The new me

A woman sat on the mulch amid enormous, well-maintained flowering plants. Her legs were spread apart in front of her, her denim skirt above her knees. She was weeding and cutting back spent iris stalks. Her wheelchair was on the grass partly hidden by more plants.

The peonies were in bloom, many-petaled rose ones and others with large white petals and a sort of dense patch of pale yellow shreds in their centers.

I introduced myself. She knew my mother and knew a bit of her history. We talked about flowers and herbs. I told her where I lived and she asked me if I went to the symphony. “Shame on you!” she said when I said I didn’t. I said I went to poetry readings. I smelled a white and yellow peony. Lemon meringue.

The woman, whose name was Barbara, had a brace on one leg. She moved by lifting herself with her arms. She moved closer to the center of the circular bed and a small rabbit ran out from the opposite side. “Ah. Thanks for noticing,” she said. “I saw the damage, but wasn’t sure what caused it. I’ll ask the landscaper to get the Havahart.”

I walked along the drive that circled the buildings, then across a road to a park. From a hundred yards away I watched kids playing baseball. They were very considerate. They let the smallest and youngest boy get a home run off a dribbler down the 1st-base line.

My mother had just had minor eye surgery. She had to take two kinds of eye drops, one four times a day, the other every hour until bedtime. I think I might have been slightly confused by this myself, but I wouldn’t have cared if I was a half hour off, or forgot the drops altogether now and then. I wrote out a schedule, hoping it would make things simpler.

I don’t have a TV, so when I visit my mother, I catch up. I watched CSI: Miami the previous evening. Aerial shots of orange hotels. Orange mutilated corpses. Blurred blue and green re-enactments. Saturated drama. Later, Paris Hilton on David Letterman. There! I mentioned her.

Always the news, CNN mostly. Tropical Storm Alberto approaching Florida. “I keep thinking it’s named after Alberto Gonzales,” my mother said. If Karl Rove is on, she says bitterly that he’s the real president. If Dick Cheney is on, then he’s the real president.

On Jeopardy the contestants are asked to name the New England newspaper published during the American Revolution that is still being published. One of the contestants (and I) get it right: Hartford Courant.

A lot of commercials are about motorized wheelchairs and health insurance for seniors.

We’re sitting in the living room watching TV before my uncle comes to drive me to the bus station. My mother wants to go to the bathroom before going downstairs with me to say goodbye. She inches her way to the edge of the chair, raises herself to her feet with her arms, and wobbles a little unsteadily with her cane in one hand. I think I should let her do this by herself, though she doesn’t look very stable. She seems ready to move and looks ahead of her, grim acceptance rather than determination. “The new me,” she says.