A Few Short Conversations

   “Al, the other night you said you said you were thinking of getting rid of your car and giving up driving. Have you decided yet?” Isabelle asked at dinner, Friday.

   “I went to my heart doctor – he’s my Chinese doctor – yesterday, and he asked me if I was still driving.”

   “What did you say?”

   “I told him I was.”

   “What did he say?”

   “Stop.”

   “That’s what he told you?”

   “He said, ‘stop.’”

   “What are you going to do?”

   “I told him I’d think about it,” Al said. “I really should stop driving. One of these times I’m going to kill someone. The other day, I was going along and then I couldn’t lift my foot. I almost ran into some guy. And all the idiots out there. I don’t what the hell I’m doing half the time. How am I supposed to figure out what they’re trying to do?”

   “So are you going stop driving?”

   “I probably should.”

   The conversation wended its desultory way through a few uninspiring topics before Al turned toward me and asked, “Do you have something other than that wheelchair to get around in?”

   “I’ve got a manual chair.”

   “Does it fold up?”

   “Yeah. When Russell carts me around, he folds up the chair and puts it in the trunk.”

   “And you can get in and out of the car OK?”

   “More or less.”

   “The wheelchair isn’t difficult to handle, is it?”

   “A couple of years ago, I was able to handle it.”

   “Well, if you need something and Russ can’t take you, why don’t you call me? I could take you.

   “Al, five minutes ago you said you ought to give up driving.”

   “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t do anything crazy with you in the car.”

  

   Louise fell a couple weeks ago and has had a difficult time getting around since. Wednesday, I saw her in the hall. She was in a wheelchair that was being pushed by her daughter.

   “Louise, it’s so nice to see you. How are you?” I asked.

   “I’m doing well.  I feel pretty good. And the doctor says I’ll be fine”

   “That’s wonderful.”

   “I only say that because otherwise my family would get all concerned and start asking all sorts of questions.”

  

   I’ve probably seen Catherine every day since I moved into Covenant Woods, but we hadn’t introduced ourselves, I didn’t even know her name until Monday evening, when she stopped me in the hall.

   “Do you ever see William?” she asked.

   “Sometimes, if he’s hanging around Richie’s room.”

   “Well, if you see him, would you ask him to give me a call? He said he’d help me hang some pictures.”

   “I’ll be glad to ask him, but I’m afraid I don’t know your name. I’m sorry.”

   “I’m Catherine. And don’t worry about it. I see you all the time, and I don’t know your name either.”

   “My name is Tom.”

   “It’s so nice to meet you, Tom,” Catherine said, as she bent down and gave me a hug. “I love everyone.”

   “My husband and I bought our duplex when this place was still condominiums,” Eleanor said, as we worked on the menus one evening. “I was president of the condo association. This place had a couple of different owners back then, and I managed to piss them all off. There was a five-acre tract out here one of the owners wanted to sell. That land didn’t belong to the corporation. It belonged to the condo association. We wouldn’t let them sell it. It got to the point they tapped my phone. I could hear it start to record the second someone started talking. I told them to keep their fucking hands off my phone.

   “I cuss too much,” Eleanor said. “My parents didn’t allow smoking, drinking or cussing in their house. I learned to cuss from my husband. He smoked, drank and cussed. I’ve never smoked, I’ve never had a sip of alcohol, but I do cuss. I’m a Christian lady, and I am very honest. I’m not mean, but I tell people what I think. And sometimes when I do, it sounds like I was raised by a bunch of sailors.”

Notes from the Home - August 9, 2013

   A few Mondays ago, with Russ at the wheel, Karen in the backseat with Molly, me in the co-pilot’s seat, and TomTom doing the navigating, we made the trek to the Emory Clinic to have my Baclofen pump refilled and the dosage adjusted. Baclofen is a muscle relaxer. It isn’t a cure for what ails me, but it does make it a little easier to deal with the spasticity and stiffness that comes with multiple sclerosis. The secret, according to Dr. McKee, whom I used to see at the Cleveland Clinic, is to set the dosage high enough to ease the stiffness and make moving a little easier while not making it so easy that the patient becomes a jellyfish.

   Sometime in the next few weeks I’ll find out how much the good doctor at the Emory Clinic is charging the insurance company and me for his services. I will deem it exorbitant. Every time I went to the Cleveland Clinic to be refilled, Dr. McKee had me walk a short distance, asked me a lengthy list of questions, held my knee and pumped my leg to gauge the stiffness and then said something like, “I’d recommend a ten-percent increase.”

   I’ve been to Emory three times, and each time the doctors have reminded me of gas station attendants; those guys who once came up to your car and said, “Fill ’er up?”  The doctor asks, “How you doing?” and “Do you think we should increase the dose?” Then, without bothering to assess my condition, he fills the tank and resets the dosage. It should be noted, however, that the woman who fetched me from the waiting room and took my blood pressure and checked my pulse had “Sexy Red” tattooed in fancy script from her elbow to her wrist on her arm.

   I did ask the doctor for a referral to a neurologist, and the Emory Clinic called yesterday to set up an appointment. We’ll see what happens.

  

   It has been my personal policy is to stay out of the Covenant Woods’ laundry room between the hours of 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. But, as with all personal policies, there came that moment – 1:37, Tuesday afternoon, to be exact – when I thought, “Oh, what the hell.”  With a basket of dirty clothes on my lap, I set off to the laundry room and ended up in another world. The accents in the other world were all wrong, but otherwise it was as if I were on the set of one of those Britcoms, this one involving three daft octogenarian women.

   With the sound of washers agitating in the background, Helen discussed the washday transgressions of other residents. The infractions are many and varied, but Helen encounters nothing but frustration when she tries to enlighten the washing masses.

   “It doesn’t do any good to tell her,” Helen would say after pointing out this or that person’s deficiency. “She just keeps on doing it. She doesn’t understand.”

   Frances, as far as I could tell, wasn’t doing her laundry, but every few minutes she’d pop in to check on things.

   “Whose stuff is this?” she asked after lifting the lid of an idle washer.

   “That’s Mary’s,” Helen said. “I told her she should stay in here when she’s doing her laundry. But doesn’t do any good; she doesn’t listen.”

   “Is that middle dryer empty?” Frances asked.

   “Yeah, one of housekeepers had some rags in it, but she was just in here and got them,” Helen said. “I wish they wouldn’t wash their rags in here. But it doesn’t do any good to say anything”

   “Well, I’ll put Mary’s things in that dryer,” Frances said. And she did.

   Frances wandered out, and Margie wandered in. In the manner of a mother waiting for her teenaged child to do as he was told, Margie drummed her fingers on the washer in which she had put some things ten minutes earlier.

   “There’s something wrong with this washer,” she said, lifting the lid.

   “No there isn’t,” Helen said. “See that light? It’s on rinse.”

   Margie put the lid down, and the washer resumed rinsing. But only for a minute, then Margie opened the lid again.

   “Every time you do that, the machine resets,” Helen said. “Just leave it alone.” Then turning to me, Helen added, “It doesn’t do any good to tell her.”

   Margie put the lid back down and let the washer run for a minute and then announced that the washer must be broken. She pulled the few items she’d been washing from the machine, wrung them out by hand, dropped them into an unoccupied washer and set it on the spin cycle. That done, she closed the lid on the machine she had been using, and it immediately went into the spin cycle.

   “All that for three pairs of panties,” Helen, who had obviously been paying close attention, said. “But you can’t tell her anything. She won’t listen.”

   Changing washers didn’t do anything for Margie’s patience, and after just a few minutes she took her stuff out of the washer and put it in a dryer. Helen shook her head in disgust as Margie retired to her apartment.

   In a bit, Frances was back.

   “That your stuff in there?” she asked me, pointing to a dryer.

   “No, his things are still in the washer,” Helen said. “Margie is using that one. She put three pairs of panties in it, set if for an hour and left. She shouldn’t do that. There’s no reason to set the dryer for an hour for three pairs of panties. But it doesn’t do any good to tell her. She doesn’t understand.”

   “Do you think they’re dry?” Frances asked.

   “Probably,” Helen told her.

   Frances checked, found Margie’s panties to be dry, took them out, folded them and put them on top of the dryer.

   And so it went.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

   

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Notes from the Home - July 24, 2013

   “I wish it would stop raining,” Randy, one of the maintenance men, said. “The rain is playing hell with my garden. The squash and cucumbers are gone – root rot. But the tomatoes and peppers are OK.

   “You know what’s really doing good? The eggplant. It’s the Japanese kind. They look like bananas, but they’re purple. You slice them long ways, so they’re like French fries, cornmeal them all up and fry them. You don’t have to get uppity and make eggplant Parmesan. This is the South; this ain’t Manhattan. You don’t need no Parmesan, just some cornmeal and fry them.”

  

   A while later, in response to Shirley’s call that there was a package for me at the desk, I went to the lobby. “Poop,” I muttered, or perhaps it was a synonym of poop, when I saw Ron at the desk talking to Shirley. Ron has a myriad of stories. Every one of them is about Ron, and there isn’t the slightest hint of humility, modesty, self-effacement or self-deprecatory humor in the bunch.

   “Hey, Flash,” Ron said to me, then turning to Shirley, he added, “I nicknamed him Flash.”

   “Good morning, Ron,” I said, doing what I could to mask the more obvious signs of insincerity. After all, I was only going to be there long enough for Shirley to hand the package to me.

   My hope for a quick reprieve from Ron ended when Shirley answered the phone and Dennis, the new bus driver, walked by clad in a long-sleeve white shirt and a bright red vest. The man Dennis replaced behind the wheel of the Covenant Wood’s bus was also named Dennis. It must be a prerequisite for the job.

    “Flash, did I ever tell you about the time my wife made me a vest just like that?” Ron said. “Well, Betty loved to sew, and she could sew anything. And this one time she had some extra red material and she made me a vest just like the one Dennis is wearing. I really looked sharp in it. I wore it work once in a while, and one day this guy in the office asked where I got it. I told him Betty made it for me. He asked if she would make one for him.”

   A Mounty always gets his man, and Ron always puts the other guy in his place. With a look of gleeful disdain, he finished his story with, “I told him she’d quit sewing.”

   Shirley handed me the package, and I fled the scene. The package contained two jars of preserves from Beth’s kitchen. I slathered some on a piece of toast and soon the world was a better place again.

   Al reminisced for a while that afternoon.

   “When I still lived in my house here in town, I’d sit on the swing in the backyard and feed the birds,” he said. “There were two woodpeckers, a male and a female. And there was a robin, a brown thrasher, and a few others. I would sit for hours, watching the birds and feeding them. I’d cut up apples and grapes to give to them. Some of the birds would come up and eat out right out of my hand. Do you think other people do stuff like that?”

   And he talked about the present.

   “Sometimes I sit out on the porch here and think about dying. I know I won’t jump [Al lives on the second floor] but sometimes I think about getting on the floor and rolling off. There are so many things I can’t do anymore. I’m going to have to start asking the staff to do more things for me. I can’t do it all anymore.

   “It’s not a question of damned if I do or damned if I don’t. It’s just, ‘Damn.’ It’s ‘Double damn.’”

  

   That evening, as I made my way around the Covenant Woods’ parking lots, I saw Bobby. He was staring at the groceries in the trunk of his car.

   “Nothing is easy these days,” he said. “The things that used to take two minutes take five minutes. And the things that used to take five minutes take forever. I think I’m going to have to make two trips.”

   There were two boxes of groceries in the trunk. The boxes were too big to put side by side on Bobby’s walker, and they were both too full to stack.

   “Can I give you a hand?” I asked.

   “You won’t be able to handle these.”

   “My lap is available,” I said. “Set a box on it. I’ll be fine.”

   Bobby wasn’t convinced, but he was willing to take a chance. He took a several items out of one of the boxes and set it on my lap.

   “Can you handle that?”

   I looked at the half-filled box and assured him I could. He grabbed a head of lettuce from the trunk and put it in the box on my lap.

   “How ’bout now?”

   “I’m fine.”

   He put a bag of rice in the box and asked if I could still manage. I said I could. He repeated the question and I repeated the answer when he added a box of raisin bran to my load. Bobby then got the other box of groceries out of the trunk and set it on his walker, and off we went to his apartment.

  

   The following morning, I found an e-mail from Beth in the in-box. It was a video of smiling little MaKenna.

   “Can you say, ‘Good morning?” Beth asked, and MaKenna smiled. “Can you say, ‘Good morning, Grandpa?” And MaKenna looked like she might burst out laughing.

   I smiled, said “good morning, MaKenna,” very nearly shed a tear and got on with things, knowing that a smile from MaKenna in the morning makes any day a good day.

Aging Gracelessly - Again

   At Piggly-Wiggly this morning, the cashier told me, "Twenty-one dollars even." But, as I was fishing in my wallet, she said, "Wait, today is Wednesday." She turned back to the cash register, punched a button or two and said, "Nineteen ninety-five."

   "Wednesday must be a good day to shop," I said.

   "It is for you."

   "Does that mean I'm old?"

   "Well," she said, "it means you've been around longer than I have."

   That got me thinking about the following piece, which ran in the Star Beacon in 2008 and which I posted here in July 2011.

   The change was correct; it was the receipt that bothered me. I couldn’t understand why I had been given the senior discount at the fast-food place.

   In some narrow chronological sense, of course, I qualified for it. But I was in the drive-through, and the lady with the garbled voice who took my order was somewhere inside. How ever did she know?

   Age has its privileges, mostly in the form of discounts. Discounts are wonderful things, and I am not too proud to avail myself of them. But I thought it would be a while before sales clerks could take one look at me – or simply hear my voice - and pronounce me deserving of them. Given my well-preserved features and immature demeanor, I assumed I’d have to fight for discounts until I was well into my 70s. And I was gleefully girding myself for battle.

   A few months ago, in the weeks leading up to one of those birthdays that end in zero, I received a Golden Buckeye Card. The State of Ohio had given me a powerful identification tool I could use to stun and embarrass sales clerks. Or so I thought.

   I pictured myself at the checkout, watching the clerk ring up my purchases. Then, just before she hit the total button, I pulled out my Golden Buckeye Card and held it two inches from her nose, in the manner of a television cop.

   “Tom Harris, high-end Boomer,” I said with great authority.

   “Mr. Harris, I’ll need to see your driver’s license,” she replied in the snippy manner the young have when they’re given a modicum of authority.

   “Look, young lady, this is a Golden Buckeye Card issued by the State of Ohio and it entitles me to certain rights and privileges, including discounts on my purchases at this store.”

   “I know what it is. Do you think I’m like blind?” she said. “If you want the discount, you’ll have to show me your driver’s license. And if you don’t stop acting like some four-year-old with a plastic badge and a toy pistol, I’ll call the manager.”

   “Actually, I’ve always thought I was more like Special Agent Gibbs, NCIS…”

   “Yeah, right,” she mumbled while working over her chewing gum. “Just show me your license.”

   “OK, here it is. Read it and weep, Little Miss Priss.”

   A triumphant smile spread across the clerk’s face as she took my license. But then, as she examined it, her gloating faded to shame and remorse.

   “I’m so sorry, Mr. Harris,” she said.

   “Apology accepted. It happens all the time.”

   “As you probably know, a gang of really evil 40-somethings is flooding the system with counterfeit Golden Buckeye Cards,” she said. “The manager told us, we have to ask for a photo ID from every really young looking person who attempts to use one. It’s not my fault you look so young. I busted two people this morning, and they both looked at least 10 years older than you.”

   “They probably should eat more carrots,” I said.

   “And maybe I should be a little slower to accuse,” she said. “I’m like so embarrassed.”

   “Don’t worry about it. No one likes to be mistaken for a youthful miscreant, but we all have to make sacrifices to preserve the integrity of the system.”

   “Thank you for being so understanding,” she said. “Here’s a $50 gift card for your trouble. Do have a nice day.”

   I don’t know why, but nothing even remotely similar to this has happened to me.