay at my brother's place for 2 months. And I am going to do All the Things!!!

Here's a list for you:

Visit daughter C and go to a family wedding with her

Go to a T'ai Chi Chih retreat in New Mexico

Go to Maui for a friend's birthday week celebration

Visit one of Dan's oldest friends in Hilo

Go to Kauai for another friend's birthday celebration

That's just September. I am not making up the Hawaii stuff. I do indeed have two friends (who don't know one another) who have invited me to their birthdays celebrations on 2 different Hawaiian islands. And by some incredibly fancy luck, the party dates did not conflict with one another or the T'ai Chi Chih retreat or the T'ai Chi Chih teacher accreditation week in October. 

In addition to (hopefully) becoming a T'ai Chi Chih teacher in October, I will: (here comes another list)

See friends in L.A. and actually go out somewhere at night

Read from my memoir with other Shebook authors in L.A.(more about that later)

Have a wild party with wine... and...wine (please send wild party ideas)

Host a mini writing retreat chez moi 

Return to the east coast to pick up my mom

As if this weren't enough good news for one day, I also had a sweet, sweet dream about Dan last night. It was black and white--like a classic movie. We were having a secret tryst in a library. Through most of it, I was unaware that he had died. He was alive, in my arms, and we having a fabulous time sneaking around in the dark among the books. Every now and then a man in a suit would show up at a desk, and Dan and I would have to straighten our clothes and look presentable. The man in the suit had some kind of account book, and Dan wanted to ask him something about money, but I'd try to discourage him. It was at these moments that I knew Dan was dead. I wanted to tell him nothing about money mattered, but Dan didn't seem to know he was dead so I had to skirt around the issue.  But it was fairly easy to distract him, and then we'd just go back behind the shelves and forget that he was dead.

How We Made It...and Other Wonders: Part 2

It was a four-Advil-dozen loads of wash kind of day.

Everything we traveled with and all the treasures we retrieved needed to be purged of cigarette smell. The suitcases sat airing on the patio all day, and many of the paper items and other non-washable things are quarantined to the garage--a cookbook, family photos, two purses, a beautiful piece of art that hung on the dining room wall of my mom's and aunt's apartment that they salvaged from the trash (see previous post)--tossed out most likely because the glass in the frame was broken. They never re-framed the piece, and it absorbed twenty years of smoke. All of these things will be beautiful--or at least utilitarian someday.

I've succeeded in putting almost everything away.

I love old family items, but I'm afraid the enormous skillet might be too heavy for the drawer under the cooktop. I wonder where my grandmother and my great aunts kept it.

It was easier to find a place for the 1940s beads and the crocheted jewelry (my mom made quite a few of these necklaces and earrings once upon a time.)

The crocheted bedspread and a dozen doilies and dresser scarves are soaking in the washing machine.

Is the bedspread destined for my bed? Maybe...but there's already a well-worn and much loved quilt on it that my mom made for me. Stay tuned.

As for my mother herself, the unpacking was quite the effort. She circled around all day, losing this, finding that; telling me little tidbits about an old family prayer book, a pair of earrings, a couple of old watches. Nothing really valuable in the sense that people would pay hundreds for it, but treasures in their own way.

I'm tired. I drank too much wine at dinner.

I'm home.

And trying to come to terms with the fact that the City of Angels no long holds one of my beloved writing teachers, Les Plesko. Like most of his former students, I learned of his death on Tuesday, and each morning since then, I've done that thing we do when someone is newly gone from us. No, that was a dream, I think as I wake. He's here. But he isn't. And won't be. I think of him as I drop into sleep. Try to imagine. Try not to imagine. 

How We Made It to the Curb and Other Wonders: Part I

The wheelchair guy who met my mom at the door of the plane looked something like this. Do you have luggage? he asked. I told him we did, and he said not to worry, he would help us. Counting the time that he waited outside the ladies room, we probably spent an hour together. He was smooth. The whole process was smooth. We arrived at the curb with my mom in her wheelchair and our mountain of luggage just as the beautiful M pulled up. I tipped him generously, but forgot to thank him for giving up his Bollywood career just for us.

This morning our house looked like this.

Here are some of our treasures.

Don't worry, it gets better.

Um...that's a tiny bungee cord and a pair of those non-skid hospital socks.

Well, this is sweet. "Someone in Iowa loves you!" it says.

Check out the matchbox cars in the tin and the box. We have dozens more. My mom's older sister crocheted the afghan. I washed it three times this morning to get the cigarette stench out. The purses are stuffed full of family photos. And hiding in the back is a boxed set (still shrink wrapped) of Anne of Green Gables. 

And what was my mom doing with the matchbox cars you ask? She and her twin sister searched the streets, trash-picking, for many years. They routinely washed, repaired, and refurbished tons of stuff, saving it from the landfill and giving it to people they thought would like it--and every so often having a pretty profitable garage sale. The cars were kept for my nephew, whom my mom and I now call Big Jacob since he's 15 years old. We brought them back to California so my grandson, whom we sometimes refer to as Little Jacob, can play with them when he comes to visit.

Is there more? Oh, my. Yes. But I refuse to get up right now and take more photos. Later.

But wait!--we did find her martini hat.

Six not-so-easy pieces

The suitcases were a matreska doll set-up on the way to Baltimore. Suitcases inside of suitcases inside of suitcases. On our return each bag is stuffed--full of its own potential, no longer tucked inside of something else. Everyone asked how I would manage all the luggage and my mother and a wheelchair. Thinking too far ahead, I said. All that worry for nothing. In a situation I couldn't quite fathom since I'm used to traveling with a roller bag stashed in the overhead. 

My brother pulled us into the un-loading zone while my mom and he and the two carry-on bags waited in the truck. I rolled the 4 suitcases  to the curbside check-in. Presented my mom's i.d. and my own, wondering if they would insist on seeing her in person or if pointing to the truck was good enough. Mr. Skycap was cheery and helpful. We m'am-ed and sir-ed each other all over the place and it was fine. He checked the bags and sent the wheelchair guy to get my mom--but not before he assumed the wheelchair was for me. Wanna arm wrestle? I asked. How about a foot race. Gray-haired women confuse people. So off he went to retrieve my mom. She shouted Weeeeeee up and down the curbs and made people smile.  I tossed off 5 and 10-dollar tips like I was still married to a millionaire. Off we went.

Security was fun. Her bag had to be hand searched. Not the coin collections, they said. Something. They wouldn't say what. The vintage cigarette holder/lighter interested them. Damn. I had visions of running back into the pre-security part of the terminal and buying a tote bag to check it. What is it, the TSA officer asked. A cigarette case from the 40s, I said. She opened it with a click. I envisioned lighter fluid. Surely it would have evaporated over the last half century, I reassured myself inside my head. Then came the swab. What are they doing, my mom asked. Ah.......checking for um.....could I actually say the word explosives? Explosives! said the TSA trainee. You can't say that! said the veteran TSA officer who looked to be all of 20. Say other substances, she said. Other substances, I said to my mom.

So, here we are. Southwest Airlines. Row 3. Wheelchairs board first.  I'm in it for the pre-boarding, right?

And how will I get those 6 suitcases to the curb? I'll let you know.

Crocheting is Good for the Brain

My mother crochets. Over the last few years she's crocheted dozens of doilies and dresser scarves. She's crocheted tablecloths that would make your Thanksgiving dinner look like you'd been transported to Downton Abbey. Before I went to France for my study abroad semester 30 years ago, she crocheted me a purse that I wish I still had. It was circular and had rings of color like a target. I thought the 70s orange and brown color scheme looked smashing with my orange raincoat. In some over-enthusiastic closet purge, I must have gotten rid of it. Maybe there's a retro hippie chick toting it somewhere in L.A., thrilled with her vintage find. Maybe not.

In the past few years, it's been snowflakes that my mother has taken a liking to. This past Christmas I told her my tree could use a few more. Whoa. 

The picture at the bottom of the post is what she's done since then--and that does not include the ziplock bag of a dozen or so more still waiting to be starched. She's making them for other people too. This trip to the east coast that we're on is not just a birthday trip, it's a snowflake distributing mission.

We carefully packed her book "101 Snowflakes" in her carry-on. After our flight was delayed, cancelled, and then subsequently re-scheduled due to the lightning strike at the BWI control tower, my brain was in a rather fried state itself. I think I put the book in her seatback pocket....and I think that is where it remained after we deplaned. Maybe not. 

But we can't find it. Also lost is her toothbrush, some underwear, and a gorgeous pair of earrings. Traveling at 89 is a challenge. We spent the first night at my brother's house, then my cousin's place for three nights, and now we're back at my brother's. In addition to our carry-on bags we brought four empty suitcases and stuffed them with all kinds of treasures that she left in Maryland when she moved to California a year ago. Among them a crocheted bedspread that I can't wait to unfurl across my bed. Anything could be anywhere. Or maybe not.

This is not the first time the book has been lost. A couple of years ago I figured I would simply snap one up for her on Amazon. But it's out of print and was being sold for over a hundred bucks. I considered buying it anyhow and not telling her what I'd paid for it, but she found her copy. Yesterday I filled out a lost and found report with Southwest Airlines. But this morning I went to Amazon and found the book for twenty dollars. I bought it. It should arrive at my house before we do. I think my cousin is right when he says that it's the crocheting that's keeping my mom's brain healthy.