On the Ravine

Wishing everyone a happy season. Please enjoy our 2012 Newsletter. Merry, Merry Christmas.

2012 Newsletter

I could count on her combing her hair at the same time every day. It was just after the bell at the end of the first recess, the one that signaled the beginning of the next class time. She would open her desk drawer with her left hand and slide out the big black comb with her right hand, easing it up to her head in one smooth, remembered motion. Her hair was really black, parted on the right side, and it lay flat like she had had that part in the same place for as long as she’d had hair. It fell from the part over her ears to just above her chin in a wavy sort of bob.
She always started talking before she finished combing, to inform and relate details to the day’s agenda. I don’t remember that she combed her hair after the afternoon recess; maybe the wind didn’t blow as much on the playground in the afternoon. Or maybe it was just that the morning recess was close to lunchtime and she wanted to look nice in front of the other teachers in the cafeteria. I always thought that Mrs. Sexton was pretty tough and it bewildered me that she could be such a “lady” at the same time. She carried herself with a smooth elegance.
Mrs. Sexton read a devotional first thing every morning from a worn King James Bible while she stood on the left side of her desk. It was 1959, a different time, before diversity and consideration convinced us to leave Bible-reading to the church and home. I met my first Catholic that year, a girl named Wendy whose family transferred from Illinois; my dad supported Kennedy for President. Wendy was also the first girl I ever met who wore Buster Browns.
The old, massive and beat-up oak desk was turned catty-cornered, almost in front of the door, to face the field of sixth-graders. For some reason, it always seemed that she was in the middle of the room. She had a way of engaging the whole group even as she singled out any individual student. I can’t imagine that teaching was hard for Mrs. Sexton; it was as much a part of her as combing her hair after morning recess. I always knew she would miss her conversations with her students if teaching were ever taken from her.
It was from Mrs. Sexton’s morning readings that I first understood the Beatitudes. When she read “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” I heard her familiar and very honest endearment, “Bless his heart.” This was no mere Southern tagline; Mrs. Sexton knew how to issue a real blessing. Years later, I would hear ministers of the Word sermonize that “blessed” was from the Greek meaning “happy,” but twenty-five sixth-graders in 1959 heard the word “loved” when Mrs. Sexton said “blessed.”
Once she read about the Pharisee and the Sinner and how the Pharisee was so smug and self-righteous, thanking God that he wasn’t like “those other people” and how God heard and loved that poor sinner when he was only able to cry, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Sometimes her head would droop and her voice would trail off as she read; I knew that she was resting in the Word.
I don’t remember a discipline problem in Mrs. Sexton’s classroom. A few times the wrinkles between her eyes deepened and she firmly demanded—and got—a change in behavior, but she did not raise her voice. Her voice was Southern soft and slow, coupled with diction made perfect by reading aloud. Her talk revealed deep and consistent compassion with no reluctance to bare itself, even to sixth-graders.

Albert was tall and dark and he was probably two grades behind where he should have been for his age. He came to our class in late September after school had already begun, and one morning, just as we were finishing the Pledge of Allegiance, Albert just fell over. I guess he must have fainted. Mrs. Sexton crossed the room to his desk, helped him to his feet, and walked him out into the hall. When she failed to return in a few minutes, I tiptoed to the door of the classroom and peeked out into the hall to investigate. I was nosy and brave, urged on by the rest of the class’s promise that they were depending upon me, as usual, to report back. Mrs. Sexton stood in the hallway, watching Albert and a lady from the cafeteria edge down the stairs.
“Mrs. Sexton, Mrs. Sexton, what’s wrong with Albert?” I couldn’t help asking.
Her back to me, she answered just loud enough for me to hear. “He is hungry. He’s just hungry.”
“Well, what’re you gonna do, Mrs. Sexton? What’re you gonna do?”
“We’re going to feed him,” she replied firmly, and I knew that she had summoned the cafeteria worker to take Albert to the school kitchen to give him something to eat. When she turned around to head toward the classroom, scooting me along with both hands, I could see that she had been crying.
All she said to the class was “Albert’s going to be fine. We’re taking care of him. Let’s read our Social Studies lesson aloud today.”
We never heard Albert utter a word until that day that Mrs. Sexton recognized him as a natural cast for Abraham Lincoln in the February school play. Wearing a very tall and striking black hat, Albert delivered his lines proudly to an assembly of the fourth and fifth grades, along with the other sixth-grade classes. We strained to hear the quiet, high-pitched delivery of the lines he had perfectly memorized. He never smiled, but then he was quoting some serious words.
Mrs. Sexton stood in back of the auditorium, smiling, hands behind her back.
Many years later, my two sons were zoned for Lebanon’s inner-city school, Highland Heights Elementary. Several friends and other well-meaning parents advised me to send them to a private school, or to use an alternate address and send them to another public school where the proposed benefits included air conditioning, smaller classes, and more “middle-class type” students. I never once heard that the other schools had better teachers. After a few short weeks at Highland Heights, I knew that Jade and John were in the right place.
One afternoon, Jade announced as I walked in the house, “Mom, we had a substitute today, and she says she knows you!”
“Oh?” I tossed the word over my shoulder from the kitchen.
“Let’s see…what was her name…I can’t remember. She said, ‘When I saw those little glasses perched on your face, I knew who your mama was.’ She’s kinda old. She said she was your teacher when you went to Highland Heights and that you were one of her favorites. She only teaches at Highland Heights and she’s real nice.”
“Mrs. Sexton,” I told him. “Ruby Sexton. She is my all-time favorite teacher.”
“What made her your favorite?” Jade asked.
I told him the Albert story.

More years passed; both boys went to college just about the time my husband and I separated for the final time. I was unsettled and lonely. I saw Mary Ruth, an old family friend, at the grocery store. She invited me to visit First Baptist.
“Sit with Ruby and me,” she said.
“Ruby Sexton? You sit with Ruby Sexton?”
“Oh yeah, we’ve been friends for years. You must have been in one of her classes.”
One Sunday morning two weeks later, I slipped into a pew next to Mary Ruth and Mrs. Sexton.
“Ruby, I need to introduce you, or should I say, ‘re-acquaint’ the two of you,” Mary Ruth said.
“Honey, you don’t need to acquaint or ‘re’ or anything, I know Diana Blair when I see her. Diana, step over her and sit by me,” she said.
“Mrs. Sexton, you don’t know how good it is to see you,” I said. “I don’t know how you recognized me after all this time.”
“Oh, it hasn’t been that long, has it?” She paused and patted her silver hair. “You know, I was cleaning out some boxes the other day and I found a little story you wrote. I’ve saved it all these years. It’s the one about your trip to the Smoky Mountains with your family. I always loved that story. It started off, ‘There was a light on before daylight in the Blair’s house on Saturday morning. We got an early start on our visit to the Smokies.’ Do you remember writing that story?” she asked.
“Maybe. Or maybe I just remember going to the Smokies.” We both laughed and I asked, “Mrs. Sexton, do you remember that boy Albert? He was tall and lanky and dark-headed, and one day he fainted during the pledge…”
“Albert. Yes.” She turned her head to face mine and smiled. “Albert, the perfect Lincoln.”
***

We buried Mary Lorraine Cahoon Revell at the base of a big tree, in a grave with Leo’s ashes and three tiny babies that died when they were still brand new. Tall trees shade most, if not all, of Ronan Cemetery. The ponderosa pines cover the hill along with bare lodgepoles and furry Rocky Mountain junipers. Quaking aspens shimmer in the breeze. Through the trees the Mission Mountains form a deep teal silhouette. Could anyone find a more peaceful place?

Sandee, Dave and Vicki’s younger sister, made almost all of the arrangements for Mary’s services. Mary lived the final six or seven years just a mile or two from Sandee in West Seattle. When Mary had a stroke in March, Vicki and Dave flew to Seattle to be with her in her final days, and when she passed away, the three children and two sons-in-law were at her bedside. After the cremation, Sandee brought her mother’s ashes to her home to await the ceremony to be held in July.

Dave told everyone, “Sandee needs to document all her preparations for Mom’s memorial and send a file to the Vatican.” He says he’s sure that no more preparation goes into a funeral for the Pope than went into Mary’s services.

On Tuesday before the Thursday mass and burial, I accompanied Sandee to the florist’s shop as she finalized the order for the table bearing the urn and photographs. She also asked for a basket arrangement to grace the front of the altar. The large photographs of Mary cradling the urn were to be decorated with trailing roses of every shade available. The arrangement for the front of the church would be filled with calla lilies, Stargazers, and red roses, backed with a fan of curly willow. When the florist brought out long-stemmed samples of the different colors of roses in her cooler, she asked me if I would like to take them home.  For the five days we stayed in our little cottage on the Swan River, I cared for them in a plastic water bottle vase. I probably love roses as much as Mary did.

Sandee and I also met that day with the Parish Administrator to finalize plans and review the bulletin and music. Mary had songs she asked me to sing. One of them was “In the Garden”.

Sacred Heart, like many of the very small town parishes in Montana, shares a priest with two other towns, but Sister Barbara is a full-time servant of the Church. Sandee and I had both talked with Sister by phone; we all agreed it was good to put faces with names and voices. Tigger Ann, Sister Barbara’s yellow tabby, also joined our meeting. She perched on the table—only for a minute or two—before walking across our papers and notebooks, knocking over a potted plant, and biting my hand twice when I tried to scratch her head. I thought it was a loving gesture on my part; she thought it was an invitation to inflict pain. She didn’t break the skin, but the second time was the last time I tried to pet her.

“Let’s go make sure of where we want to arrange your table and flowers,” Sister Barbara said. The table would bear the photographs of Mary, some of her personal items, and the urn of ashes. Sister Barbara called them “cremains”. Sandee referred to them as “Mother” and told a funny story about how her husband Bob wanted to put Mother in the trunk for the ride from Seattle to Ronan. Sandee told him she didn’t put Mother in the trunk when she was alive and she wasn’t going to put her in the trunk now. So Mother rode between Sandee’s feet all the way to the final resting place. Sister Barbara and I both laughed at Sandee’s story.

When we eased into the sanctuary to choose places for the table and flowers, Tigger Ann followed. Tigger Ann was obviously accustomed to being in the church. She strolled down the aisles, rubbed her back on the undersides of the pews, and posed in front of the altar for Bob to take pictures. We titled her “The Church Cat”.

Yes, the five foot table could be placed in front of the piano and the basket arrangement would be fine in front of the altar. Tigger Ann would not be present on Thursday. Sister Barbara told us she knows Tigger Ann is a bad kitty but she loves her anyway. We got that.

It was warm the day of Mary’s memorial service at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. Sandee and I arrived early, Sandy to set up a photo display in the fellowship hall and to arrange the tabletop items. I was the helper but I don’t remember what I did to help.

The florist came with the flowers an hour before the Mass. The two floral displays for the two photographs of Mary would not both fit on the table, and the basket was pretty but looked a bit puny in front of the altar. Okay, we agreed, let’s put the basket in front of the lectern. Perfect.

“Maybe we could put the larger photograph in front of the altar,” Sandee said.

I said I thought that would look lovely. Then I happened to think about it the second time, you know, from a “church” perspective.

“We better ask Sister about that. I’m not sure they want us to do that,” I said.

“They” didn’t.

“Is this what you thought these flowers would look like?” Sandee asked.

I said no but I thought yes.

“It’s nothing like I imagined. Far different from my plan for a vase of multi-colored roses on the table with the urn and pictures,” Sandee said.

“But they’re beautiful—and we can find a place for them,” I said.

The photograph of Mary in red, caressed by a frame of two dozen roses in red, pink, lavender, yellow, white, and darker pink, smiled from the tea-stained lace-draped table. To its side, Mary’s light blue sweater, the one with the pearl buttons, dressed up the urn and made a soft nest for her candy dish of chocolates, pocket mints, and glasses. A Murano green glass rosary, a gift from both daughters purchased on a trip to Italy, twinkled against the blue sweater.

The smaller of the two pictures went to the reception table.

The new priest, Father Miroslav Szynal, halted a few times to settle on an English word as he recalled the same piece of the Mass in Polish, or perhaps, French, since he arrived only a few days earlier from Canada. His English definitely rang with a French accent. The one word I can recall that gave him pause was “bury”.

At the end of the service when he invited all to the cemetery and the luncheon following in the parish hall, Father Szynal said, “Mary is now Heaven’s beautiful rose.” He must have taken seriously the information about Mary’s life that Dave’s sister Sandee furnished him. I’m sure it wasn’t his intention, but with that statement he endeared himself to all the more sentimental members of the family.

Mary and Leo were rose growers and judges. They traveled around the Northwest showing and critiquing. The first time they visited our home after Dave and I married, they brought along a catalogue from Heirloom Roses in Oregon.

“Pick one out,” Mary said. “We’re going to give you a rose—and the catalogue.”

I picked Glamis Castle. It was not too large and its soft white petals cupped around a pale, pale pink center. The description said it was good for cut flowers and that it made a great hedge. To me that meant I might not kill it.

“That’s a David Austin rose,” Mary said.

When she noticed the silence and the blank look, she added, “He’s an Englishman who did a whole line of roses and branded them. We love David Austen roses.”

“I’ve never kept a rose alive,” I said.

“Oh, just learn everything you can about them. Read your catalogue there. It tells a lot.”

Leo told me the main thing in growing roses is to dig a big hole, a really big hole. “And put some manure in the bottom of the hole—don’t mix it in—and feed your roses compost tea.” Later he told me how to make manure tea, what he really meant by “compost tea”.

“At least you won’t have to fight the deer,” Mary said. Leo had erected 8 ft. chain link fences around their 200+ roses on their creekside property in Victor, Montana.

I studied that Heirloom Roses catalogue, started growing roses, and Mary and Leo and I always had something to talk about. Nearly all of my roses are own-root roses from that same company I started with. Some of my most successful roses are the climbers, which Mary told me they could never “do much with”.

“You ought to think about joining the Rose Society,” Leo said one time. “You really learn a lot.”

“And there’s a man in the Nashville Rose Society that was a good friend of ours,” Mary said. “He’s a rosarian. Be sure to call him up if you have a problem and he might come over and look at your roses for you.”

The Missoula Rose Society sent roses to Mary’s memorial, all grown by these fellow Rose Society members. There were six large vases of more varieties than a person could ever order from a florist. We sat them all over the church, one on “Mary’s table”. Then we moved them to the tables in the fellowship hall for the luncheon gathering. Those were the roses I kept wanting to photograph.

Glamis Castle almost died a few years ago. I learned that a lot of learned growers considered it a “dog” of the David Austins. “Too spindly,” they said. “Too delicate. Too mildew-y. Strange fragrance.” I thought I might replace Glamis Castle—with another Glamis Castle. Leo was gone; it was one of the ways I remembered him, this little scrubby rose. Then I saw a little life and vowed to save it. By the time we moved in late 2009, I had nursed it back to some health; it was three canes, just about a foot tall.

“I’m going to take it with me,” I said. “If it dies, it dies.”

The transplanted Glamis Castle was the first rose I planted in the new rose garden at our new home. I chose the spot most visible from my window by my desk. In no time at all, she was three feet tall and blooming her heart out. I could smell the exotic myrrh scent that makes some people wince. I like it. I guess I’m used to it.

From the porch of our Swan River Cottage, we watched wildlife gather unafraid. Does and fawns nuzzled the wild undergrowth in the yard. Calliope hummingbirds dove and buzzed. We thought we might see the bears we’d been warned about. We really were out in the woods and it was a peaceful place to be on Thursday night after the elegant ceremony and burial rites, the well-presented luncheon, and a sweet family gathering at the condo Sandee and Bob rented. The last two days of our trip, we rested and visited with family.

We talked to my mom almost every day while we were gone. Dad told Mom to tell me that the deer were eating his okra and beans and that now they’d taken a few bites out of my roses. This is the first year we’ve even seen deer here on the ravine. Mom said she was going to perfume up some streamers to stretch around the rose bed. She said that seemed to work at the farm.

On Sunday morning, I changed the water in the plastic bottle of multi-colored roses from the Ronan florist and set them on a living room table before we left for the airport. I knew the landlady would enjoy them. She emailed me to say that we left the roses and that they were beautiful. “If these hold sentimental value for you, I’d be happy to press them for you,” she wrote. “I’ve never pressed flowers before but I’d be glad to try.”

“No,” I answered on my phone. “Just enjoy them until they’re gone. I left them for you.”

Why is it that the flight home seems shorter than the one going out? We drove in the garage about 10:30 Sunday night feeling not too tired. On Monday, I checked the deer damage to the rose garden. Bambi’s mama didn’t do too much harm. She only ate what she could easily reach. But there were those red plumes and wimpy-but-thorny canes sticking out of most of the roses in the garden that I noticed a couple of weeks before we went to Montana. I had vowed to find out what to do about that and get them all cleaned up as soon as we got back home.

“I do wonder what causes that,” I thought. Since there were three red rosebushes on the way from Heirloom Roses and I did not yet know where I was going to plant them, I strolled around the property looking for a spot where Dad could see the new roses from his window. He loves red flowers.

Laundry, doctor appointments, and other duties took precedent over the rose bed and it wasn’t until the new roses arrived on the following Saturday that I headed outside to survey the placement possibilities. I thought perhaps I might move a mini on one side of the rose garden and I could plant one of the reds there. The mini really needed a pot.

“Okay,” I thought, seeing again the dark red broom-like branches and extra thorns on the roses, “I’ve put this off long enough. I may as well go inside and see what’s causing this and get that resolved before I start planting the new ones.”

Photos and articles on the internet named the disease in my rose garden: Rose Rosette Disease, a fatal, incurable mite-borne disease. There’s hardly anything one can do to prevent it except to dig up and destroy any plant showing symptoms, especially a nearby wild rose.

The two Dublin climbers would have to go. One Pink Lady in the big lower garden was infected. In the rose garden, Blue Girl, Blue Skies, Lemon Spice, Imagine, Jude the Obscure, Café Ole, The Alnwick Rose, and one of the Deep Secret—they all had to go.

Dave told me to check to see how late the dump was open on Saturdays.  I asked the lady who answered the phone what they might do with my infected roses if, per her instruction, we were to deposit them on the “mulch pile”. Diseased roses cannot be composted; they really need to be burned.

“That’s just what we call it, the mulch pile,” she said. “The place that I’m telling you—all that gets burned.”

We dug and wrapped and loaded. We tied down the overflowing bed full of thorny discards. I drove.

“Did you hear back from the guy from the Rose Society?” Dave asked.

“Yeah, I did. I think I’m going to join the Nashville Rose Society. He was good help. I think I would have known if I’d been going to their meetings.”

“Would knowing have made a difference?” Dave asked.

“Well, he said if you can get the infected plants early on, you might save some of the others. Maybe I wouldn’t have lost so many.”

“Did you tell him you have three that don’t have it?”

“Yes, and he said he would just take a ‘wait and see’ attitude toward those.”

“I wonder why they didn’t get it. That one red rose was right between two sick ones.”

“That was one of the Deep Secrets. It’s the one that tried to die when we first planted it, remember? It seems it was stunted for three years. And then, that little yellow one, it’s a mini and it doesn’t appear that the small mini’s got any of the rose rosette at all.”

“That little white one seems to be doing great. It’s not a mini, is it? Isn’t that the one you brought over from the other house?”

“Yep. That’s Glamis Castle. I’m sure glad we didn’t have to dig that one up.”

***

Just a few days ago, we had the hottest day in Nashville history. Ever.
109. Degrees. It hasn’t cooled down much, either. And to think my last post was “It’s Hot As…” and it wasn’t even 100 then. But, guess what? You think that might stop us from gardening here in the compound? Guess again. GWD—Gardening With Dad—continues, and parts of the gardens thrive, actually most parts.
Last week, I told a California friend that it must be too hot for the hummingbirds because I haven’t seen one, and then, this morning, a shiny red throat buzzed in and out of the red daylilies. I still don’t see any at the feeders but, hey, that sugar juice in those hanging jars is hot!
The mockingbirds are always with us, though, annoying creatures that they are. They are trying to help us, though, probably without any honorable intention. They’re mocking the squeaks and whistles from the animal pest control boxes we bought off the Internet. We hear the warnings overhead. If they would just fill in the spots closer to the ground where the sounds of the Yard Sentinels don’t reach, I think we could keep the gardens clear of the critters who love to mow down beans, okra, and corn, not to mention the raiding of the ripening melons on the ground. The raccoons are believers; they don’t go near the vegetables.

     Dad’s harvest is abundant. We’ve eaten romaine, sweet corn, green beans, cucumbers, cabbage, eggplant, yellow squash, zucchini, blackberries, onions, red potatoes, beets and tomatoes. Mom and I put green beans and blackberries in the freezer; then she made pickled beets and a few jars of blackberry jam. Today we got lima beans. We’re waiting for watermelons, butternut squash, and peppers—and there’ll be more of almost everything else.
We share with the neighborhood. The Al-Akashis next door bring us some of their yield and we try to outdo them in reciprocation. Dad leaves baskets on the back porch of the single-mom family across the street. A church friend stopped by to leave plastic communion cups and candle holders in our recycling bins. She got tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers.
After the July 4th indoor cookout (or should that just be a “cook-in”), our guest went home with corn, squash, and something else that I can’t remember. I took a load to a nice lady at the end of the street who rescued Murphy and me from a big dog last week. She was ecstatic, her husband less enthused. I think he’s afraid she’s going to make him eat eggplant.
The weather forecast for the week says “more hot and dry” with only the slightest chance for rain. We hear thunder almost every day and some clouds gather but it doesn’t rain.
Dad waters the vegetable garden and young trees from the big rainwater tank he placed in back of the apartment. Dave and I tap the Cumberland River flow from the front and back spigots to water roses, pots of all manner of blooming things, vines (morning glories, hyacinth bean, and cypress), and various beds. And still, much is dry and brittle. The lawn crunches under foot. I don’t pull weeds down in the big garden for fear of unsettling a perennial in this punishing heat. Some previously dependable sun-lovers cry uncle.
I try to water my portion of the grounds early. It takes just about an hour to hand water the pots, the plants under the ramp, and the “back door garden”, the one beside the patio entrance to The Cellar. After that, I set a sprinkler on the big corner garden for at least an hour and follow with an hour of drip irrigation on the roses. Dave has a similar regiment out front.
Our standard is every other day. We will lose some plants to this heat wave, even those that we water every morning. The roses are fine and so are the daylilies. In fact, almost all the perennials promise to be with us next year and the year after.
We have a couple of new intruders who threaten petunias and even the roses and daylilies. Deer. Walking through the vegetable garden. I’m sure they are thirsty. They circumvent the solar-powered noisemakers, double back to lick their lips from green tomatoes, and then prance through the patio to the petunias. I haven’t seen chomps out of the roses—yet—but we all know Bambi loves her some rosebuds.
And then there’s Old Fatso, the resident groundhog. Dad has watched him pretty carefully all spring and summer. Old Fatso respects the whistles and shrieks from the Yard Sentinels and so does his newly-discovered cousin (or brother or sister) so they’ve avoided the garden, but one day Dad found him eating the petunias on the side of the apartment where there is a dead spot for the alarms. Does everybody just love petunias? I feared Old Fatso had transgressed beyond redemption. Doesn’t he remember the disappearance of five family members we took over to the Agriculture Center last year?
When I left Mom and Dad after the cocktail hour last Saturday, I noticed the daylilies swaying and shaking down in the lower gardens.
“What?” I yelled and burst through their door above the courtyard. “Get out of my garden!” Old Fatso hauled A to the ravine.
“Okay, Dad,” I said the next morning, “I want you to set the trap over there in my big garden. He won’t be expecting you to try to catch him over on that side so maybe we can get him.”
“Yeah. I was thinking about that. I think I’ll put some cantaloupe in there for bait.”
“What are you going to do about the deer?” I asked.
“I’m going to stake a string around the garden.”
“String?”
“Well, your mom is perfuming up some strips of cloth and we’re going to tie them on the string. They don’t like that.”
At dusk, Dave and I watched the raccoons push the trap around in the garden, trying to find a way to get the cantaloupe without entering the cage. We both agreed that we would need to free a raccoon the next morning. There was nothing in the trap.
Dad pulled out of the drive in his Nissan pickup the next morning. I waved him down.
“Where are you going so early?”
“To get some apples. Old Fatso loves apples.”
After a little rehab work, Dad moved the big cage back to the downside of the vegetable garden. The scent of steaming Red Delicious filled the hot air under the trees next to the ravine.
“I got Old Fatso!” he yelled the next morning when I went out to water.
“I guess you and Dave will be making a trip to the agricultural center?”
“Yeah, sometime today.”
Dad turned in his chair that evening to look out the window.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “I just miss Old Fatso.”
“Do you think you really caught Old Fatso?” Dave asked. “That groundhog we took over to the ag center was scrawny; he looked like a young one.”
“You’re right. That wasn’t Old Fatso. That must have been his cousin.”
“I named that one Jumbo,” Mom said.
“Yeah, we caught Jumbo, not Old Fatso,” Dad said.
***
A bunch of my friends are enjoying a summer bounty of vegetables from Avalon Acres, a local farm that receives and distributes produce, meat, and dairy from other local growers. We have GWD, Gardening With Dad, here on the ravine. Avalon Acres’ program is CSA, Community Supported Agriculture. Such an alliance allows the local farmers to sell their produce, meat, dairy, and eggs; it is a wondrous treat for the rest of us.
“What did you get?” I asked a friend just after her box arrived from Avalon.
“Fennel, Veronica cauliflower, cherry tomatoes, a yellow melon of some kind, peaches, corn, eggs…and goat’s milk and goat cheese!”
“Wow!” I said. “I wish I had some goat cheese. We need some goats.”
***

When the temperature approaches, oh, 100 degrees or so, the thermometer on my window registers 120+. It’s been hot out there, folks. Blessed hot. Hot enough to fry an egg on the asphalt (or a sidewalk if you have one). Hot enough to singe the hair off a brass monkey. Hot enough to breed sheep. (Not sure what that means but I think it’s, like, bawdy or something, maybe even vulgar.) Hotter than Satan’s armpit. Hotter than a tin roof on the 4^th of July. Hotter than a cast-iron commode in the middle of a volcano. Hot as Hades.

On the hot days, I go out to work in the flowers by 6:30 at the latest. At 9:30, it’s time to come inside. That’s just about the time Dad goes out. Cold hurts his hands and feet. Dad has Raynaud’s Disease, a condition that causes his fingers and toes to over-respond to cold temperatures.

It’s very cool this morning, following the good soaking rain we got last night. I’m going to clean vines out of the shrubbery in front of the living room picture window. I can’t pull them out; they’ve been growing there for at least fifty years. My best treatment is to reach under them and clip the sprouts close to the ground, knowing I’ll have to do that twice more before winter. Yesterday, when I told Dad my work plans for today, he asked if I had ever imagined reaching into the leafy mulch beneath those bushes and pulling out, well, maybe a snake.

Today I’ll just reach under the three old bushes with a small rake.

My gardening time and Dad’s don’t usually overlap, but this morning is an unusual one when I may still be out when he begins his day. He will find me to ask, “Where did you say you want me to put those little nandinas?” Or he will say, “When you get that wheelbarrow full of clippings, come get me and let me take it to the compost.”  Maybe, “Is it okay if I put some of that monkey grass on the bank?”

Sometimes he needs my help.

“Come here, Sis, and twist this twine around that stake while I push on the tree.” He always needs to show me something, or me to show him something. Sometimes he calls me to the vegetable garden to see how many early green beans are on the vines or to look at the loaded blackberry briars. A few days ago, we investigated some purple Rose-of-Sharon on the ravine bank.

He rarely gives advice, but when he does, it’s usually about taking care of myself.

“Young lady,” he says, “you need to get yourself inside because you’ve worked enough and you’re going to get too hot.”

Last Thursday, our time and locations overlapped. I got out a little late and I was in the large corner garden that backs up to the ravine. We were both cutting and pulling vines, Dad down, me up. His ladder leaned on the bank of the Big Ditch just below where I sat pulling ground ivy from around a tall tree. I could barely see him down in the thick overgrowth—but only when I stood up and leaned over the side of the ravine. I thought, as I had before, that he could be hurt—or out cold—down there in the ravine, and none of us would know it. I called to him occasionally.

“Hey, you still down there? I don’t hear you singing.”

“Oh, Sis, are you still up there? I can’t sing when I’m pulling. Takes too much breath.”

By 11:30, sufficiently tired of sweltering, I decided to wrap it up and head for the house. I’d have time to rest, cool off and clean up before I put lunch on the table at 1:00. Still sitting on the ground by the big tree, I gathered up hand tools to drop into my basket.

Something whizzed by my head, so close that I felt the whir of air. I turned to see Dad’s hatchet on the ground three feet behind me.

“Dad! Good lord, you nearly got me!” I yelled.

“Oh, Sis, are you still up there? I forgot you were there. I’m quitting for the day. I always throw my hatchet up.”

“You barely missed me. Are you trying to kill me?”

“Oh, it wasn’t that close.”

“How would you know? You’re not up here.”

“Because I know where I threw it.”

“You threw it at my head, that’s what you did.”

He appeared at the top of the ladder and grunted his way onto the bank and hauled himself upright.

“Now, look at that, it wasn’t even close to you.” He pointed to the grounded hatchet.

“I think you missed me by about ten inches.”

He chuckled and brushed off his overalls. “Well, I’m going in the house. I’ve done enough.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that. You scare me.”

“And you better get yourself inside out of this heat, too.”

“I’m going. I was rounding up my tools when you tried to bury that ax in my head.”

I watched him toddle across the back yard. He was worn out, but he was laughing. I was, too.

When Dave and I sat down for the 5:00 o’clock cocktail hour at the apartment, I nodded toward Dad.

“You know what he did out there today?” I told Mom and Dave. “He tried to kill me with a hatchet.”

***

I am on the beloved porch this morning. It’s cool. Old Daddy Sun tries and tries to break through the clouds over behind Tusculum Elementary School. Birds are singing—in round. I don’t know bird calls, and I wish I knew who keeps calling “Tee-shirt”. Or maybe it’s “M’knee hurts”. Could it be “Sweet-tarts”? And who is it that keeps hollering for Budweiser? “Beer! Beer!” he says.

The cardinals usually wait for sun, but not today. They are already dipping through the vines down in the ravine. There are not nearly as many vines assaulting the tall trees as there were when we came here two and a half years ago. My eighty-two year old dad found a way to lower himself down the almost vertical side of the great ditch. He keeps the tallest ladder propped against some large tree. When the mood strikes, he shinnies down the rungs and cuts the vines at the base of the tree. When they turn brown, he announces a “pulling day”, gripping the aluminum ladder with his left hand and yanking muscadine and climbing euonymous with his right. I have to admit things are looking pretty good down in the ravine, slightly less dark and threatening, and there is still sufficient cover for the wildlife. So far, Dad has returned from the ravine without assistance.

I have to check the calendar for the week to find out where I am going most days. Today, I know what I’m bound to do without looking. I’m going to iron. And sew. And write. The things that need to be done inside are piled up and I am going to practice a bit of my own brand of hilltop removal. Since I’m going to be inside, I’ll also color Mom’s hair and wax her face. That reminds me to make an appointment with my own hairstylist. I like to check and plan the week on Sunday evening but I was too tired after the Mother’s Day Marathon-at-the-Compound.

Last week, pressure-washing the concrete consumed us. It’s entirely possible that we have more square footage of driveway, patio, and parking space than we do house and it was time to clean it all.

Somebody at the compound power-sprayed every day for nine days. Most days, both of us wielded a wand. We ran two pressure-washers: one small electric model that Dad brought from the farm and another gas-powered hoss borrowed from a friend. Maggie, our friend, took a break from home-sale readying to drive to Iowa and back. When she came home on Monday, we returned the washer and then stopped at Lowe’s on the way home, bought one just like hers, and continued on.

I took a break from the concrete cleaning on Thursday to take Mom to the gastroenterologist. Mom has seen eight doctors since she and Dad have lived at the Compound. I know this because she listed them for me on the way to Dr. Parker’s office.

Dr. Parker thinks Mom’s two occurrences of diverticulitis were actually one; he said he would bet the antibiotics just didn’t rid it all on the first try. I loved it when he said that little seeds and nuts do not cause diverticulitis and that she should just eat whatever she wants—including her beloved strawberries.

She loves to go to lunch when she has a doctor’s appointment, but the timing of Thursday’s appointment didn’t fit right. “We can’t go to lunch,” I said.

“I know,” she said in her sad voice.

“Would you like to go out for frozen yogurt?” I asked. “We could go to Sweet Cece’s.”

“Oh, yeah. Where is Sweet Cece’s?” she asked.

“There’s a new one over at Nipper’s,” I said.

“Isn’t that out of your way?”

“Not much. We need to go somewhere before we go home, don’t we?”

She smiled.

. She took my arm as she scooted from the van. (We leave Dolly, Mom’s Rollator, in the van when we’re only walking a short way.) I steadied her as she lifted herself onto the sidewalk curb. We toddled in and chose a table. I looked at the toppings under the glass and reported back to her.

“Look, Ma, there are different flavors. And fresh fruits. Look, you could have strawberries,” I said. “Want some strawberries?”

A beautiful dark young woman came from behind the counter. I thought she must have at least a yard of silky black hair wound up in a net. “Have you ever been to a Sweet Cece’s?  Let me give you samples of the different flavors.”

While she reached for tiny paper cups, I told Mom, “Vanilla, Original, Cupcake Batter, Strawberry…”

“I want strawberry,” Mom said.

“Cupcake Batter is our most popular,” the lady said.

“Okay, I’ll try Cupcake Batter, Vanilla, and Original,” I said.

It seemed difficult for Mom to hold the tiny paper cup to her lips and squeeze. For the first time, I thought I noticed a tremor. But there she sat, all dressed up in a dark red and black animal print blouse with matching jewelry, and red lipstick, only slightly fancier than she appears every day. She looked normal enough.

When I lifted the thimbleful of vanilla to my mouth, it ran and tumbled and slithered all the way down my new red tee-shirt. And that is when we got the giggles.

“Well,” Mom said, wiping her eyes, “at least it’s not chocolate Coke.” (There was this time forty-plus years ago at the Fergus Café in Lewistown, Montana, when Mom’s chocolate-syrup-laced Coca Cola got loose and sailed across the table, drenching my new black and white hounds-tooth dress. Some red-suede ghillies also wound up stained and sticky.)

She got her strawberry—“just plain and no toppings”. (I don’t think she was quite sure of Dr. Parker’s encouragement to “eat those strawberries”.) It was too beautiful a day to sit inside and the sweet Sweet Cece’s girl helped us move outside.  She carried the frozen desserts; I carried Mom—on my arm.

“Are you coming over at 5:00?” Mom asked as I was pulling into the driveway.

“I don’t think so, Mom. I think I’m going to pressure-wash for a while.”

“Boy, is that a job,” she said. “But I can sure tell the difference.”

I lifted Dolly from the back of the van and rolled her backwards to Mom. She made a nice catch with one hand and plopped her purse into the wire basket on the front of the walker.

“And tomorrow night we’re going to Fontanel,” she said, easing into the garage.

“Yes, your Mother’s Day weekend has begun. Saturday to Aunt Elois’s, Sunday to John and Vicky’s. We are busy mamas.”

“What time do we need to leave tomorrow?”

“Oh, I think 3 o’clock will get us there by 4,” I said.

Fontanel is the log-home estate built by Barbara Mandrell over on the north side of Nashville. It is now operated as a tourist destination. My elder son Jade and his wife Anjie were treating us to dinner at the new Italian restaurant and wine bar on the mansion’s grounds.

Dave and I raced to get cleaned up (from pressure-washing) in order to leave at 3. We were a few minutes late but had discovered that Fontanel was closer to us than we had thought. Still, we were going completely across Nashville from south to north and the traffic was treacherous. A glance in the rear-view mirror showed Mom clutching both arm rests. Dad, on the other hand, was oblivious to the peril. He was singing a Merle Haggard song.

Dave navigated and I drove. I missed the exit and we wound up entering the back way, guided by signs. We got there ahead of Jade and Anjie. They had been shoveling red rock to mulch newly landscaped beds. Dave accompanied Mom and Dad to a table while I trotted down to the gift shop/ticket office to inquire about ease of access to the tours for Mom and Dad. It turns out the place is well-equipped for those with canes or walkers; however, the last tour left the shop at 3 p.m.

The food was good; the service, impeccable and warm. Our waiter overheard our vows to return and take that tour. He told us no one would stop us if we took the one-vehicle service road up to the mansion. We were game, we said. On the way to the car, Anjie produced pots of flowers that feel like tissue paper. Mom chose the yellow; I got white.

“We better not go up there,” Mom said, pointing to a car coming down the hill from the mansion.

“You’re tired, aren’t you?” I asked her. Yes, they were both tired.

*

When I headed downstairs at 10:15 Saturday morning, Dave asked what time we might be home.

“I don’t know. I’m sure it won’t be before 2:30.”

“If even by then?” Dave said.

“Right,” I answered. I gathered up my Kindle, a bottle of water, and my purse. The phone rang before I made it to the garage. It was Mom.

“I’m worried about your father. He went downstairs and was supposed to come right back up and I don’t know where he is. I don’t hear him downstairs and he’s not out in the garden…”

“I’ll run over there and take a look,” I said.

“Oh, here he comes. I hear the lift,” she said, and then added, under her breath,
“I am going to take his head off.”

At 85, Aunt Elois is Dad’s oldest surviving sibling. At the last Blair gathering, she invited her remaining sister and three brothers for hamburgers and hotdogs on May 12. She reported that, by that time, she planned to have her patio renovation complete. Mom let me know that same day that I would need to take them to Mt. Juliet for the event. I put it on my calendar and thought I might go shopping at the Providence Mall just up the road while they all visited. I learned on Friday that I was expected to be at the gathering.

“Elois asked me if you were coming, and I said yes. I’m sure she’s planning a hamburger for you, too,” Mom said.

“Okay. I guess I don’t need to go shopping anyway. I’d just spend money,” I answered.

One brother and one sister were already there when we pulled into the drive. Uncle Frank and Aunt Bessie sat on the patio at a freshly painted picnic table; Aunt Elois occupied a lawn chair on the far corner of the patio so that her cigarette smoke wouldn’t drift on her guests. After the initial hellos, she hauled her skinny self up the steps to the kitchen and brought out chili-cheese dip and two bags of chips.

As the guests dipped and oohed and smacked lips, she stood staring at the grill on the edge of the patio. Maybe she heard the question in my mind, “What are you looking at?” because she turned around and called across the patio, “This thing is brand new. I don’t know how to work it.”

I set my iced tea on the picnic table. “I’ll figure it out,” I said. “Dave always grills at home, but I can do it if I have to. Let’s see, is the gas on?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe.”

I turned the gas on and switched the left burner control to High. “Stand back,” I warned as I hit the red igniter button. Whoosh, it was on.

“Okay, now we know it works,” I said.

“I don’t want to cook yet,” she said. “I need to bring everything out.” She wrapped the right side of her body around the wrought iron bannister and began the long journey up the five steps to the back door. Steep steps.

“Here, let me help you,” I said, following her. Not one of the five present—Mom, Dad, Elois, Frank, and Bessie—climbs stairs with ease.

I stacked the buns on top of the tray of hamburger accompaniments—lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles—and took them down to the patio table. I called to Aunt Elois, “Hey, you just hand me things out the door and I’ll come up the stairs to get them.”

When she was sure we had all the sides and condiments on the table, she handed me a cookie sheet of hand-pressed burgers and half a package of jumbo wieners. “I guess we better start cooking,” she said.

“I left the grill on,” I said. “It’s ready.”

“Should I oil it?” she asked.

“Well, we do. Actually, we use non-stick cooking spray, but you can’t do that when the grill is already hot. Just put some on a paper towel.”

She came back with three paper towels greased with olive oil. I gave each a swipe across the rack and placed the meat.

“Just make sure it’s real done,” Aunt Elois said. “I like mine almost burnt.”

            I can probably do that, I thought.

Dad and Uncle Frank, both retired ministers, argued over who would ask the blessing. “No, you do it,” Dad said.

“I think I did it last time,” Uncle Frank answered.

“Well, do it again,” Dad answered.

“Our gracious Heavenly Father,” Frank began.

The hamburgers were good. The old folks ate, told stories I’ve heard at least fifty times, and talked about their vegetable gardens, Aunt Elois’s update of the patio (hence, the new grill), the neighbors’ dog that ate Aunt Bessie’s daylilies, and Mom’s ordeal with her clogged carotids. None of them had heard about the hit-and-run wreck I had after the last Blair gathering, an event that proved to be much more amusing to me than to any of them.

Aunt Bessie had to tell the best tale-of-the-day twice since Dad and Uncle Frank didn’t hear the first time.

Bessie works for Jackson Hewitt, the income tax preparation people. At the end of every tax season, the local office throws a big party. Bessie said she knew better than to go this year but she went anyway. The last time she went to a Jackson Hewitt party, the town flooded and all the tax people had to be evacuated from the public square through several feet of water, Aunt Bessie proving the most difficult evacuee. She doesn’t swim.

This time, on the way to a fancy dinner in Nashville, the Humvee limousine driver hit his brakes to avoid hitting a car that suddenly pulled into his path and the brakes locked up. That wasn’t all that happened, but who knew at the time. The driver told the jam-packed employees that he did not feel the brakes were safe so he was going to take them back to the office and he would send another limo for them.

Just about four blocks before the square, two young guys in a pickup waved and yelled enough to convince the driver to pull over. When he stopped, one of the boys ran over and started yanking doors open. “Get out!” he said. “It’s on fire.”

“Fire?” Aunt Bessie said. “I don’t see any fire.” And she didn’t until she allowed him to take her hand to ease her down to the ground and escort her to the front of the Humvee. She was the last to leave the vehicle. Not only was it lit up like a giant chimnea, but a most curious positioning of the left front wheel confirmed a broken axel.

The rest of the story had this posse of Jackson Hewitt people encountering police, walking from one site to the other, and being treated to a very cramped bus ride instead of another limo, Humvee or otherwise. Bessie said at least it gave them some interesting dinner conversation but nobody much wanted to talk given that dinner was two hours later than the reservation.

Dad’s question, “What is so funny over there?” prompted Frank to echo, “Yeah. What’s so funny? Tell us, too.” Version 2 began.

I served the desserts we left in the kitchen; Aunt Bessie’s chocolate pie, a purchased pecan pie, and strawberry shortcake. I loaded the plates onto a cookie sheet and brought Mom and Bessie some pie, both kinds of pie with ice cream for Dad and Frank, and some of all three for Aunt Elois.

She came to the kitchen as I was making the last trip in with the dessert dishes and food.
“Now, don’t you touch a one of those dishes. I have all afternoon to do nothing but fool with this.”

I complied and we got home before five, that hour of the day that we call cocktail hour whether cocktails are involved or not.

“Coming over?” Mom asked.

“I’m not sure. I need to make dessert for our Mother’s Day dinner.”

“What are you making?” she asked.

“Lemon bars. And maybe one other thing.”

“I like lemon bars,” she said.

I missed cocktail hour but, instead of baking, I opted for pressure-washing.  There was a short window of cooking time on Sunday—no porch-sitting on Sunday morning.

Our Mother’s Day was a quiet affair; just us and our hosts, John, Vicky, Jameson and Carly. Vicky kept her promise not to cook much and served salads and fresh-baked croissants from Whole Foods. Just right. It was just right.

Mom and I got to take Vicky’s lavender and white rose arrangements home with us, and we each now have our own heifer somewhere, cared for by someone who needs it. The heifers join our pigs and goats and chickens from Heifer International. Vicky said she resisted any urge to write on the card, “Heifers for the heifers.”

When Dad started snoring, it was time to leave.

In the van, Mom announced, “I feel rich. I got my Kindle and flowers and a heifer. Rich. I’m just rich.”

She turned to me as she and Dad made their way through their garage to the lift. “I’m worn out, but we had one more Mother’s Day, didn’t we?”

Yep, we did. And that is why I’m still sitting on the porch, listening to bird calls. The pressure-washing is finished. The ironing and sewing will wait.

***

In this second story of our two-part series, our heroine Ethel finds that it even more difficult to get OUT of the place where she had such a hard time getting IN…

When Mom called early Tuesday morning, I was already on the couch drinking coffee and reading the news online.

“I don’t know a thing yet,” she said. “And I tried to call Daddy again and he didn’t answer. Probably doesn’t have his hearing aid in.”

“I went over to check on him a few minutes ago and he was already outside.  I’m sure he didn’t take the phone with him.”

“Oh, no, he wouldn’t even think of carrying the phone,” she said. “And if he did, he’d lose it. Well, I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”

I told her I planned to be there about 10. “Oh, don’t rush,” she said. “If they turn me loose before you get here, I’ll just put on my clothes and wait for you. I’ve still got my book to read.”

“Did you read last night?”

“No, I watched TV. Two episodes of Law and Order.”

At 10:00, I called her back to tell her that I was running later than I intended and was just about to leave the house.

“They are right now getting me ready to go down,” she said. “They’re trying to start the IV for the dye so I’ll probably be gone when you get here.”

“Trying?” I said. “Are they having trouble?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, “Nurse called somebody up to get it. She couldn’t get it.”

“Okay, I better let you go. See you after the test.”

I took my time getting on the road. I was in the room forty minutes when she got off the gurney. It was 12:10.

“Thanks,” she said to the man wheeling her bed. “That didn’t take long at all.”

“Give me my pills,” she said after a trip to the bathroom. “You did bring them, didn’t you? Here it is after noon and I haven’t even had my morning pills.”

I handed over the daily pill sorter and she swallowed the entire contents of the Tuesday section with one gulp of water. “And don’t give them to those nurses because I’m about to go home,” she said. “They said they wanted me to let them give me my pills.”

“Guess it’s too late now,” I said.

“Well, they took my Flagyl and Cipro.”

“But they did bring it to you, right? You should have had some last night and this morning.”

“Oh, yeah, and they got me some Percocet last night since I didn’t have mine here. There’s no telling what that will cost.”

Nurse and Trainee came in not long after to hook her back up to the IV, explaining that they were pushing fluids to flush the dye from her system. I wasn’t there because Mom had already sent me to the food court. I might have mentioned that I had two more tickets to use.

“I’m starving,” she said. “He gave you four?”

“Oh, my goodness, you haven’t had anything to eat since midnight. Is there anything you don’t want?”

“I don’t want any baked chicken. No baked chicken.”

“They won’t have baked chicken today,” I said. “They had the baked chicken yesterday. Everything will be different today. I’ll just see what looks good.”

I chose one box of barbecued chicken breast on polenta, braised greens, and roasted carrots. The carrots looked so good I added them to the second box of herbed tilapia and spinach soufflé.

“I see they hooked you back up to your drip,” I said, un-stacking my four boxes.

“They say they’re pushing fluids to flush the dye out of my system,” she said.

“That makes sense. Dessert is banana pudding. It looks good, but you just can’t tell about banana pudding made in bulk.” I pulled a bottle from my pocket. “I brought you  some apple juice.”

Mom held the small container of dessert to her chest. “It’s warm. I better taste it.”

“Before your tilapia?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I handed her a spoon.

“It’s good,” she pronounced after two mouthfuls. “Good stuff. I better go to the bathroom before I eat.”

Nurse and Trainee answered the call.

“Well, that IV is working, isn’t it!” Trainee said.

“And—you’re good to go home,” Nurse said, as Mom, Trainee, and IV pole made their way to the potty. “We’re just waiting for someone from Dr. Scoville’s office to sign off on the discharge papers.”

“Do you have any idea when that will be?” I asked.

“No, they’ll just come by as soon as they can. I’m not sure. We’ll let you know. We just called them.”

Nurse and Trainee came back in after we finished eating.

“Did you bring her meds with you?” Nurse asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“I took them already,” Mom said, just as I was saying, “She took them right after she got back to the room.” I figured I would just fess up to what could be considered as incompliant.

Nurse acquired a frown. “Sweetie, you were supposed to give them to us.”

“Actually, we thought she was on her way home so that it wouldn’t matter,” I said. I said “we” to distribute the guilt.

“She’s not supposed to take them herself.” She sighed. “What did she take?” she asked in a noticeably exasperated tone.

“She took every morning med that is listed in her record.” I knew that because I was the one who gave the admissions nurse the meds list to put in the record.

“What all is that?” she asked.

I reached for the list I in the top of my bag. I looked up to see that Nurse had a pencil and paper poised to begin writing.

“Okay, let’s see, she had Diovan, bumetanide, propranolol, nefedipine…”

Nurse snickered and shook her head and said, “Wait, wait. Okay. She had the Procardia?”

I said, “Propanolol.”

She answered me, “No, Sweetie, Procardia.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s the nefedipine. Procardia is nefedipine, isn’t it? She did have that.”

“Well, see, now, she wasn’t supposed to have that Bumex. They didn’t want her to have that Bumex—and that’s why we’re supposed to do this.”

“Okay, but she’s already taken this stuff now. I’m thinking there were morning meds she wasn’t supposed to take, you know, before the test, like when she would normally take her morning meds? She didn’t have her meds here before the test.” If I had felt more confident in the conversation, I would have said, “It’s okay. There, there.”

She gave me what Mom calls a “blank stare”.

“Well, anyway,” I said, “she probably needs you to be very clear and specific—if there’s something she isn’t supposed to take.”

“Oh, we told her we needed her medications,” she said, her manner of speaking saying,“We did what we were supposed to do so don’t blame us”.

“That may not be the same thing as telling her last night that there were some morning meds she wasn’t supposed to take this morning,” I mumbled as Mom overrode me.

Mom bolted upright in the bed. “They’re gone!” she said, spreading her hands palms up and opening her mouth to show it empty. “It’s done. I took them.”

They heard her. I think everybody heard her—even ten doors down the hall.

Time to divert attention. “I really can give you all this,” I said, waving the list. “I know what she takes every morning. Simvastatin, Prevacid, aspirin…”

“I take the simvastatin at night,” Mom said, turning to me.

At the same time, Nurse said, “Simvastatin? She took simvastatin?”

“No,” I answered. “ No, it was just next on this list and I was reading down the list. She takes that at night. Sorry.”

“Ewwwww-kay,” Nurse answered. She jotted something on her note.

“And then there’s that big handful of vitamins,” I said. “Calcium, D, E, C Garlic, B12, glucosamine.”

This time the response was more of a huff. “Okay,” she said, and tucked her pencil in her pocket and turned to leave. Trainee was standing behind her this time, so Trainee had to go first.

“I’m not sure I get that,” I said—as soon as I was sure they were gone. “I think they’re talking about what you weren’t supposed to take before the test this morning—and you didn’t—because you didn’t have your pill box here.”

“I don’t get it, either,” Mom said. “I’m not sure they know what they’re doing. They’re just kids.”

“There is a marked difference between the staff on this floor and the one you were on last,” I said. “What floor was that, anyway?”

“Can’t remember. But I told them this morning that I would just skip my morning pills and take them when I got home. What difference does it make if I took them here at 1 o’clock or home at 3 o’clock?”

“I don’t know. I’m sleepy.”

We both settled for naps. “May as well nap while we wait on Scoville’s nurse,” Mom said.

“Let’s play Banana-grams after our naps,” I told her.

“I don’t know how.”

“I don’t either, because I always play with Jameson and Carly and they make up their own rules. We’ll figure it out.”

I was first to wake up; I picked up my e-reader. Mom continued to snore for another half hour or so.

“You had a good nap,” I said, closing the cover on my Kindle.

“You did, too, when you weren’t snoring,” she said. “I have to go to the bathroom again.” She pushed her call button and Trainee arrived.

“We can disconnect that tube as soon as you’ve finished this bag,” Trainee said on the way to the bathroom.

“Well, at least then I can move around and not be calling you every ten minutes,” Mom said.

“Oh, no. If you’re going to get up, you need to call us to help you. We don’t want you to fall,” Trainee said. I was totally in agreement but I didn’t say anything.

“No word from Scoville’s office yet?” Mom asked.

“Not yet,” she answered.

“I’m going to call Scoville’s office,” Mom said after she got back in bed. I was just about to lie to her and tell her that I didn’t have the number when she started punching numbers. “I know the number,” she said.

She left a message and then said, “I should have asked for the nurse.” She dialed again and punched the number for Dr. Scoville’s nurse. She left another message.

“Mom, I’m not even sure they’re in the office. You said today is the day he goes to Carthage. Maybe his nurse here doesn’t even work in Nashville today. I don’t know.”

“Well!” Her indignation swelled. “How is anybody ever supposed to know if they’re coming or not? This beats all I’ve ever seen…”

“Mom, there’s always a chance that they’re not waiting for his nurse to actually come over here and sign papers. I mean, why wouldn’t they be able to do all that electronically these days?”

“Who knows…” she answered. “We’re waiting on something. Or somebody.”

“Yep, but it’s possible that we’re just waiting on what has to happen here. Maybe they just needed you to finish that IV bag of fluid before you could leave. They said they needed to flush out your system…”

“Nobody said a thing about that,” Mom said. “And the IV’s been finished. I’m ready to get out of here.”

“Any word yet?” I asked Nurse when she came in the room to look at the IV.

“No, not yet, Sweetie,” was the answer. “But we can take this tube loose from your IV,” she said to Mom. “You finished off that bag.” She clipped off some little thing on the needle, released the tube, and coiled it on a hook at the top of the pole.

She left the room and returned with Trainee.

“We’re going to need to get her medications from you so that we can figure out what all she took,” Nurse said.

I knew she planned to read the labels on pill bottles and write down the ones with instructions to be taken in the a.m. I hated to tell her what she was up against; I tried to make light of it. I held up the Daily AM/PM Pill Sorter and winced as I handed them over.

“Good luck.” It was all I could think of to say right then.

I heard a combination of a sigh, a blow, and a grunt. She took the container from me.
“Sweetie,” she addressed Mom, and then turned to me, “We’re not trying to be mean. We just need to know and do what we’re supposed to do and we are the ones who are supposed to give her her medications.”

“I know,” I said. “I understand. She took her own Flagyl and Cipro before, so I just figured she’d take her own medications that she missed this morning.”

“But we are giving her the Flagyl and Cipro,” Trainee said. “That’s why we took them.”

“I guess I figured all that was over with since she was about to be discharged.”

“Well, she’s not discharged yet. We need to administer the meds as long as she is here.”

“I know. I know,” I said.

Nurse moved so that she was shoulder-to-shoulder with Trainee. Then she launched into a small speech. “We’re really not trying to be mean. We are concerned about doing our jobs, and keeping you safe, and I promise, we’ll bring these back. We are just doing our jobs.”

I cut her off. This time, my tone would betray my otherwise innocuous words. “Really, you don’t have to give us a customer service treatment. We do understand.”

“Okay.” They turned to the door in tandem. “We’ll come back in a few minutes to take the IV’s out.”
“There’s more than one IV in your arm?” I asked.

“Yeah, that one for the dye is over here on the outside of my elbow.”

“See, Mom,” I said. “They’re still fiddling with your chart. They’re working on your medications list.”
“Hmph,” is all she said.

We talked for only a few minutes when Trainee came in to pull out the IV needles. She stooped to the floor beside Mom’s left arm.

“You know, of course, the part that hurts the worst is removing this tape.”

Just as she pulled out the first IV, Nurse entered the room. Trainee dropped the gauze she intended to use. “Could you hand me some gauze?” she asked.

In just a few minutes, the needles were out and the two entry sites were padded and taped.

“That’s probably going to bleed a little, but I padded it pretty good,” Trainee said.

“Oh, it usually does,” Mom said.

“We’ll be back as soon as we get the go-ahead,” Nurse said.

After several minutes, I said, “Mom, we can leave now. And I think we’ll give them until 5 o’clock and then we will leave, discharged or not.  I just need to find somebody to bring us some papers to sign. I’ll step out in the hall and tell them.”

“Good,” she said. “And don’t forget, we have to get my medicine back.”
Several doors down the hall, a male nurse was writing on a chart just outside another patient’s room. A female staff member approached him from several feet away and the two began what seemed to be a tense exchange about a phone call from a doctor, some necessary paperwork that the nurse was trying to finish, and whether he could stop what he was doing to do whatever it was that she wanted him to do. He couldn’t; I understood that much.

I eased back inside Mom’s room.

“What did you tell them?” Mom asked.

“Actually, I didn’t see either of our nurses, and it looked like the two I did see were in the middle of an issue of some kind. They were sort of snappy with each other; I didn’t want to butt in.”

She sighed.

“Well, I’m going to call to go to the bathroom again. And then you can tell her.”

This time, a nurse-technician came to help.

I called her by name, “Meredith” (not her real name), “I need you to tell our nurse that we are going to leave and that we will be happy to sign papers.”

“You want to leave AMA?” she asked. “AMA” stands for “against medical advice”.

“Yes, we do,” I said. “I told her we could go home at 5 o’clock.” It was 4:50.

She flushed the toilet. “Okay,” she said.

Nurse and Trainee entered the room just two minutes before 5:00. Meredith followed closely behind.

“We were just coming in to get you going,” Nurse said.

I nodded. “And you’re here directly after we threatened to leave AMA.”

“Oh, no,” Nurse shook her head. “That’s not what happened. We were coming anyway. We just got finished up. It’s not what happened.”

“Well, you can’t say that you didn’t come to discharge her right after we asked to leave AMA. That did happen.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess so, but it had nothing to do with it.”

Trainee added, “We’ve just been busy.”

“Oh,” I said. “What happened?”

“Well, one thing and then the other. We have other patients we were tending,” Nurse said.

I nodded.

“And…and, we had a patient fall. A patient fell. We had a hard time getting him up. It took us a while.”

“Oh, my,” I said. “But she got back to this room at 12:10. It is now after 5 o’clock.”

“Well, we’re going to get you out of here. Trainee is going to do your education.”

Trainee told Mom to resume all her regular medications, just as usual, and to keep the bandages on the IV sites, and not too much else. She pointed to the bottom left of one sheet. “It says here for you to follow up with Dr. Scoville on the 26^th—That’s in two days.”

“No,” Mom said, “It says to follow up with Scoville on 7/26. That’s July. That’s my regular appointment with him. July.”

“Oh, yeah. I read that wrong. July 26. And here are your medications.” I took the pill sorter and the two bottles of antibiotics and dropped them into Mom’s bag.

“Okay,” Nurse said. “I think you can get dressed to go.”

She looked at me. “Oh, we couldn’t have let her go any earlier. We just got the papers signed about an hour ago.”

“So we could have left an hour ago?”

“Well, no, it takes about an hour to do all the paperwork.”

“Really?”

“Yes, about an hour. Well, do you have any questions?”

“No,” I said, “We do not have questions, but I do have a lot of resentments. I know that this whole fiasco may not be your fault, but you’re the one standing in front of us. I’ll be happy to complete a survey if you like. St. Thomas, bar none, has to be the worst experience we’ve ever had with hospitals. Scoville is the only reason we’re here at St. Thomas. If it weren’t for Scoville, we would not come to St. Thomas ever again.”

“Ohhhhhhhh, no, really?” Nurse asked. “What could we do…?”

“You know, we told you it took 2 ½ hours to get into this place. Well, now it has taken us double that, plus more, to get out. It’s ridiculous…” I didn’t seem worthwhile to go on to re-live the rest of the visit. I just wanted to get Mom into the van and leave.

“Noooo,” Nurse said. “I am so sorry, Sweetie. We take our jobs very seriously and we try very hard.”

“I’m sure you do,” I said. I did not want to say more. “And if all this is because you’re short-handed, I’m sorry that St. Thomas can’t seem to get you some help.”

“And we care for our patients,” she said. “We really do.”

I nodded. “I do not know what is wrong here, but it’s something within the system. We have experience with other hospitals in town and they’re both smaller—one a community hospital—and the other, people look down their noses at, but they’re both more efficient…they’re better operations than St. Thomas.”

“I hope you’ll come back,” she said.

“I’m sure we will, whether we want to or not,” I said. “This is where Scoville is.”

I helped Mom dress. She brushed her hair and put on some lipstick.

“Mom, they usually bring a wheelchair, you know. I didn’t hear her say anything about that, though.”

“I can get there with Dolly. I’m not in bad shape.”

They caught us at the door.

“We need to take you downstairs,” Nurse said.

“Not necessary,” Mom said. “I do not need a wheelchair. I’m just fine.” She rolled on.

“Trainee,” Nurse said, “Would you go down with them?”

“Where are you parked?” she asked me.

“I’m in the visitor’s garage,” I said. “I’ll take Mom to the discharge area, get the van, and then I’ll pick her up.”

“Okay,” Trainee said, “I’ll just wait with her.”

Mom turned to me as we drove off the hospital campus. “Well, Sweetie, we’ve managed to hit the work traffic again.”

“We sure have,” I said.

I still don’t mind when Mom calls me Sweetie.

***