Morning fog obscures the bay in late October at the Little Village By the Bay. Photo Socotra.
The fog is in thick this morning, forty degrees as the morning tries to come on. Standing on the deck in back of the house, the sky is connected to the gray water in wisps of cloud, the highlands across the bay concealed.
It was a good day, yesterday after an unpromising start.
Raven was out of it when the Socotra boys rolled in, all full of faux energy and enthusiasm. He was slumped on the bed, on Big Mam’s side, arms drawn up around his thin torso and legs crossed unnaturally around him.
“Yo, Daddy-o!” I boomed out. “Time for lunch!” His dark eyes cracked open, hooded on his craggy face.
“Lunchtime, Dad!” He stirred after a moment, and it took a minute for him to start to move, attempting to come upright. I don’t know how long he had been motionless, but his Depends had failed, and urine soaked his sweatpants and all the way up his shirt. He must have been motionless for some time. “Crap. Spike, we gotta change him.”
“All right, let’s find some new pants.” He began to go through the drawers in search of shirt and pants, and I looked for replacement safety underwear.
The process of changing him is straightforward enough, and while he is still able to get upright, not particularly difficult if a bit yucky. I found the scissors so we could cut off the old soaked paper garment after we got the shirt off and replaced. It would have been too much to have him nude in the living room.
One on each side, we got the old polo shirt off him, unable to avoid touching the wetness, and then got a new one on him. He has lost so much weight the skin hangs on him. We negotiated his head through the collar, and then snaked his thin arms through the sleeves. Then came the fun part. Spike got his sweats down and ripped one side of the underpants as I cut the other with the scissors. The soaked garment swung off without much fanfare, only liquid, and into the trash can.
“Here is the trick,” I said, as we got him seated on one of the wooden chairs. “Replacement pants on, then the sweats while he is seated. Then we only have to get him on his feet and everything can be hoisted at once.”
“Elegant,” said Spike. Big Mama looked on with mild interest.
Once we had Raven re-garbed, it was time for the parade to lunch. Karla was there in her tuxedo shirt and tie, and it was Saturday Cheeseburger Day at Potemkin Village.
It was not a great lunch. Raven was very foggy, not all the way back from his deep submergence, and there is something going on with him. He said his belly hurt, and squirmed at one point, and would only show enthusiasm for the slices of watermelon and the German chocolate cake. Big Mama talked about going Christmas shopping, and the Socotra Boys reminded her of Raven’s Big Trip coming up.
She took that into account, and then tried to come up with a theory for why there were not more people in the Challenged Dining Room. Not a great lunch, despite the enforced merriment from her boys.
When we got back upstairs, we turned on the television. Turner Classic Movies had a Tarzan film on, which Big Mama watched absently while Raven reclined on the couch.
“If we can’t find the purse it is going to be asses and elbows tomorrow to get the insurance information we need to get Dad admitted to the Bluffs,” I said, and we began to
to ransack the apartment for Big Mama’s purse.
The bag had gone missing at some date in the indeterminate past. “I just had it yesterday,” she said, when I asked her in desperation after the third pass through every nook and cranny.
“Of course you did, Mom.”
We looked in everything. I found all the weekly bags from Glenn’s Market in the closet, all still packed neatly with Depends Adult undergarments. I counted at least nine full packages in the closet alone, and not being able to do anything else, began to make a pile of things to get rid of: old newspapers stacked neatly in a bureau, the weeks and weeks worth of market bags from the market.
Spike came through. Two more packages of Depends were in the magazine rack, and under them was the white leather purse. “Eureka!” he exclaimed, and went through the little compartments until he found the folder that held the cards and a charge card to Kohl’s Department Store.
I took the Blue Cross card with Dad’s name on it, and sighed. That was a big deal.
We watched a little of the Tarzan movie, and then announced that we had a big meeting to attend. Raven dozed and Big Mama nodded. She is well aware that we are all engaged in a Big Project, and that we are all very busy.
We went back to the house and went back to work, Spike pounding on Big Mama’s desktop computer and me on the laptop in the kitchen. Around three I went for a bike ride down to Magnus Park, where the sun sets, and then we drove back over to Potemkin Village where things were essentially unchanged, save for the fact that Raven had gone into the horizontal mode.
We got them orange juice in wine glasses and I made cheese and crackers and handed them to the folks in turn. “Happy Hour,” said Spike. “Just like old times.”
I did not have orange juice in my glass, and I was treating this as the real thing.
Nicole, the RA with the fright-wig dark hair came in to make the dinner announcement and remind Big Mama to tow Raven down to the dining room, and we assured her we had things under control. We looked at one another and announced that it was time.
I cleaned up the crackers and cheese and glasses and Spike got the folks out into the hall.
For some reason, Bib Mama had chicken fingers and Raven had some sort of goulash dish, which he did not want, and Big Mama announced that she was having nothing to do with the fish.
“It is not fish, Mom, it is chicken.” We got it sorted out, after a fashion, though Raven did not have a good appetite. We tried everything to get them to eat, though after a while we were just goofing around like we did at the dining table years ago.
“You are my sunshine…” began Spike.
“My only sunshine,” I responded.
Duet: “You make me happy, when skies are gray…”
My voice rose, and Spike’s went low as we gained energy and intensity. Big Mama looked on with a smile as we continued:
You’ll never know, dear,
How much I love you.
Please don’t take my sunshine away.
You are my sunshine,
My only sunshine.
You make me happy
When skies are gray.
You’ll never know, dear,
How much I love you.
Please don’t take my sunshine away.
There was applause from Rachel and Nicole across the room. I guess they don’t get many duets in the Challenged Dining Room, any more than the flying potato nuggets I tossed across the table to Spike, who caught them deftly after Raven pushed his plate away.
“I wonder if it will work like that?” I said to Spike. He looked back at me steadily. “I mean, when we take her sunshine away?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Mom, you know that Dad is going to go on a trip in a few days, right? Is that OK?”
“So long as everyone’s happy,” she said with a smile.
In late October the sun sets over Magnus Park. In the high summer, the golden orb sinks smack in the middle of the entrance to Little Traverse Bay. Photo Socotra.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com