mother writing to me from France, worrying about her coming retirement from her teaching job. “What will I do?” she asked me. I wrote back that she should be free—paint watercolors, keep a memoir, do volunteer work and help others, travel to Italy or Scandinavia or North Africa. She had never been anywhere. But my uncles told me that she retired uneasily and sat small in her house. She lost weight, grew depressed and got even smaller, became so weak she couldn’t take care of herself. By the time they moved her to a care facility she was so reduced she died within weeks.
Is it any wonder I resisted the idea of coming here to this rest home? I can already feel myself diminishing. Sleep closes in at all times and from all angles. Should one attempt to be calm and acquiesce to this entombment? We have so little choice. I fall slumbering over my books. My watercolors are runny and frustrating. Music becomes noise. I can only read for a half hour at a time before my eyes grow dim. The television set is a box full of babbling, intrusive idiots. The advertisements attempt to suck my blood.
How can I give myself to any of this? My entire adult life has been silence, but I made myself large within the quietude. I must strive to do the same in this place.
That man Danderman is trying to be friendly, but he is such an incredible bore, and his attention makes Cyril feel threatened. The two of them act like school boys around each other.
I must give Cyril some assurances. I don’t want him to feel that our friendship is at risk. I have never met anyone like Cyril—all of his life he has collected other people’s lives and his head is teeming with them. Out of his generous heart he attempts to share his studious good fortune with others, but he is generally avoided. Despite this patronization and now his physical afflictions, he remains buoyant and munificent. I hear the lives he recites with gratitude—they are like gifts. But not everyone listens to him. He needs to be a bit more selective, and I will urge this on him. But who else knows such things? He is someone using his mind, flourishing like fresh air in this place, and people are generally suspicious of this.
Cyril says I remind him of Christine de Pisan, and he wants to buy me a Leinenkugel at the tavern across the road. The potentiality of this adventure stirs us both as if it were an exotic trip on the Orient Express. The rules in the home are that we are not supposed to leave the grounds on our own, so we will have to do this on the sly, but this is precisely why we should have this forbidden adventure—it will challenge us to do something, to stay large in our brief lives.
We begin to lay our plans. Friday nights are bingo nights in the home, so everyone will be busy at the games. We decide that we will make an appearance and play a few cards, then fade away from the crowd. Cyril will go out and around the side of the building to prop open one of the emergency exits with a match book late in the afternoon, and we will slip out that evening. Cyril uses two canes and I require one, so arm in arm with this tripod of assistance we will deliberately make our slow way through the parking lot and across the highway to this tavern called Burkhum’s.
Cyril says there is country music on Friday nights—not my favorite genre, but Cyril wonders if we might have a dance. Now wouldn’t that be wonderful, if we could do it? I am willing to give it a try—a slow number, so we can support each other. I haven’t danced in decades and Cyril says he has never danced. He wants to try. He figures it is time for us to take a step or two, and I agree. Perhaps after several Leinenkugels we will attempt it. The people in Burkhum’s Tap would probably welcome a spectacle.
Everyone at the home’s bingo party is in a good mood after a day of sunshine. In these driftless hills one earns and deserves the pleasures of springtime after the long winter. If you bear up well to the cold
Is it any wonder I resisted the idea of coming here to this rest home? I can already feel myself diminishing. Sleep closes in at all times and from all angles. Should one attempt to be calm and acquiesce to this entombment? We have so little choice. I fall slumbering over my books. My watercolors are runny and frustrating. Music becomes noise. I can only read for a half hour at a time before my eyes grow dim. The television set is a box full of babbling, intrusive idiots. The advertisements attempt to suck my blood.
How can I give myself to any of this? My entire adult life has been silence, but I made myself large within the quietude. I must strive to do the same in this place.
That man Danderman is trying to be friendly, but he is such an incredible bore, and his attention makes Cyril feel threatened. The two of them act like school boys around each other.
I must give Cyril some assurances. I don’t want him to feel that our friendship is at risk. I have never met anyone like Cyril—all of his life he has collected other people’s lives and his head is teeming with them. Out of his generous heart he attempts to share his studious good fortune with others, but he is generally avoided. Despite this patronization and now his physical afflictions, he remains buoyant and munificent. I hear the lives he recites with gratitude—they are like gifts. But not everyone listens to him. He needs to be a bit more selective, and I will urge this on him. But who else knows such things? He is someone using his mind, flourishing like fresh air in this place, and people are generally suspicious of this.
Cyril says I remind him of Christine de Pisan, and he wants to buy me a Leinenkugel at the tavern across the road. The potentiality of this adventure stirs us both as if it were an exotic trip on the Orient Express. The rules in the home are that we are not supposed to leave the grounds on our own, so we will have to do this on the sly, but this is precisely why we should have this forbidden adventure—it will challenge us to do something, to stay large in our brief lives.
We begin to lay our plans. Friday nights are bingo nights in the home, so everyone will be busy at the games. We decide that we will make an appearance and play a few cards, then fade away from the crowd. Cyril will go out and around the side of the building to prop open one of the emergency exits with a match book late in the afternoon, and we will slip out that evening. Cyril uses two canes and I require one, so arm in arm with this tripod of assistance we will deliberately make our slow way through the parking lot and across the highway to this tavern called Burkhum’s.
Cyril says there is country music on Friday nights—not my favorite genre, but Cyril wonders if we might have a dance. Now wouldn’t that be wonderful, if we could do it? I am willing to give it a try—a slow number, so we can support each other. I haven’t danced in decades and Cyril says he has never danced. He wants to try. He figures it is time for us to take a step or two, and I agree. Perhaps after several Leinenkugels we will attempt it. The people in Burkhum’s Tap would probably welcome a spectacle.
Everyone at the home’s bingo party is in a good mood after a day of sunshine. In these driftless hills one earns and deserves the pleasures of springtime after the long winter. If you bear up well to the cold
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