At Her Prime

            Why spread the cinnamon sugar butter on your cornbread when you can add it to your split pea soup?

            Mom liked being 83 so much--there is nothing like being a prime number—that she can’t remember she is now 84  (twelve dozen).  I’m not sure what prompted that repeated round of conversation this morning (her birthday was back in April), but by the fourth or fifth time I dropped the correction.  Let her enjoy her prime!

            At her doctor’s appointment, we noted the date:  December 7, 2011, seventy years since Pearl Harbor.  After a bit, she asked me what had happened on December 7 and then wondered aloud why the Japanese would attack when we had the atomic bomb.   I explained that was before the development of the atomic bomb.  Quickly, as if to cover her embarrassing mistake, she said something about the world being caught up in the arms race in 1941.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the Cold War came along later.

            It took awhile for Mom to sign her Medicare reimbursement checks to cash at the bank.  We joked around with the teller about the 39 cent one.  Mom was eyeing the coffee stand next to the counter and, as we finished our transaction, told the teller she was going to take a Swiss Miss packet home.  I was grateful that she asked rather than slyly slipping it into her pocket where the chopsticks had been earlier.

            As we drove home, she commented on all the beautiful blossoms and asked if it was May.  And less than an hour later, while she ate her split pea soup with cinnamon sugar butter, she asked if we were going anywhere today.

            “We’ve already been,” I said.