“What did they say?” Mama asked me.
“They fixed the TV. We didn’t really understand what was wrong, but they fixed it,” I shouted …in so many words, more fragmented, more exasperated.
“It wasn’t anything we did wrong?” she asked.
No, we didn’t do anything wrong.”
I had to shout. Otherwise, my mother, at 95, can’t hear me, I understand the distaste for shouting, but I also understand the need to communicate, and the hearing-aid trial did not go well.
A child of the Depression who married and had two daughters in the 50s, Mama is also a product of what I call the pre-feminist, Good Housekeeping movement, a time when women were more concerned with appearance than being heard and with making certain they weren’t to blame for whatever went wrong. And something otten did: With Daddy, it was spilled coffee; with Mama, spilled milk. Sweet milk, she called it – another carryover from the 50s.
“I got to where I really like sweet milk,” she told me as she often has lately. “I didn’t like it when I was a kid.”
“They probably made you drink it then,” I said, just before I heard the clank of her plastic glass hit the metal TV tray and then the tile floor.
Mama cleaned off her tray, and I wiped the milk off the floor, telling her to avoid the area while it dried so she wouldn't slip – advice she likely ignored. “I’m not going to fall,” she always says but often has, once breaking a hip.
When she spilled the milk today, I couldn't help but remember the time Daddy spilled his coffee just as I was stopping by for a visit.
I rang the doorbell, and Daddy opened it. Still wearing pajamas and barefoot, he was sitting on the storage part of his walker. Bent over slightly, he swept a few shards of glass into a dust pan. Dried blood covered his bald head.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I fell during the night. I’m OK. It’s not a bad cut.”
Broken glass and blood were in every direction – on the kitchen, hallway and bathroom floors.
“You go in there, and I’ll clean it up,” I said.
I found a mop but hadn’t used it yet when Daddy walked back toward the kitchen to warm his coffee up in the microwave.
Mama then walked into the kitchen. She, too, was barefoot but didn’t seem surprised by the blood and glass.
Daddy reached for his coffee in the microwave. He dropped the cup, and the coffee mixed in with the blood.
I told Mama and Daddy to please go to the other room and let me clean the kitchen. “You need to put some shoes on with all this glass,” I said.
But to them, I was the child daring to tell them what to do. Mama was 87. Daddy was weeks shy of 90 and would live albout two more years.
Daddy warmed up another cup of coffee. I held it so it wouldn’t spill. He then went to the living room and sat down. By now, Mama had put on shoes and had taken Daddy a bowl of cornflakes.
“Bring me a banana,” he said.
I called my sister and asked her to take Daddy to the doctor while I cleaned the floors. Mama washed the blood off his head. No longer did it look so scary.
Soon, the floors were clean and glass-free as best I could tell.
Daddy headed back to the kitchen, and I feared he would slip on the wet floor. He wouldn’t listen and kept walking.
“You’re going to fall, break your hip and end up in a nursing home. I know you don’t want that,” I said.
I didn’t either. I’m still haunted by my grandmother’s pleas for me to get her out of the nursing home, to pull her out of the ice bath intended to lower her fever in the hours before her death.
Daddy mumbled something I couldn’t understand.
About that time, my sister arrived, and they left together.
I sat down and visited with Mama.
I’m afraid, Mama said. I’m afraid he’s going to have a wreck and hurt someone. I’m afraid he’s going to burn up the house when he’s trying to cook.
When he got home that evening, he went to bed and slept through the night.
I called him the next morning. He was far more lucid.
“Are you at home?” I asked.
“No, but I’m headed there,” he said.
I closed my eyes. I’d hoped for a different answer.