The Two Mothers
by Mary Leonard

My mother-in-law visits from Iowa. She's 87 and in good physical health. The social worker at her senior residence tells us, "She doesn't need any medications." On the first hour of her visit, she moves all the wicker furniture on our front porch and sweeps. The porch looks perfect when I return home from work.

I pick up my mother who also lives in a senior residence. She is 86, blind in one eye, deaf in one ear (luckily not on the same side), recovering from a major heart attack, and walking off balance. She relaxes in the wicker rocker and Shirley, my mother-in-law, starts lamenting about her memory loss. "My mind is going. I can't remember anything anymore. I'm so confused. My mind is going. Sometimes I don't have any memory." My mother, who only hears what she wants to hear, hears only the word, "memory."

"Memories are wonderful things. We should never lose hold of our memories. It's all we have now. I close my eyes and remember all the good times. At least I have my memories. My mind is still good."

I stand up and scream, "Haven't you two been listening to each other?"

They look at me with disbelief. My mother says, "We're having a nice conversation. Why are you yelling?"

It's early in the week of Shirley's visit and I haven't abandoned my middle-aged pragmatism. Once I accept that I have a minor role in the theatre of the absurd, I plan my moves accordingly.

"I'm taking the mothers out to lunch at the diner," I tell my husband. He's very grateful because it's so difficult to have a conversation with someone who is so disoriented, and he realizes that his mother's visit to Kingston was a mistake, that we must visit her where she is more secure. At our house, Shirley spends her days rearranging her possessions so that she can find what she hasn't lost. Sometimes she hides things so that we won't take them and then we all spend the day in a scavenger hunt.

I have decided that the diner would be the easiest, the most generic and familiar restaurant, forgetting that the menu has hundreds of choices. Shirley and I help my mother up the stairs and we all study the menu until my mother says, "Order for me. You know what I like and anyway I can't see the menu." I look at the menu, scanning for what she might enjoy. "They have veal Marsala, mom." She says, "Fine." That was easy, I think, too easy.

Shirley is still looking at the menu, and then says, "Chicken, what's that?" I panic. The menu is eight pages long and what if I have to explain every meat, drawing pictures and making barnyard sounds. I am also saddened, realizing how far Shirley's mind has deteriorated if the word, "chicken," doesn't register. That must mean that she has lost her memory of her own roast chicken, chicken soup, and her famous chicken salad made with almonds. I reach down to some primal level and ask, "How about some spaghetti and meatballs?" Shirley is enthusiastic, recalling some memory of this dish she never cooked.

The food arrives and when my mother sees my pita bread sandwich, she wants it. So we switch. Shirley sees the mound of spaghetti and meatballs and says, "I can't eat all of this!"

"We'll take it home," I say and those two lines become the litany for the meal: "I can't eat all of this. We'll take it home." Meanwhile my mother has withdrawn into memories of better times. I talk rapid speed about the children, their grandchildren, and Shirley says, "There's another one." While I have been talking, she's been noticing cars on the road next to the diner. "Another one" refers to red cars only, seemingly her favorite. My mother can't see that far and so she says, "Yes, there are too many flies in this diner."

I pay the bill and wonder if it's better to have a sound mind or a sound body. Just at the stage in my life when I have accepted the mind/body connection, I am contemplating the mind/body separation. On the way home, Shirley says, "It's a great life if you don't weaken." I point to a red car and say, "There's one."

This piece first appeared in Prima Materia, Volume 3, in 2004. For further information, go to www.blissplotpress.com.