Stitches in Time

Stitches in Time

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Stitches in Time

Stitches in Time

The refrigerator is packed with Tupperware, and the dishwasher is humming merrily on its second load.Mother and I have settled in front of a cheery fire. I am thankful for the logs from Wal-Mart and satellite TV and Starbucks coffee that I can brew at home. The perfect end to another Thanksgiving in Twenty-first Century America.

Iam thankful for many things tonight, for the dozen loved ones who joined me atmy table, for the sun that broke through the clouds after a week of gloom, for my cornbread dressing that actually tastedlike Mother’s this year.I am thankful that my sister, who is fighting a valiant fight against cancer, asked for a second helping of my sweet potato casserole, and that my mother, who is in her ninetieth year and still has her own teeth, spent one more holiday with her familyaround her.I am thankful for my daughters and their fiancés and for long engagements that allow me to put off paying for weddings a while longer; for digital cameras that let me delete shots in which I look wrinkled, frazzled, or generally scary; for computers that let us send to relatives in other states pictures of Mother and her two-year-old great-grandson.

Mornings are Mother’s best times, so I arranged to conduct our business this morning.Caroline brought a portfolio of documents.It’s handy to have a daughter who’s a lawyer.Our witnesses (the fiancés) and notary (my nephew’s wife) were in place.Carolineknelt on the hardwood floor beside the big chair that nearly swallowed Mother, and in lawyerly fashion began to read the Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care.She held the paper so that Mother could follow the print with her knobby forefinger.

I had worked with Caroline on all four documents, making sure they expressed Mother’s wishes.She would want my sister and meto be the beneficiaries of her will.She would want me to have her Power of Attorney. I have managed her affairs for years. This signing business I had arranged was strictly on the up and up, so why did it feel so underhanded? Deep furrows creased Mother’s brow. “It’s all so complicated,” she said.

“What it means,” Caroline said in her more natural voice, “is you’re giving Mom permission to make healthcare decisions for you if you aren’t able to make them for yourself.”

“Health care decisions,” Mother repeated.

“Medical.Mom might need to make medical decisions for you someday.”

Mother considered it and said, “She already does.”

Caroline’s eyes shone with hope.She had made an in-road.She plowed forward. “Yes, butif you weren’t able to talk to the doctor yourself and Mom had to make an important decision, she would need this paper with your signature.”

From Mother’s expression, I could see she was thinking so hard that it hurt.She touched her cottony white hair. The agony sounded in her voice.“I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“Let’s go through it step by step,” Caroline said, shifting her position on the floor. This would take a while.She started at the beginning.She did not get far.Mother’s gaze wandered, and when her eyes fixed on the pen, she picked it up.Slowly, painstakingly, she scrawled her name on the line. Her handwriting was shaky and thin, a long, slanting thread of scribbles.I remembered her letters to me at college, the strong loopy letters on a level line.Good penmanship, she used to tell me, was a sign of good character.

The next document was the Last Will and Testament.Caroline pointed out the main clauses of the document, as she had done before, but this time Mother fidgeted and let out a long sigh of exasperation.“I don’t think like I used to,” she said.Her voice was like the high whine of a child.“My thinking is not – it’s not –” With her arthritic fingers, she touched the lines of her forehead. “I don’t understand what you want me to do.”

Caroline shot me a glance that signaled helplessness.She turned back to Mother and patted her shoulder.“We’ll do this some other time, Grandmama,” she said. The good lawyer.When? I was thinking. Time is running out.Caroline snapped shut her portfolio.“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said, “but it wouldn’t be right.”

I had another mission this Thanksgiving.

Yesterday I went to Mother’s house, at the end of a hundred miles of crooked road, and packed her blue suitcase for two nights with me.I am thankful that Mother can still live in her own home, with twenty-four-hour care.After we made the trip to my house and Mother finished her snack and took her pills, I sat down next to her at the table and asked, “How are you getting along with the girls?” The girls are her caregivers.One is in her fifties, another pushing seventy, and the other is somewhere in between.I have finally joined with Mother in calling them girls.

“Some are all right and some are not,” she said, in a pout, something new for my normally good-natured mother.

Each of the caregivers believes she is Mother’s favorite.Each one disparages the other two.The neighbors who drop in tend to side with one – but not the same one – and report to me that the others are negligent.I needed to get Mother’s version.

“Which one is the best?” I asked.

“I don’t know their names.”

I can’t get used to these lapses.

“You know their names,” I said.There’s Mary from New York. “Yankee talk,” I reminded Mother of her own words.There’s Dorothy, “the big woman who works at the nursing home,” and Cheryl, “the one who polishes your nails.”

“Some are not good to me,” she said.

I felt the grip of dread in my chest.

“What do they do?” I spoke each word deliberately.“What do they do that you don’t like?”

The wrinkles gathered between her eyes.“They sold my car,” she said.“I don’t even have a car to go to town.”

“Mother, I sold your car.You couldn’t drive anymore.Remember?The battery kept going dead.I had to sell the car.”

“Things are not like they used to be,” she said.

“But what about the girls?”

She blinked, as if the question surprised her. “They’re good cooks.”

“Do they take good care of you?You have to tell me, Mother, if they do anything they shouldn’t do.That’s the only way I can know.”I tried to notch down the anxiety in my voice.“You have to help me.”

“What do you want?” she asked with a blank look.

“I want to know – Do you like Mary?”

“She’s good,” Mother said.

“Do you like Dorothy?”

“She’s all right.”

“Do you like Cheryl.”

“Yes, I like her.”

“Who is not good to you?” I asked.

“Some are crabby,” she said.

“Who?”

“I don’t know their names,” she said.

The night crawls on.No, it’s not bedtime, I keep telling Mother.Six-thirty, seven, seven-fifteen – I would like to keep her up till eight-thirty.Like a baby, she’ll be up at dawn if she goes to sleep too early.

She holds up a patchwork purse.“I don’t like these straps,” she says.The purse is a gift from Blanche, the woman who fixes Mother’s hair.Blanche comes to her house every Saturday. That’s something to be thankful for, a hairdresser who makes house calls.

“That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” I tell her.The straps in question are attached to the sides of the purse, two on each side.They are supposed to be tied to make two bows.It is not as complicated as it sounds, but Mother has worried over the straps ever since she we left her house yesterday.

The problem she has with the purse is the little side pocket. She shakes the purse at me and explains yet again that the straps ought to be attached to that side pocket.“See?It’s gapes open.”She points to where she thinks the straps should be.

“All I can tell you is that Blanche made it that way.”A note of impatience rings in my voice.I take a breath and try again.“Blanche made the purse for you, Mother.You should be happy.”

A cloud has come across her face. “Who?”

I tell myself, Get used to it.It’s only going to get worse.I feel helpless, powerlessagainst the dark thing that looms over us, that is bound to overtake us.

Mother holds up the cloth purse.“I could fix it, but my eyesight is not what it used to be.”

“Mother –” I start to say again that the purse is fine and she ought to stop complaining, but I reconsider.I remember Mother bent over one of my dolls, trying to reattach an arm.I see her in the slant of lamplight, running satiny cloth under the clacking needle of the old treadle Singer, making my prom dress exactly to my specifications.The images burn at the backs of my eyes.

“I’ll be right back,” I tell her.I return with my sewing box.

“What are you going to do?” she asks, as I take the purse from her.

“I’m going to fix the straps,” I say.

“Do you know how?”

“Yes.”

“You need some good sharp scissors.You’ll have to rip the seam.”

“I know.”I hold up my good sharp scissors.

“Those straps need to go on the side pocket.”

“I know, Mother.”

It’s not an easy job.Blanche’s stitches are strong.The fire crackles as I gouge at the seams.I free the cloth strips at last and split the seams on the side pocket.

“You want to be sure they hold,” Mother says.

“I’ll do my best.”

And that’s all I can do, all I can do for her.But it is one thing, tonight, as we perch on the slippery edge of uncertainty.

I sew the straps on the side pocket.The patchwork purse looks lopsided, but when I hand it to Mother, her face brightens.

“That’s a lot better. Thank you,” she says.

For a moment, she is happy.For a moment, she is Mother.