Face Plant

            “I’m going to go water the garden,” I said to Mom and John.  I turned, took a step or two, and my left ankle gave way.  I landed flat out on my stomach, my palms scraped by the sand and stones of the driveway.

            Talk about feeling stupid.  I don’t remember ever taking a flying tumble like that before, though it is not the first time in my life that my ankle suddenly gave out on me.  No hole, no uneven spots, no rocks or curbs this time.  Just an errant ankle.

            The timing of this sprain is pretty bad, to say the least.  We are preparing to have flooring installed next week.  True, I have been pushing my limits in the quest to dig out my room and clear off all furniture surfaces and closet floors.  Enforced rest is not what I had in mind, though.  At least the ankle swelling is closer to chicken egg than goose egg size.

            However, on the bright side, because I’ve been doing all this cleaning, I did know exactly where my assortment of ankle supports and splints were:  in a box in John’s shop.  I boxed them up yesterday.

Thirty Years and Three States

            It’s probably been thirty years and three states since I thoroughly cleaned out a particular two-drawer file cabinet, but I felt ruthless enough to do it Saturday.  It’s amazing what the prospect of getting new flooring in the bedrooms and hallway can inspire me to do.

            I dumped entire folders such as “maps” and “KPERS” (Kansas Public Employees Retirement System newsletters dating back to 1989).  I threw out the old brochures from a homeschooling program I planned to use for my daughter’s kindergarten year back in 1987-88.  Out went church annual reports from the 1990s along with an unbelievable accumulation of warranties for items I no longer own.  I even threw out a stray year of mostly empty planner pages (after reading through them, of course).

            Naturally, I kept the important stuff:  things like pictures, copies of my Christmas letters going back to 1979, and treasured special occasion cards (including the Mother’s Day letter my daughter wrote me when she was nineteen, and the drug-free Kansas red ribbon with “Best Mom in the world badge” at the top in my son’s grade school script).  Among other things, I re-filed college transcripts, the 1974 career testing results that showed I would make a great priest or male English professor, and dental X-rays. 

            So now what used to be crammed into two file drawers comfortably fits into one.  My old, dented metal cabinets have been replaced by a two-drawer lateral file, but a lingering homesickness remains for people and places of long ago.

Berry Quandary

            Jewel-like ripe berries crown our bushes this summer.  John and I feast on the abundance as we walk the dogs down the driveway.  Mom harvests the crop.

            She comes in the house, bearing her berry gifts.  A throwaway plastic container is heaped high with the edible gems.  The abundant overflow sits in the big blue recyclables tub.

            Earlier today, I watched Mom wash out the tub at the kitchen sink and set it back on the floor.  I did not waste a second worrying about whether it was truly clean or thoroughly rinsed—after all, it is the repository for glass and plastic items.

            At the time, though, I hadn’t imagined it as a berry bucket.

            Mom is keen to freeze the berries right away and do it herself.  I retrieve the cookie sheet from the freezer and bag up the now-frozen strawberries she picked yesterday from our strawberry patch.  She washes and dries off the cookie sheet.   Then, showing remarkable restraint, I watch her dump the freshly picked wild blackberries onto the sheet, spread them out, and deliver them to the freezer shelf.

            Tomorrow I will take the cookie sheet of frozen wild berries and carefully inspect them, pulling out the stray non-berry items.  Last week I found what appeared to be a frozen slug.  Hopefully this batch will be free from slugs and leaves, but I’m unsure how to ensure it is free from recycling residue.

           

Waiting Rooms

            Waiting rooms are getting interesting.

 On Friday afternoon, Mom and I got to sit in two different waiting rooms at the vitreoretinal specialist’s office as we moved through the phases of her appointment:  1. vision screening, drops to dilate her pupils and numb her eyes, and pressure screening; 2. pictures of her eyes; and 3. more numbing and antiseptic drops in the left eye, followed by the injection.  (We go through this process every two months; the shot stabilizes the macular degeneration of her “good” left eye.)  When the technician announced the drops for her pupils, Mom’s witty remark made me laugh:  “I used to be a teacher, but I don’t have any pupils here.”

            But back to the second waiting room, which had two or three other persons in it.  Mom was in a talkative mood.  And, though I tried to steer the conversation in another direction, she got a little stuck on a particular professor she had for a graduate class at Northwestern:  she loved watching him lecture because he was so good-looking.  Now, why should I feel embarrassed by my 84-year-old mother talking about a handsome professor?  I think she only mentioned him three times in about as many minutes.  I don’t remember if that was before or after she sang part of a song from her freshman year at Oberlin.

            However, it was a different patient who stole the show.  Back in the main waiting room after having his eyes dilated, he peered around and said, “Now I need to find the right wife.” 

           

Back to the Berries

            I ate my way up the driveway Saturday morning. 

            I have the luxury of choosing the best.  Color is only the first criterion because ripeness can be an orange-yellow, orange-red, or purplish-red.  After color comes definition.  There is a certain look to ripe berries, a slight separation occurring where berry meets blossom and in between each seeded bump.  The last test is touch:  the berry should “give” slightly to a gentle squeeze and practically fall off the stem.

            Once I have the perfect berry in hand, I have learned, it is wise to give it a final close-up inspection for insects.  If it passes the test, I pop it in my mouth and enjoy the wild berry combination of sweet and sour succulence. 

            And on the way back down the driveway, mail and newspaper in hand, I sampled berries from the other side.  It was a delicious walk.

           

Good Cheer

            Her voice rang out in the quiet of the Good Cheer Thrift Shop on Saturday afternoon:  “Do you want to get married again?  There’s a wedding dress.”

            Yes, there was a retro wedding dress hanging on the wall.  A woman nearby, evidently amused by Mom’s comment and my embarrassment, pointed out another wedding dress on the other side of the room. 

            Earlier, at the gift shop, I unexpectedly ran into Barbara from choir.  We had a nice visit and then, while I browsed, Mom chatted with the shop owner, who recognized us from the week before. 

            Thus, we were just doing a walk-through of the thrift shop.  I longed to linger and look at every single thing (except for wedding dresses, that is), but Mom was wearing out.  That’s okay. I’ll make a return trip alone next week.

            As we left Good Cheer, Mom asked again where we were. 

“Langley,” I said.

 “Oh, yes, Langley, the other end of the island,” she replied.  “I haven’t been here in ages.  Do we ever go to Langley?” 

“Yes, we come see movies at the Clyde Theater.” 

We walked over to my car parked behind the Star Store and headed on out of town.

 Mom exclaimed every couple minutes over the blossoms and how this has been the prettiest spring in her memory because we haven’t had any rain to blow the blossoms off.

 I thought about how a simple drive gives her so much pleasure, only reminded her once that all we’ve had this spring is rain, and realized that someday I will miss her cheery repetitions . . . even the embarrassing ones.