e were only about 45 minutes into our 7-hour drive north when the traffic came to a complete standstill just south of Milwaukee. The highway was in the middle of construction and we were totally boxed in with concrete dividers and rumbling semis; there was no way to peek around to see what was going on. The midday traffic had been light, so the abrupt halt was foreboding, promptly confirmed by the distant but oncoming sound of sirens.
We sat idling for about five minutes, but when the truck driver next to us turned off his rig, we realized that we might as well settle in and get comfortable. “There’s big accident up ahead of us,” he said, “a south bound semi crashed into the divider and flipped over into the northbound traffic. There are bodies. Both sides of the highway are completely blocked off. We’ll probably be here a couple of hours at least.”
The grim news traveled quickly through the trapped traffic, and one by one engines were turned off and people emerged from their cars into the bright sunlight. I got out to look around and check out our new randomly selected social group. The truck driver broke all my stereotypes as he stepped out of his van. He was neat and trim, wearing khaki shorts and a polo shirt, and looked like he would be coaching a kid’s soccer game on Sunday. Immediately ahead of us were a youngish looking man and woman who looked like they were returning from a business meeting. They just didn’t look like a romantic couple. But that image was shattered when the man sat on the trunk of the car, took off his shoes and starting clipping his toenails. When he began to brush his teeth I revised my first impression and concluded that they had been married for years. The older man in the sedan in front of them had a back seat filled with boxes of light fixtures. He said that he had been in many traffic jams over his many years on the road, but never one so close to home. He could almost see his house from where we were trapped.
I thought back to my days of commuting on the subway in Chicago from my apartment on the north side of the city, through the business center and then out to the sketchier West side. Occasionally, the subway would stop between stations for no apparent reason and I would irrationally fear that I might be stuck in this claustrophobic tunnel for the rest of my life. If so, who would become my friends amongst this random collection of riders? The easy choice would be the other medical student, or would I, by necessity, branch out and strike up a conversation with the guy wearing a do rag and hoisting a boom box, or perhaps with the kind but world-weary matriarch with huge bunions and cracked calluses, or maybe the pretty younger woman whose tongue was currently in the ear of her boyfriend?
But here at least we weren’t in a dank and germy tunnel, and in fact it was a beautiful day and people began to mill about. It actually seemed like a perfect setting for an impromptu block party. Our son Ned said that if he had a football he would look for someone to play catch with, running routes between the cars. I thought how great if we could find a couple of bridge players in the mix, and set up a game on the hood of our car. A perfect way to pass a couple of hours in the cool spring sun. Years ago just Nick and I were vacationing in the Caribbean and we put a sign up on the activities chalk board announcing that we were looking for middling bridge players. We were thrilled to see that room 214 responded and that evening we met our mystery opponents in the lobby. They were an older couple, that is to say they were probably about our age now. The husband was a retired engineer who had built airplane bombers. He slammed back whiskey after whiskey and sniped at his wife, who more than held her own. It made for a very entertaining evening of bridge. Just last New Years we found Phil and Linda on a whale watching boat trip in the Sea of Cortez. We had a fabulous time playing bridge with them for three straight nights, and if we had maybe one or two more nights we might have exchanged addresses and Christmas cards.
Ned had now returned from his walk up the highway. “The crash is really close, just ahead, under the bridge. It’s a mess. I saw an EMT with an axe breaking a window to get a guy out. The tipped over semi is straddling both sides of the highway. There are spilled hamburger buns all over the place.”
I had not realized that we were so close to the accident, and immediately began to think of the series of coincidences that put us one ripple away from ground zero. At home, I thought that we were all set to go, and then at the last minute Ned hadn’t finished packing. When we finally headed out, Ned took an unusual route to get on the tollway, which probably set us back another minute or so. These were the most proximate factors that put us snuggled safely in traffic some 1000 yards away from a near death experience, but I probably could come up with an infinite number. Before leaving, Nick took the dogs for a final bio break. If they had promptly pooped instead requiring a couple of laps around the driveway, we could have been the bloodied bodies lying among hamburger buns.
I grabbed my binoculars and started walking towards the crash. The binoculars must have lent me an air of authority, because many people asked me what was going on. When I repeated Ned’s story, almost universally people said something along the lines of, “I don’t mind sitting in this traffic, that could have easily been us up there.” As I walked further, I felt that I was approaching a bright line for the victims, separating the time before and after the crash. I imagined waves of communications rippling out, sending on tragic news that would forever change lives. Nick’s mother happened to call, and then she called Nick’s siblings to confirm that we were okay, on the off chance that one of them heard that there had been a major accident near Milwaukee, and the even more remote chance that they knew we might have been in the area.
It made me think of a book that I had read in middle school called “The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” by Thornton Wilder. This was a popular book since it was on the reading list for three years straight from 7th to 9th grade and thus was a perfect choice when you had to write a book report. I think that I wrote three straight book reports on this ancient Incan bridge spanning a chasm, which suddenly snapped and hurtled 5 seemingly random people to a violent death. The tragedy is witnessed by a monk who then seeks to understand why God made these choices and how he engineered the set of circumstances that put these specific people on the bridge at that very moment. He never finds an explanation, is accused of being a heretic and both he and his book are ultimately burned in the town square. So if you strip away the story line, and Wilder’s elegant prose, the book report could simply conclude, “Shit happens, sometime good, sometimes bad.”
I felt awkward about being a gawker over road kill, so I headed back to our car. I noticed that other traffic was slowly being rerouted along a side road and realized that cars just a little further back had the good fortune of being able to exit – even though they were just inching along. These cars were in the second ripple from ground zero, not close enough to the accident to think about near-death experiences, but close enough to our predicament to say, “Boy were we lucky not to get trapped in that traffic standstill.” While I did not want to gawk, clearly the news media did, and I heard news helicopters hovering over us. This distinctive thwapping noise immediately made me think of the Vietnam War, imprinted in my memory from the many hours of nightly news in the 1960s. With nothing else to do, I pondered on distinctive noises of our most prominent wars. World War I is silent occurring before the arrival of the talkies. For World War II, I think of the menacing sound of German shepherds barking as they strain at their leashes, the sound of armies marching on cobblestone streets, and the dissonant two tones of French sirens – I suppose you would call them klaxons. And then somewhat embarrassingly, the Korean War is represented by the M*A*S*H theme song. I am out of touch with the audio from our current conflicts, since I no longer watch the news.
I snapped out of it when Nick said, “Hey I think that they are making progress. They must have the bodies off the road, because now they have some device up there removing the concrete barriers.” And then suddenly traffic started forward; we were rerouted back south and then the traffic fanned out to fill up side roads as we made a big detour back north. Altogether not a bad 2 hours. Now we were on our way again, eagerly rushing into another infinite set of unforeseen coincidences.
Ever since you took your first breath and your life began,
Coincidences and circumstances have determined your life - - - - .
So don’t fritter away your nights foot loose and fancy free,
Or squander your afternoons taking - - - - in front of TV.
But also don’t spend too much time wondering what life is all about,
You’ll be wasting time waiting to see if your life - - - - out.
And don’t worry about making long term investments to get ahead,
Because with a - - - - of the fingers, shit happens, you may be dead.
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Our Fridge/Ourselves
arrive past midnight after a long day of traveling – a one-day round trip from Chicago to San Francisco – and the house is still. Only the dogs are up to greet me, but instead of the appreciative thump of a tail on the floor, they just fuss about me with whimpers and agitation. I am stale from the endless plane ride, so I don’t want to sit down, and I am still a little jazzed from the trip, so going to bed is not an option either. What to do to regroup and feel at home? The refrigerator beckons, I fling open the door and look inside. My husband has fond college memories of the well-stocked refrigerator as a homecoming beacon and the feeling is still the same.
I close my eyes and remember the refrigerator of my youth, which we called the “ice box.” Milk came in glass bottles then, delivered by the milkman Lou, who would arrive at breakfast, step over the idle dogs and peak into the fridge to see what we needed. My mother always marveled that he got it just right, knowing that we needed more milk during vacation, or that my brother was the only one who really liked cottage cheese. There was always a Pyrex bread dish filled with individually peeled and cut up carrots floating in icy water, and a bowl of Jello in bright carnival colors like lemon yellow, lime green, cherry red. All of that is gone now. Milk comes in a plastic jug, quart sized now because we are empty nesters, my mother's carrots have been replaced by identically milled carrots that sit in a bag, and the unrealistic Jello is no longer in style.
My cousin tells me that the gender identity of the kitchen and refrigerator, a.k.a. the domestic sphere, has been the subject of Ph.D. theses. In my parents’ entirely traditional marriage, the domestic sphere was clearly the responsibility of my mother, who faithfully made my father three meals a day for over 50 years. Other than the occasional foray to get a glass of ice tea, I bet that my father could go days without opening the refrigerator door, and months without going to the grocery store. When he became a widower, the domestic sphere became his by default. One day I was trying to help him make a grocery list and plan some meals. He suddenly said, “I have always liked coconut, but I have not had any since I was a kid.” Now coconut was something that my mother would never let into the house, “It reminds me too much of toenail clippings,*” I remember her saying. I wondered if my mother’s refusal to buy something that my father loved was a symbol of her domestic dominance or my father’s passiveness. That Christmas I got him a whole array of coconut creations to try and make up for 50 years of unrequited love – homemade cookies and brownies and other overly sweet store bought goods. His coconut phase was very short-lived when it became apparent that he had no interest in the domestic sphere and he turned over responsibility to a Polish housekeeper. Now the fridge was filled with interloping ingredients such as sausage, sauerkraut and other Polish favorites.
I open my eyes and look at our fridge to see what it says about our family. I immediately notice the large jar of black olives, which to me symbolize a shared domestic sphere and the inevitable compromises one must make in a marriage. A blossoming relationship is marked by one partner achieving a dedicated drawer in a bureau, progressing perhaps to a shelf in the fridge, but with marriage a refrigerator definitely becomes shared space, hence the olives. I abhor olives, to me they look like tiny shriveled and necrotic body parts, perhaps stored as grisly trophies by some serial killer.* But I try to be a loving wife and look away instead of throwing away. On the other hand, I am besotted by raspberries, but Nick hates them insisting that the seeds always get caught in his teeth. In the winter, I never buy raspberries for myself since they are so expensive. But I am blessed with a loving husband who still thinks I’m worth it, and tonight I find a small container of raspberries greeting me home.
There is one non-food item in our fridge, a small container that looks like leftovers from a Chinese restaurant, but in it are two cubes of shredded wheat. Fortunately, the label is prominently displayed; these are actually the eggs of a praying mantis, which at some exact moment in summer should be placed in our garden to stave off bug infestations. I have stored the eggs for several years now, and I have yet to wake them from their deep slumber and give them their moment in the sun. Two times I have tried to foist them off on family members during our large Christmas grab-bag gift exchanges, but when everyone leaves the praying mantis eggs are always left behind.
My mother stored various non-food items in the large freezer in the mudroom. When we would dive into the freezer looking for popsicles, we often had to paw past piles of frozen laundry. This was my mother’s ingenious tactic for postponing ironing by taking wet clothes from the washer and simply dumping them into the freezer. When extracted and allowed to thaw, the clothes would be the perfect dampness for steam ironing. The most unusual thing in my parents’ refrigerator was a dead bird, a Connecticut Warbler to be exact. I can imagine the moment, my mother sitting in the sun porch, startled by the sickening thud of a bird hitting the window. She looks down and sees the agonal flutters of the distraught bird, the small lively eye suddenly glazes over and the fluff goes out of the feathers. The dogs might be pawing at the door, seeking an opportunity to stalk prey that is still warm. My mother does not want to subject the bird to this ignominy, particularly since a Connecticut warbler is an unusual bird, and one that she has never seen on her many bird walks. So she scoops the bird up, stores it in the freezer compartment and occasionally shows it to other bird watching friends. It remained there for decades, and I was ready to transfer the warbler to my freezer when we cleaned out the house after my parents died. But the bird had mysteriously vanished, perhaps at the hands of a startled caretaker who took control and neutered the family refrigerator.
The side doors of our fridge are clogged with an astonishing array of mustard and salad dressing. Growing up, there was only the sickly yellow container of French’s mustard and maybe two bottles of salad dressing – syrupy French and Wishbone Italian. Now I count 4 different types of mustard and 7 different kinds of salad dressing, and I know there are more unopened jars in the cupboard. I think that we are suckers for any comfort food of our youth that has been gussied up as “gourmet.” Certainly we have succumbed to the gourmet pop corn and potato chips that have replaced Jay’s and the gourmet/decadent chocolate sauce to replace Hershey’s syrup.
We also buy in bulk, which is totally ridiculous considering that on most days we are a household of two. But Nick, who does most of the shopping, finds it hard to resist Costco bargains. There is a large container of “Spring Mix” salad, a definite improvement over the iceberg lettuce of my youth, but the restaurant quantity is far beyond anything that we could eat. I notice that some of the leaves have turned the wrong color green, some have gone limp, and there is some sort of brownish green liquid beginning to accumulate in the bottom of the container. There is a brick of cheddar cheese the size of a door stop, which has a creeping white mold, and an enormous chunk of parmesan that has acquired the color and texture of the jumbo callous on my right heel.* There is also a mysterious vegetable in the drawer that might be a jicama, the detritus of a failed attempt to make a more interesting meal. The sheets of phyllo dough in the freezer have been there as long as I can remember. The three containers of sour cream reflect my inability to make a grocery list. We use sour cream rarely, typically mixed with horseradish when we have corned beef, but when I get to the grocery store, I can never remember whether we already have some, or if we do how old it might be. The sour cream is in an opaque container that drifts to the back of the shelf. So I never know what I am going to see when I pry off the top. Tonight I see a shimmering fur-bearing slime the color of an vivid bruise,* and I pivot and chuck the container into the garbage.
There is also a jar of homemade Mayhaw jelly, an annual Christmas gift from my uncle for the past 20 years. I was surprised to keep receiving the jelly even after he died; it took me a year or two to realize that his namesake, my cousin, had continued the tradition. We have a large extended family, and it makes me smile to think of jars of Mayhaw jelly in kitchens all across the country. When I was visiting my 88 year old aunt, she asked me to get some crackers from her cupboard. When I opened it up, there must have been 8 jars of Mayhaw jelly in there. Family unity expressed in jelly.
I also spot a large baking dish of leftover lasagna that is a source of some irritation. It has been picked at for several days and only a smidge remains, but no one will finish it off, since that person would then be responsible for cleaning the dish caked with stubborn cheese and sauce. So the dish will sit there for a few more days until someone finally succumbs. However, the eater can always dodge the cleaning bullet by deciding that the lasagna dish might need soaking for a day or two. So it will sit in the kitchen sink at the bottom of a pile of dirty dishes that are slowly accumulating until someone volunteers to empty the dishwasher.
Even though a careful family could probably live out of our refrigerator and freezer for weeks, I conclude that there is not much to eat except a slice of bread with my cherished raspberries. I close the refrigerator door, which has nothing on it except for two taped pictures of my childrens’ footprints from the day they were born. When we moved into this house, one of the first things I wanted to do was to transfer the refrigerator art. I put up one footprint and was stunned to see the magnet slip straight down to the floor. I grew up before someone had the bright idea to spawn an entire knick knack industry of refrigerator magnets and turn the refrigerator into the family bulletin board and ephemeral photo album. Apparently we had inherited a high end unit, whose manufacturers deliberately created a non-metallic door to avoid trashing up the sleek lines of the family fridge. But I have grown to like the bare refrigerator door, which projects an image of cleanliness.
Before people come by, I dedicate a good chunk of time beating back the creeping clutter. But it is all a façade, because if any one opens any door, including the refrigerator, they will find a jumble of this and that. When I am a guest, I assume that a door – whether closet, bedroom, medicine cabinet, refrigerator – defines a personal space that should be respected. It’s not that I am embarrassed by anything in my fridge – the food is healthy enough and there is no disturbing excess of liquor or cookie dough – but I might not be proud of the disarray, and outdated food might undermine confidence in my party-night cuisine. I remember one particular incident with my mother at her friend’s house, who asked her to go upstairs to find something. On the landing of the stairs, we could see into three bedrooms at once, and all of them had unmade beds. My mother whispered to me, “Mary doesn’t make her beds.” I would not call my mother a neatnik, but there was never an unmade bed in our house, and I think that she assumed that this was a routine standard for a housewife in the 1960s. She was appalled and I truly don’t think that she ever looked at Mary in the same way again, but at the same time regretted what she had found out. I tried to keep up the bed making standard for years, but recently have given up, preferring to just close the bedroom door. Same thing with our fridge. Our fridge/ourselves.
* I think that I have inherited my mother’s ability to demonize food by using unappealing human analogies.
My mother was totally in charge of the fridge for over 50 years,
Consistent with my parents’ - - - - - of marriage regarding the domestic sphere
So my father set - - - - - his love for coconut and let my mother’s taste prevail
Since she refused to buy anything that looked so much like trimmed toenails.
And then suddenly the fridge was controlled by housekeeping - - - - - from Warsaw,
Who didn’t like coconut either, and filled it with brats, sauerkraut and cole slaw.
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My Brother Charlie
y parents were married in 1950 and three and a half years later they had three children, my older brother Ralph, me, and my younger brother Charlie. When Charlie was around two years old he developed a very high fever and was rushed off to the hospital. The doctor told my parents he had polio. Sometime around that time it also became apparent that he was not learning to talk and everyone seemed to assume that even though he no had no other physical problems, his inability to talk was related to polio. Throughout my childhood and into adulthood when asked about my family I would say “my brother Charlie had polio and that’s why he doesn’t talk.” I remember my mother saying in retrospect that she was always so grateful that Charlie was undemanding as an infant, and could sit in his own world for hours in his playpen. Although it seems so obvious in retrospect, I never heard my parents mention the word autistic. I had been so ingrained in the polio/doesn’t talk scenario that I didn’t realize that he was autistic until several years after I had completed medical school. The sad truth was I never really thought about it.
Part of the reason that I never questioned Charlie’s polio is that when I was about 8 or 9 Charlie moved to Lochland, a residential facility in Rochester, New York, and there was probably a good 20 year period when I never saw him. I have very hazy memories of Charlie before he moved out; I don’t recall wondering why he didn’t go to school with me, why he didn’t have friends over, or what he did all day. Recently we got our old family movies turned into DVDs and I was surprised to see Charlie totally mixing in with the rest of us. (Of course the movies had no audio). There was Charlie looking for Easter eggs wearing shorts pants, a sport coat and a bow tie, Charlie riding a tricycle, and blowing out candles on a birthday cake. I cannot even imagine the growing anguish of my parents as they realized that even though Charlie was so normal in many ways, he would require life long care.
For several years when Charlie was first at Lochland he would come home for summer vacation. This was great because my mother always rented a trampoline for the summer that we could all use. I remember Charlie jumping by himself for hours, sometimes suddenly yelling the syllable Geee (with a hard G)!! and then laughing at some secret joke. He was also a good singer and could wordlessly sing various show tunes my mother would send him. This was also the time when we would watch the Ed Sullivan show on TV, which often seemed to feature odd circus acts from Eastern Europe. One that I remember was a bunch of guys wearing white stirrup pants with suspenders, who balanced spinning plates on the tops of long poles. Well, Charlie seemed to have the same skills. He could jump on the trampoline while twirling a wet washcloth on his index finger. No one else in the family could do it. He could also do the same thing with a Frisbee, and I think that he was pretty good at a hula hoop. Charlie was also an enthusiastic eater. I remember that he would grab a canister of Redi-Whip from the icebox, squirt it directly into his mouth and then laugh. It was obvious that he had a pretty good sense of humor.
One of the great mysteries of Charlie’s mind was that although he could not communicate he understood everything and was perfectly capable of doing household chores, such as emptying and loading the dishwasher. One day my mother asked Charlie to take out the garbage. We had two garbage cans outside; one was an incinerator at the edge of the driveway and the other one was a regular garbage can right out the back door. Charlie seemed to mistake the incinerator for the garbage can and lit the garbage can on fire. I remember the day distinctly. I was getting dressed for school, and in fact was wearing a pink and yellow candy-striped pair of culottes that I had made myself that perfectly matched my pink sweater. I looked out the bathroom window to see the fireman raising an axe as the flames licked up the side of the house. There were pools of water in the driveway. My father was wearing his going to work clothes which included his felt hat and my mother was standing in the bathrobe she used to wear while she made us all breakfast. Although they were standing with their backs to me, I could see their body language of deep sorrow.
After this incident, my parents decided that coming home to visit was too disruptive for Charlie. While they visited him four times a year, I don’t think any of my siblings saw him for decades. Now I wonder why my parents did not take one of us on each of their visits to Charlie, but on the other hand I am also ashamed to say that I never asked to go. Charlie moved to different residential facilities along the way and spent some time in Florida. When that facility collapsed, my parents even tried to set up their own facility in Florida, called “Great Days.” I noticed these efforts with only passing interest, and I am even more ashamed that I did not pitch in to help on a daily basis. It was very clear that my parents loved Charlie and that he was part of our family, but I think that my parents were trying not to burden us with his care. Perhaps they knew deep in their hearts that it would be our turn soon enough. Ultimately Charlie ended up back at Lochland. Finally one August about four years ago I made my first visit to see Charlie at Lochland. It was the last visit for my mother, whose heroic efforts to compensate for her eroding mind were beginning to show cracks. Shortly after this visit, Alzheimer’s disease overwhelmed her and she never saw Charlie again.
Lochland is housed in a magnificent estate overlooking Seneca Lake, one of New York’s Finger Lakes. As we walked up the steps, I began to hear odd noises - some yelling, inappropriate laughing and then Charlie’s characteristic Gee! Charlie came up and hugged my mother briefly saying, “Muma, muma, muma.” I said, “Hi Charlie, I’m your sister Bobbie,” and gave him an awkward hug, in part because I was startled to notice that Charlie and I are virtually identical twins. This was something that I did not appreciate in all the photos that we had of Charlie, and it was eerie looking into his faraway eyes to see a sort of warped version of myself. Charlie was clearly pleased to see my mother since he knew that he would get some treats, but he soon he wandered off, retreating into his own world. We were left standing in the huge living room of this old mansion surrounded by other residents and staff of the house.
I took a deep breath. Glancing at my watch, I realized that our visit was less than 15 minutes old and it was already clear that we had to start killing time. I turned to the woman next to me and struck up a conversation. I had a such pleasant chat with Cameron that I assumed that she was one of the staff people. All of a sudden she leaned over to me and said, “Wait right here, I want to give you a present.” She rushed back and presented me with a load of hangers that she had decorated (sort of) with different colored yarn. Oops, first mistake, turns out that she was a resident. There was another sloppily dressed man standing awkwardly in the corner who looked like a resident. Later on I realized I was making dangerous assumptions when I saw him driving the Lochland van.
That morning I met with Charlie’s psychiatrist and for the first time I formally heard that Charlie was autistic. Later that day we met Charlie’s “advocate” a woman named Charlene who was supposed to be especially attentive to Charlie’s needs. My parents had been singing the praises of Charlene for several years since she would frequently take Charlie to her home for dinner or even on vacation with her family. Now that I belatedly knew that Charlie was autistic, it didn’t make complete sense to me to change his routine and environment. Sure enough, Charlene would report that they had a great outing, but that Charlie had broken something, like her computer, and then Charlene would send my parents a bill. Charlene suggested that we take Charlie out for dinner to the Sizzler steakhouse. This seemed equally crazy – why would you take someone with virtually no impulse control and an infinite appetite to an all-you-can-eat buffet? This was my first initiation into the sandwich generation and it was the most stressful meal of my life. Charlie would continually try to slip out of the booth and hit the dessert line again and again, and then yell when I tried to stop him. My mother wasn’t sure where she was either; she would get up but then not remember where we were sitting and I would lead her back to our booth. At one point I was retrieving Charlie when he startled another diner by grabbing his lemon meringue pie off his plate and then laughing mischievously. Charlene was trying to show off how well she controlled Charlie by continually jabbing her index finger into her forehead to get his attention but this strategy clearly wasn't working. It was merely incidental that the food was predictably wretched.
The next day was Charlie’s birthday - I think that it was his 50th birthday. Charlene had arranged a birthday party at her house, inviting all the residents of Lochland plus a variety of other disabled adults. Charlene’s husband was one of these enviable guys who could fix anything, but the consequence of this great talent was that his yard was strewn with appliances – there were dishwashers, lawn mowers, cars and an RV all in various stages of repair or disrepair. Charlene had really gone all out and made many different casseroles, all of which seemed to have mayonnaise as the principle ingredient. She had laid them all outside and as the bright sun relentlessly beat down I began to see oil pooling everywhere and the mayonnaise getting that nasty gelatinous look. The yard was now filled with people either in wheelchairs or staggering around, Charlie had no clue that this party was for him and just wanted to eat the dripping and drooping cake that was on display, I had lost track of my mother and I didn’t want to make the same blunder of mistaking a staff person for a resident.
I was utterly exhausted when we finally reached the soothing, relaxed atmosphere of the airport. We happened to fly over Buffalo and I got my first glimpse of Niagara falls. I leaned over to point this out to my mother, who only noticed the fluffy clouds and commented that she thought it was odd that there would be so many snow drifts this time of year. I also saw that when she tried to do the crossword puzzle she just added extra boxes if her word didn’t fit. I thought about all the times that she had made this trip by herself and how she had somehow assimilated all this sadness into her life, and how she had spared the rest of her children from this burden. I vowed that I would not view my care of Charlie as burden, but consider it an opportunity to spend time with my brother in a beautiful part of the country.
I have had some missteps in the past five years, but by and large I would have to say that I am learning visiting Charlie, if you don't mind having your heart broken from time to time. I have discovered a National Wildlife Refuge some 20 minutes away that has fabulous birdwatching. I took Charlie on a walk there on my last visit, and even though he peed in the middle of the trail, I was actually happy to realize that he was smart enough to know that was acceptable in the woods. There is a great yarn store in downtown Geneva that I always stop by. We no longer take Charlie out for dinner, but go to the grocery store and let him pick out something special to have back in his apartment. One time we made a cake together and he did a masterful job of licking the bowl, then washing it and putting it back on the shelf. Charlie loves watching the movie “Sound of Music,” and occasionally when he sings you can catch snippets of “Edelweiss.” One night as we were watching he curled up on the couch and put his head in my lap. I gave my 55 year old look alike brother a head rub just the way our mother did so many years ago.
What's in a Sandwich
When someone says sandwich, I used to think of peanut butter and jelly,
Or maybe pastrami on rye from the corner - - - -.
Or the Earl of Sandwich who spent - - - - days in luxury’s comfortable lap.
His friend Captain Cook made him famous by putting his islands on the map.
But now mostly I think that sandwich is the generation that I'm currently in.
And I - - - - if I told you that sometimes this doesn't stretch me a bit thin.
