Over the River and Through the Woods

The refrigerator is still a refugee camp, Thanksgiving leftovers awkwardly shoved in amongst the native juices, butter and that third a jar of salsa.  John has already left town for another meeting, so I'm left to my own to figure out what will freeze and what won't, whether the neighbors can be counted on to receive all that yogurt and half-loaves of chocolate brioche.

The house was full, from Wednesday through Sunday, one suitcase after another coming in the door, extra toothbrushes adorning the various sinks, different choruses of voices in the kitchen.  What all did we do?  I don't know.  What did we eat?  Pretty constantly is all I remember.  I got up way early and  went to bed a lot later than usual.  The dogs were delirious with all the extra attention.

The house was alive with the energy that comes from all these people in their twenties and thirties that are still hatching their dreams.  Sharing their stories with each other, taking off in jogging pants across this rural neighborhood, gently prodding the old folks about their elementary use of all this technology.

We cooked together, the barista amongst us made us all repeated coffee drinks with designs in the foam. . .amazing!  We played Flinch with my grandmother's cards well beyond bedtime.  We went to the woods to fell a Christmas tree.  We ate dinner in the greenhouse:

And then on Saturday, we packed a picnic with our leftovers and drove to see Mom/Grandma in her new digs.  We found her in the lobby at the assisted living facility where we moved her in September.  She's "in the tank" she calls it, because anytime she is left by herself in her apartment, she tends to try to move herself from wheelchair to wherever and she ends up on the floor.  After repeated versions of this, the staff now has her within sight most of the day.

She seems a lot older, a lot more fragile and a little whupped by all she has been through in the last few months:  two major surgeries, two bouts of rehab and being moved summarily from her home of 54 years into foreign territory.  Wouldn't we all be.  She will be 90 next April.

To have three of her four grandsons there at the same time, two of their girlfriends, and two of her four children and a son-in-law, well. . .she smiled the whole time.  "I just feel so full", she would say, as she would reach for yet another hand, as she would embrace us one more time.

Periodically, despite our trying to veer the conversation elsewhere, she would get this look in her eyes, "I just don't know what I'm doing here, " she would say, looking off into the distance.  My sister would tell her again, that her wheelchair wouldn't work so well in her house, and since she couldn't walk now, well, this was her best option. "Oh," she would say, "all right."

We all know it isn't, "all right", that is.  It isn't all right that she can't be home, that she can't be younger that she can't walk.  It isn't all right.  It isn't all right that she is physically and mentally this far away from us, that we can't hold her when she is lonely and frightened, or when we are, by all that has happened so quickly.

This dear dear woman.  All we can do is love her, deeply, thoroughly and constantly, in this jagged, flawed manner, in a way that can never repay her for all she has done for us, all that she is to us.

Thanksgiving, indeed.