Visitors and Victuals

Sunday marked the eighty-fourth birthday of my mother, The Grammy. Her annual annoyance at sharing the birthdate with Dr. King is now mitigated by her Alzheimer’s, so well-wishers no longer have to listen to a diatribe about “that rabble-rouser.”

In recent years, the birthday weekend has been highlighted by a visit from my brother John, flying up from D.C. to wish our mother a happy birthday, to eat a huge platter of fried clams, and to engage in three days of non-stop repartee.

One incident occurred in the Hallmark store, where we were picking out cards for The Grammy. The store clerk, a young woman with a pierced eyebrow, asked him if he had a “Gold Crown Card.”

“No, but he has a Gray Crown Card,” I offered, proving I had no fear of glass houses.

“Don’t listen to my much-older brother,” he told her.

I can’t recall where the exchange went from there, but we did seem to add a bit of hilarity to the check-out proceedings. We filled out the cards in the parking lot of the Queen Anne Nursing Home; my brother took the opportunity in his to inform the Grammy that I only visited to improve my standing in the will.

We had visited on Saturday, bringing a half-pound of lobster salad that The Grammy devoured in short order. Sunday’s offering was a rum-cake from the locally famous Montilio’s Bakery; again, The Grammy dispatched the offering with aplomb. When John squirmed answering questions about the welfare of Spunky the cat (dead for 10 years), I realized how seamlessly I have learned to construct feel-good fiction to spare grief to someone who would experience a loss anew with every visit.

We spent much of the weekend in research. The NFL playoffs are underway, and we needed to determine the best locations for food, drink, and wide-screen high-definition plasma televisions. Saturday’s winner was Murphy’s, a local pub where we saw both his Redskins and my Patriots go down to defeat. Sunday turned bitter cold, and on a whim we headed down to Haddad’s in Brant Rock. Here, across the street from the wind-whipped gray ocean, we hunkered down at the bar to watch the games and discuss them with the friendly locals, while a pretty redhead named Patty served us victuals and beer.

Later on Monday I got a call from my aunt in California. "I just talked to your mother on the phone," she gasped. "She told me that had been burned in a fire, that all her hair had been burned off." I reassured Helen that these things had not happened. Her sister was fine. To a mind damaged by Alzheimer's, though, such imaginings must be painfully and horrifyingly real.