ONE CORNER AT A TIME

12 of 100

six de fevrier

Janet had a doctor's appointment this morning, a little on the early side for us. It felt more on the early side as I am just not falling asleep as soon as I would like to. Like now. I might not have mentioned this before, but Janet will often fall into a ditty or a song, even when you would rather she did not. For instance, at dinner in a restaurant. Or just sitting in her chair, rocking. This morning, trying to calmly wrangle her into getting dressed on this accelerated schedule, I found over the heater and not in her bedroom getting ready. 

Since there has been talk of a nursing home, I have been infinitely nicer to her and far more patient. Which is not to say that I am always patient. But no notable yelling or scolding in quite awhile, although I will own up to a bark or two. Instead of calling her from the doorway to get up, I've been sitting down on the bed and making up songs of my own. Nothing I can remember, of course. Turns out she responds to this better than being spoken to in a sharp tone. 

At any rate, she started reciting/singing, "Have you ever been in the shade/ with marmalade?" as if it were a 1940's standard. She asked me if I knew that song. I think she made it up.

We made it to the doctor's office in fine time, even after a quick stop at Patrick's to drop off my vehicle registration (he's borrowing my stick shift Fit) and pick up my dry laundry (still no dryer). The doctor's office was busy, of a Monday, with plenty of older folks and wheelchairs. We were sitting in the office waiting room when a trio sat near us. The family relationships were not easy to discern. One person was very old, in a wheelchair, and bent over as it straightening up was no longer an option. (It sounds as if there are chipmunks in the kitchen making that cccccaaaaacccing sound. Now cats are fighting, which is odd because Vera Paris is usually beating up Idrisse when that happens.) 

At any rate, one old person coached the wheelchair person about doctor's office etiquette: "I don't want you singing, and I don't want you farting, okay?"

Today has not been a good one, pain wise. I finally took an oxycodone (and some single malt scotch). I got some relief right away, but I just looked at my knee and it all looked red and swollen. I did not do much of anything but walk around quite a bit. I always have errands to run, things to clean, etc. Difficult to NOT do those things. I have an ice pack on my knee right now, but my ankle and foot look a bit more swollen than in recent days. 

So I was in a crabby, pernicious low-level pain wet cat mood all day. I misplaced my (add your own expletives here) Apple Earbuds. They are so hard to keep track of. In a household of playful animals, one never knows who found what and how they might have played with them. This frustrates me incredibly as I know I saw them yesterday when I recharged them. 

This pain (not severe but there) and the whole healing process are getting to me. I just cannot move around as I would like. I am not capable of doing as much as I would like to be doing. 

Reading, though, reading is good. Finished the Marcella Hazan memoir and moved on to Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters Who Paved the Way for Austen and The Brontes. Fun read. Besides this which is most enjoyable if very long (440 pages), I have my French workbook, a poetry anthology (The Yale Younger Poets Anthology), Berlin Diaries 1940-1945 (Marie Vassiltchikov), Last September (Helen Rose Hull), and Jane Gardam's A Long Way From Verona, taking up bed space. Bebop does not approve of the bed space being used thus.

 MEMO

Touch was all.

Many nights of touch

and only yourself to trust.

Your hands led you

through caverns of other hands.

You brought nothing from the journeys,

lost nothing each time the mind

took back its roots,

learned nothing 

when people withdrew with pieces

of what you thought was heart.

The hands set out plates, opened cans.

Your age arrived, one corner

at a time. The familiar hungers turned

their backs. Only the hands

kept up with you,

folding the loose garments,

fingering the sheets

on the thin bed, showing more and more

of their frame, their muscle.

— Leslie Ullman, Natural Histories, Yale University Press, 1979