What Dolly Carries

It has been gradually dawning on me that I should do the complete opposite of whatever I think I should do. The "alzheimer authority" at the home where Dolly may soon be living says, "Don't expect Dolly to be the same person you have known from the past. Get to know this new person and enjoy time spent with her. There will be happiness there." So I am determined to just "roll with Dolly", this "new" Dolly, wherever she goes. Wherever she leads.

Yesterday I picked her up and we drove to a nearby town where we enjoyed lunch in a nice restaurant by the river. Dolly wanted a glass of wine, and she loved the good food and ambience. She carried the remains of her dinner with her to the river, where we watched ducks quacking and swimming below. Reflections of fall trees moved in the cold water, Dolly's cheeks were rosy from the chilly air and we walked arm-in-arm to the car, studying the stuffed scarecrows hanging from every lamppost along the way. "This one is fat," said Dolly. "What did they do to that one?" Two scarecrows, taken from the posts and arranged horizontally atop a fence in a passionate leggy embrace, made us laugh. "What day is it," Dolly asks. "When is Halloween?"

The backway home took us down narrow dirt roads with a canopy of leaves overhead. The landscape was dotted with burning red bushes and swept into a flurry of constant change with wind, rain and bursts of warm sunshine. Slowly passing a brown field dotted with orange pumpkins, Dolly said, "Let's buy ten!" So we, standing out in the muddy field, chose "this one because it is bumpy", and "that one because it is strange looking, isn't it?" I drop our bills in the self-pay box as frail Dolly treks back to the car carrying a beautifully imperfect and dirty one.

"What day is it," Dolly asks again. Almost home, we drive once more through the county park, searching for the very place where she first saw my dad, sitting in the branches of a tree when they were 15 years old. All the jack-o-lanterns, all the pumpkin pies, all the indian corn and popcorn balls. All the pheasants that my father shot and I watched my mother gut. All the football games and hot cider and apples from the orchard north of town. All the chrysanthemums by the steps. Hot chocolate. Mitten weather. Warm house and steamy windows.

Back in her livingroom she puts on a headband with cat ears that Blue found in her closet the other day. "When is Halloween," asks Dolly. I tell her she looks beautiful. On my way home I glance in the rearview mirror and find a familiar lipstick kiss on my cheek. What I carry takes me back to her. I will always be taken back to her, wherever she goes

Underneath It All, We Are Home

"I am having an existential crisis," I tell Mallory. I hear the wind's bluster, close my eyes and smile as the sunlight flickers on the wall through my eyelids. Squirming in my chair, my eyes open suddenly, dart for the window and land squarely on a picture of a perfect fall day. Cars are lined peacefully in a parking lot as dark clouds race to reveal sudden bursts of sunshine and let loose a flurry of glowing yellow leaves that float swirling sparkling and spinning toward wet pavement.

I have seen the imprint of maple leaves on concrete, nature's little art project, cave drawings for a new millennium, a reminder that we are all campers here. Wet autumn days challenge us, and we industriously chop wood, dig latrines, revel in our scrapes and cuts. Our red-cold fingers and red-hot tempers flare, and under a gray sky of freezing rain, beneath steamy layers of cotton and wool, we are warm and in love with muscle, skin, cartilage and bone.

A Mess (iah)

Today while texting, "It looks like rain again today," my jaw dropped when these words magically appeared on my phone: "It looks like pain again today." Predictive text input technology has become my Shroud of Turin, Holy Grail and water turned to wine (which honestly seems the best of the three). "What is "aides milk", you might ask? If you are the recipient of a text message from me, you may translate it as "cider mill", but of course the words carry much much more. Perhaps to you I seem like some lunatic yelling jibberish from the street corner, but I am the only one who knows the truth. God speaks to me through T9 texting. Pretty much all the time.

TOO MUCH MATERIALITY

The woman sitting next to me remembered when her son drove the 125 miles to visit her and she said TOO MUCH MATERIALITY. He said, are you sure you want to get rid of everything, and she said DO IT. So now she is in this wonderful assisted living facility that she loves, the people are friendly, the staff is great and SOMETIMES I COME TO THE DINING ROOM AND GET MY DINNER TO GO IF I FEEL LIKE EATING IN MY ROOM. Mustard sprays on the table, she asks for spumoni and the tour is over.

Blue and I glance at each other when the manager says "I thought I already explained that your mother can have the double room for the price of a single room until the room that she wants becomes available." Later, sitting in the back seat of Dolly's car we talk about the pros and cons of being a flight attendant. On call at an hours notice. Flying away to the beaches of Oahu.

What would you love to do, I ask? Blue says she would like to be a dog groomer. I say I would like to be a hair stylist. Willa says Dolly hasn't been taking her medication regularly. This place will be good for her, says Blue. Nutrition is so important. We all agree that the place is great, like a nice hotel, with bridge games and a theater and trips to the store and concerts and good food and rooms facing a courtyard filled with flowers and birds.

I would like to live there, says Blue. Me too! says Willa.

Dolly is irritated when I tell her she has to eat. I ALREADY ATE. I'M NOT HUNGRY. I see she hasn't taken her morning pills, it is already 5pm and she hasn't gotten dressed today. Dolly told the doctor that Harry Truman is president and she tells me that she didn't go to the doctor. The doctor tells Willa that Dolly can't drive anymore and needs to be in an assisted living facility for her own safety.

When I get up to leave, I search Dolly's face for my mother. Isolated, she recedes into herself. She exists in a place that she can't share with me. I leave a lipstick kiss on her cheek. Maybe later, looking in the mirror, it will lead her back to me.