Waiting

Eva Chupikova

I just found Eva Chupikova's work this morning (link). It is lovely. You might like it, too. Those crazy Europeans get to do things we here in the conflicted U.S.A no longer can. Everything is contentious. There is no poetry here now, only anger, hate, and resentment. She is from Czechia and Slovakia. Majored in philosophy. 

There are such lovely things. 

Like last night's dinner.  I'll begin with that.  I'd been looking forward to it since I had a fairly bland one the night before.  No, wait. . . I'll save that for now.  Let's go back to the beginning.  

I had a full day of mom.  Pretty much, anyway.  After a slow morning, I got to the gym and worked out quickly, then gave myself twenty minutes of sunning by the pool.  Ten minutes per side.  It was 12:30.  I'd eaten only a yogurt and some banana bread before the gym.  I'm a fool for sweet starches with my coffee.  Banana bread, chocolate croissants. . . something.  It is a weakness, I guess, but it seems to be a perfect companion to early morning coffee.  

12:30.  The sun was bright and the day warm but not so much.  I had things to do.  What could be put off?  I needed to eat.  I decided to take back the LED bulbs I had bought which did not work and get a refund.  The lighting store was close to the house.  When I walked in, the counter girl remembered me.  

"They didn't work?"

"No."

"Was the wattage too low?"

"I guess.  I had some others that worked."

She was kind of cute in a not glamorous way.  I hated to disappoint her, but she didn't smile.  I said thanks when she handed me my refund, and she blandly said you're welcome.  

I haven't shopped well recently.  I had few lunch choices.  A can of tuna.  Mayonnaise and sweet relish.  Triscuits.  Kombucha.  

I needed to make a run across town to see if the Plastic Diffusion place could make a lighting cover, but I didn't want to.  An Epsom Salts soak.  A shower.  A brief nap.  

I had told my mother I would take her to Costco.  I had to hurry.  We would have only an hour before I needed to get her to her therapy session.  We got a cart.  She pushed it like a walker.  Slowly.  Very slowly.  We navigated the store, but she couldn't find the paper napkins.  We searched.  Slowly.  We found them in the last place we looked.  O.K.  Checkout.  We had ten minutes.  

I dropped her off at the front door and went to the garage to park.  As she got out of the car, I saw a tall, thin woman in a business suit and low heels walking toward us.  She cut an attractive figure from afar.  She crossed the road and got to the entrance at the same time as my mother and helped her with the door.  

By the time I got to the office, my mother was already in with the therapist.  The thin hipster fellow who works there smiled and waved me back.  My mother was seated with her hand in the massager machine.  Sitting at the table with her was the tall, thin lady in the business suit.  Hmm.  The therapist pushed a chair out for me as she talked to the tall thin lady.  My mother turned over her shoulder and smiled.  I sat silently and listened to the tall thin lady talk about her visit with her doctor in a high-toned way.  I pegged as someone who knew people but was not one.  There was a pretension in her voice with which I was familiar.  

The timer on the massage machine dinged and the therapist rolled over and got my mother started on her exercises.  She asked my mother a question, but my mother couldn't hear.  She repeated it more loudly, but my mother still couldn't hear.  I answered for her.  I did this for a couple more questions.  Then the therapist went back to working on the tall thin woman's hand.  More high-toned talk.  I heard the therapist say, "Did he say it might be Dupuytren's contracture disease?"  

"How do you spell that?" asked the tall thin lady.  

"D-u-p-u. . . .y. . . ."

The therapist looked at me.  I was grinning and held up my phone.  

"Do you want me to look it up?"

". . . t-r-e-n-s!"

"Here.  You can feel it."

The therapist cautiously took my hand but only quickly.  

"Do you mind showing that to her?  This is what it looks like."

I spread my palm wide.  

"Do you have it on both hands?"

"No, just one."

"How long have you had it?"

"A long time.  I think since I was in my thirties.  I just discovered what it was a couple days ago.  I thought I caused it by getting mad and punching my hand."  

I made a fist and popped it into my left palm.  The ladies laughed.  

The music in the facility changes.  It is often old rock or sometimes a little hip-hop, but today it was jazzy.  

"Did you pick the music today?" I giggled to the therapist.  

"Noooo. . . I don't know who did."

The therapy room is big and open and everyone, patients and therapists, began joking about the music mix.  I was the only one who liked it, I think.  I could feel the tall thin lady glancing on me.  Was she vibing on me?  Hmm.  

A man next to us going through some kind of knee therapy said something to the tall thin lady, and they walked away for a moment.  I looked at the therapist with a grin.  

"Oooo. . . a little therapy romance."

She smiled.  "No. . . they work in the same office."  

When the lady came back, she said she needed to go, then turned to me, looked me in the eye, and said, "Thank you for the pleasant company." 

Yes. . . I think she had been vibing on the scruffy hippie man.  Huh.  I had just washed my hair.  

Therapy done, I took my mother to the grocery store, but she said she was too tired to go in, so I left her with the motor and the a.c. running.  Chicken, broccoli, rice, wine, and. . . uh-oh. . . Alfredo sauce.  I would cut the chicken into bite sized bits and marinate them in teriyaki sauce and drop them in a pan.  Three minutes on the stovetop per side.  When done, they would go into a bowl over the rice and broccoli, then I would drizzle just a little of the Alfredo on top.  

Holy smokes. . . it was perfect.  

"What is in Alfredo sauce," my mother wanted to know.  

"Butter, cream, and salt," I said.  "How can that not be good?"

When we finished, we went to sit with our drinks outside. Then, after a bit, I went in to clean up. I was careful. I scrubbed everything shiny--pots, pans, counters, sink. I wanted it to look like the maids had come. I'm trying to not be so much in a hurry.  

It was after seven when I left my mother, but there was plenty of daylight left. I stopped at the liquor store on the way home and got scotch and a small pack of cheroots. The ones I was giving up. Back home, I poured a drink and lit a cheroot and went to the deck. I needed the deck. I sit out with my mother, but it is different. I needed to think my thoughts. That is not what I do at my mother's. It takes time to rummage through the brain attic and pull together something coherent. As I sat, people of the neighborhood walked by. They would wave and say hello, and sometimes they would stop to talk. When the scotch was gone and the cheroot had gone out, I went back inside. It was moving toward dusk now. I turned on the lamp beside the chair where I would sit and read. I put on the water and made a cup of Milk Oolong tea. I had been a good son and had made a wonderful meal, but now I was tired and knew that bedtime would come early. The gymroids were trying to get a happy hour together for the following afternoon. I would probably go. That's what life is now. I'm trying to be more productive in the wake of being creative. It will come back to me one day, I say. You can't be creative always. There are lulls, doldrums, days of work and duty. And there are the mundane pleasures of food and drink and nights out among people. It is important to study then, to read and learn and to look at new things and prepare for when the ideas begin to flow again. When. If.  

You can only hope. You can never know.