naches fun die kinder
it's another one of those times where common ground is not so common and respect-doing unto others-is the big stick we were tohavebeen wielding and it was a moveable feast it was another one of those times where knowing asif you're so damn smart is only the beginning and putting into practice all things one professes to believe was another moveable feast and yet fraught though it was with divisability I think we were older than that now younger than that then and we did love her tender and she knew it all and shewas gladdened

ourmother
and the bath prize was mine, will you wash my hair she asked doling out the favor as if it were pure gold, and getting as I did in the shower taking her back to front we stepped she and I into a bloodline tapped into our lineage, taking a place on the strand of mothers daughters sisters joined, and for a moment we were free we were she&I temple sisters on the brink for a moment virgin maiden crone we stood atop mount parnassos overlooking delphi peaking around the corner we saw death heard music laughed; came clean

enfamille
touchstones traditions rituals gatekeepers fairest of them all sharing head of the house and the layers recast as lairs divas one and all by any other name it's the common goal that saves us preserves our integrity it is after all not about us there is something grand in how we've each chosen a partner who like our mother hasnot abandoned themselves and thereafter is first and foremost our grand champion and protectorate not of course that any of us need such a thing...and our father longsince dead poked his head askance through the door on morethanone occasion

the birthday party
her mother saved me twice from giving into a wave of weeping&wailing all of us gathered around ourmother the glue&umbrella the alpha&omega holding court, all of us her friendsstudentschildren each approaching in turn, she nolonger able to takeover a room, with homage&love and in the notso back ground someone playing schubert impromptus& chopin nocturnes the endless forevermemory the blood&bones of home and I was thankful it being neither the timeorplace place for my indulgences and what she asked chin out hating her mother's penchant for half full would have been the matter with your shedding a tear

enfamille
a houseful of executives she, the woman we were in the process of hiring to take over, noticed smiling-the nature of grown children I supposebut &beyondthat it is luckily still about her, not us but, it is notso much the sharingof the same space as it is negotiating ha running the rapids of differences that no matter the degree of personal transcendence at the brink is still brinkmanship and to the victor belongs the spoils: we overlap we all think we knowitall some of us wear it better, we are all smartohsosmart, but the smartestones are not so wise

home
I reach into the drawer as if I were still in her kitchen to make a cup of coffee having lost the lay of my own land so far into her reaches have I traveled that I've forgotten the tempo the rhythm of my own and her reaches close and far inward and outward seen and not heard and not expressive and receptive wise and foolish are changing faster than any one of us can stay mindful of and so we rush around loving her as fast as we can and none of us are where we started from

how is your mother
one of those simple questions that leaves me speechless, the operative words so very inoperative there is no is, only fleeting, and there is no my mother, no such creature fixed in a moment's timespace, losing elemental substance she is elusive and we don't know how and yet, extrapolating from what the at firstblush abrupt doctor said, if we are palliating her then I guess it can be said all things considered she is going along for the ride and though comfortable, sheis nothappy
but thenagin I guess at this point happy is not operative either

bouyancy
details are keeping us afloat when instead we might simply have drowned in the otherwise unfettered pain of it and after all will be said&done we won't have known what it is and it will ended up not having mattered we will have done everything there was to do butand in the squeeze of the vortex her moorings are loosening and for all of our efforts caught by I'm not exactly sure which wind she is adrift, her crossing has begun; she isn't listening anymore

I wonder if the whittling down to size is to make the loss smaller

enfamille
our oldertbrother is anxious she said you worry ourbrother is laid-back and ouryoungerbrother is the youngest she said wrapping it all up as if it were so and my first reaction was to take umbrage thinking I'd somehow gotten past worry or that it was bad but sitting with it I came to ohyes I infact pull at or fiddle with repeatedly to discover or devise a solution by persistent thought and worrying the words as I would I discovered, given the hue&intensity of the other words in the list, what was off-color was ofcourse her description of ourbrother

enfamille &my him
he did well had all the tools&skills infact needing no special favors present and accounted for standing up in and out with just the right hue&intensity and visible or cloaked in the perfect measure solid and certain, huge as a granite boulder, happily covered&spared he might add under the justperfect it's not about you umbrella and content as always and especially in the bosom of my sniffy family with the downstairs crowd he walked the perimeter and as would be his wont stood proudly and ever on guard for me, of course

so how ironic&perfect is that

en famille wrap-up
it's a swirl and a current and a hardwon I'd have to say truce fighting like cats&dogs not necessarily lost on us and yet we really never have, no matter the spark it would reflect badly on he who struck back, we don't really believe in that, ah yes...there it is, not backhandedly anyway and winning isnot everything it's cracked up to be either but& we are all terrifically skilled at brinksmanship, deft at just the tug&pull which canbe offbalance putting, and you claw to get in&out just the same; no runs no hits no errors

choice& lot's wife redux
as if there'd been an always and forever link a fundamental understanding there was a comfort and liberty a bias a warp&woof that we created that we became, that we describe, that we further and asif of course as if by design sidebyside we stood the edge as the wheel turned beholding the horizon shoulder to shoulder, and saw that it had been reconfigured; and tempted though we may have been to look back it wouldnothave rendered the splendor&terror of the brink

the baton is not passed by default and factis showing up is a choice

ourmother
wendy? I asked when she'd said wendy was coming to visit, wendy who? you know, wendy she said what does she look like I asked blonde, did you teach her sons music lesssons yes I did, Oh, cathy! you mean cathy? yesmaybe I do mean cathy, she does look like a wendy I said actually if you think about it, who's wendy? she wanted to know

what ever it is marches with her vigor and reckless abandon claiming her

the wind blows in my eyes now, no one in front only those to the side ...only fools would miss it

Ourmother
under the wire we slid with no moment to have spared &yet there's been a true to form about it and as I step back I cansee it worked as it shouldhave and there's only one way through all of this no matter the which way we would have wanted or hoped to create it all no matter the splendor boiled downto safety, the great equalizer, and when I asked her if she knew why she'd been kept inpatient rather than having been allowed to go home from the dayhospital, she said smartly oh! the differences are very similar

still fullcode
and in the still river moments we saw the elusive river otter yesterday before the wind came up and the shy green herons and a black cormorant bank swallows and the young osprey still learning the currents in his high perch,and&though but, in the quiet I still couldn't help but worry my obligation to make good her only caveat which was representation and advocacy so homeagain to pen to say her piece to make peace to proffer her please I am not an old lady, yet

so until the asked questions are answered, it's still lights&sirens thankyou

but
andyet as he rightly says it's a quality of life issue and I remember remembering that, my huff&puff notwithstanding, she's not been happy for some time no matter the argument that if she'd felt better la la la fact is she lost her way and her will when ourfather died though she was his life's blood, no matter or special message that this very minute they're playing her brandenburg the one she recorded in paris concerto no, matter that upclose it's hard to let her go, she isnott she which is the point, ahyes ofcourse, it's not about me

&so
I'm forced to giveup someof my covers someof my slightsofhand someof my feints ahyes my feints I have a soft touch&a knowing a kindness& a generosity and a patience that surprises me, that seems so often to seem foreign and not familiar and ofcourse it was, is familyar, it just was so well disguised in our family...andbut I still tell the truth asif it were nothingbut knowing all the while there ain't suchathing, and it is a lie but it starts that youthink you're so smart ruckus when I ain't nothin' but a knowitsome huzzy, you know, sheeit

howami
it's quieter now details falling into place phone calls made connections established and in the still of it there is a burgeoning and a looming all things are tenuousness in a sure way and for all the things we don't know everything is happening as we knew it would, I mean in the end you know, we know don't we, we're told in a thousand ways but for the listening about how things will be and create mystery where there is none only to miss the real mystery; the final unfolding wow I am awed sometimes sad &just fine

ourmother's gifts
how are you? half&half, half what? half dead she said and ofcourse it's half funny...and there it is...unfolding splendor, reminded him of something he'd read somewhere sometime -that the meaning of life is enfolded in life itself- "...I think," he said "Dvora would say that we should be unfolding the splendor as we go and that music is an agent of that unfolding, actually when I stop&think about it she might not say that because she resisted talking directly about the effect of music on one - wholly relying on the immediate musical experience to perform its miracles..."

in so many words

it's a good hotel, well kept she says but the inmates are a bit peculiar she says asif she were ourfather, the scariest, as in the thin line of it all is how she is traveling ourfather's path, almost word for damn word,
I swam there&back yesterday stretching out my arms reaching reaching hearing bits said but until now missed, the tests don't measure the highend losses, yes that is what he said, so there it is, it's not that we didn't know it but their test didn't register it...asif the highend is um no loss

DNR
spoke with the dr today ..she's clearly had a series of strokes and she has a vasculardementia and a peripheral neuropathy (notomention ofcourse the acoustic neuroma and some enlargement of the brain that might be NPH andbut the long&short of it given the benefit/risk ratios aside from support in its many forms there is nothing really todo... except, he agreed, to love her tender though they intend to keep her (for several more weeks) to continue their assessment&rehab suchas it is...he still forestalls conversations about where&what next except to say she will/would need "significant inhome care" to return home...

nickering
going its way it is asif we have the no idea feeling asif we didn'tknow exactly how it would unwind asif there couldbe someone else to doit &fix it asif we are The Young andthere it is, that thing we spend our wholelife trying to outsmart; loss asif it will feel like being left without knowing anything& with no one to take careof the everything that is us
asif we we weren't standing face into the wind—these are the moments that count, the sorry doesn't cover it moments—

&so ofcourse theworrier worries, &the HeThatDoesnt doesn't because TheOlderSister is, sheesh

losses
andyet he is calling now to talk in his there but removed way and he brings up real daughter loss meaning ofcourse he already lost his real mother and he really only lived with her for four years and he's losing a pal when infact he livedwith and was motheredby her for most of seven years bringing to bear the remembering that for each of us the loss is different and no less real and that my need of their emotional support is a different reality altogether and for me it's not so much real daughter as eldest&only daughter

jackrobinson
when I can't get around anymore was what OurMother said the last time I asked about when she would be ready to move out which is certainly, or maybenot certainly is the point, the case which is why among other things I will go again to see and maybe she is getting better--or moretothepoint not getting worse--justbecause she is not at home, but amongst 'em...and the trick is thinking she is who she was,
she is changing faster than I can say jackrobinson andso then home is another trick because it presupposes someone to populate it

ourmother
it's just there's somuch todo&tothink about...it's become an occupation really, betterthan a preoccupation which would've instead rendered me impatient ungrateful&cranky...but I can't get away from it...not like missing a lover or in a wishing itwere somethingelse but in having to, no— inbeingcalled asif itwere a calling to manage to participate in to shepherd...ah there it is—to witness her unfolding and she isgone; the tent the uproar& her greatglee &it is awesome to behold

and allofasudden I'm left wondering if the newspaper is still being delivered to a home that is now a figment of everyone's imagination

ourmother
oh wendy and angie and you know and all the rest who visit morethan the people who don't she answers smartly when ourbrother asked who'd been visiting but her stride is longer and if you set her in front of a plate of food once she starts she'll keep it until it's allgone unless of course you ask if she's hungry which she isn't but then

she pokes her head up and says the news from israel is not good I wonder if I should phone and offer them the house if they think they could live in YWG

middle of the night

none of this seems to withstand middle of the night scrutiny she is not fine

andyet she's not the only lady ever to have wet her bed in the middle of the night

butandso will we allow that should we why would we when we don't have to how much infrastructure does it take to keep her in the style to which we are accustomed

andsobut it's not like the nightworker never fell asleep, or like babies never have wet diapers

and there it is, in&out the path is the same, we havenot lost our way

in theneighborhood
so three children later bill&nichole got married and both scott and jeremy willbe moving out, can't afford to stay and jim&sarah may not move in afterall their huge dog can't walk up and down the stairs and diane and linda are painting their house and hans and audra have four cute as hell but obnoxious just the same dogs that bark most of the time and roam the neighborhood their fence suchasitis notwithstanding and in the yellow apartments that are sure to be flooded again they finally got the sheetrock sheetrock?up andsonow another hapless soul has moved in

howami
peaceful not always comfortable in this time of loss—in loss, a geography moreso than a feeling state—a ground a skyline moreso than a backdrop not in the pit of my stomach but my heart not sad ongoing but inloss; in the throes of ceasing to have a mother in the throes of no longer being lookedafter in the particular kindly& protective way of mothers, in the way of my mother; inmotherloss,this asit turnedout is our first mother daughter dance; the blinded leadingfollowingdancing with the blind

&we are feeling our way through the thicket of inloss to godknows where

extra help
damn if I still can't remember to walk away is an option & instead I get all fired up when I hear the nursing staff think it would be better if the extra help came in the morning to help get her up and to help clean her up aslongas they're coming anyway andthen he reminds me I don't need to do anything, nevermind that they're not there first&foremost instead of them but in fact are meant to be in addition to and are there godhelpus in stead of us, and

factis it was ofcourse a damned nicetry but

we2
ofcourse he would come now too there is so much to left to do to see to sort out--of course he would come now too--warning me allthewhile about his predilection for minutiae in the face of bigger things asif I'd forgotten the time he'd spent the day making a bigger hole in the kitchen storm window while ourbrother&I put up the rest of them andso he comes with me relying on me to hold to my schema; to give him roomto
and like before wetwo make light work of what we should never have had to know