Sometimes I get a glimpse of Mom as she was, and this is one of those times.
I'm on the boat now in Eliot Bay with the lights of Seattle twinkling in the background. I'm listening to "My Fair Lady" -- and with an appreciation that is fresh.
I did not appreciate it all that much in 1957 when I saw it in New York, courtesy of Mum, or in 1958, when I saw it again, thanks to Mum.
She thought of it as a special treat, and I did not have the heart to tell her that I liked it, but not all that much. I knew that to her it was wonderful.
But having heard several bits of it lately, I too consider it exquisite -- absolutely exquisite. And with that realization comes one of those moments -- all too rare -- when I catch a glimpse of Mum as she was.
The pleasure she took in coming out from Indiana to meet her son -- out on vacation from his New England boarding school -- to see "My Fair Lady" is one clue to who she was. She was forty then -- I hope I can remember more about her.
Now she lives most of her life in a state of semi-somnolence, and for the past five years I have spent many an hour caring for -- and looking over her financial affairs. Helping her to move to one retirement home, then to an assisted living facility, then another. Fighting -- unsuccessfully for the most part -- with the S.O.B.s who think of an infirm, older person, as a cash cow. (Right now I think that she is a place that is caring, right up to the corporate offices.)
Ironically, as there has been less of Mum to know, I have gotten to know her better -- or at least spent much more time with her so that it is hard most of the time to remember her whole.
I will use these Web pages to reflect on Mom and on the people who are caring for her.
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