My Muse is Gone

            Brushing my teeth just before ten p.m., I suddenly know why I have written so little over the past two weeks.  My muse is gone.

            For close to four years, I have written about Mom.  My whole life has centered around her:  anticipating her needs, regulating my schedule around hers, taking care of her, and simply being around.  Now, instead of spending most waking hours in her presence, I spend most waking hours in her absence.

            It is snowing now (after ten p.m. on March 5):  big fluffy flakes that stick.  I see the white on the back porch.  I sit at the computer, purring cat on my lap.  I’ve clomped down the hallway several times, not worrying about the racket my clogs make on the laminate floors.  Mom’s empty, dark room sits across the hall waiting for me to fill it with furniture. 

            Today was the best visit yet.  She wanted to sit out in the commons area on the sofa right next to me.  There we sat, shoulder to shoulder, looking out at the courtyard and carrying on our conversation.  I talked about flute choir.  She wondered if it would bother anyone if she played the piano.  I reminisced about stray childhood incidents:  my sister scolding me for telling a classmate how old Mom was, how we confidently spent an afternoon digging a hole in the hopes of making our own swimming pool, the time Penny Perry and I planned to be like Mary Poppins and float down from the second-story roof down to the ground.  (Fortunately, we first tried jumping off the porch, umbrellas in hand.  It was a big surprise how hard we hit the ground.)

            For a good thirty minutes, Mom and I sat and talked.  She asked how long it had been since she had a “furlough” at home.  She said that the other “inmates” are brainless, but the food is good.  She asked what month it was.  She remarked that she wishes she knew what to do about her memory.  She was pleasantly surprised when I told her that John had taken her to lunch yesterday and that I had been by later that afternoon.

            I think it is safe to say that Mom wishes that each day’s events would stick in her memory just like the snow is sticking to the porch.  However, snow eventually melts, and Mom’s memory melts almost before it accumulates.  I guess it is the absence of accumulation that I have been writing about.