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