Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Unsettling and odd and not a little sad
My mother said to me, apropos of nothing (which is how she said most things, I’m afraid), “Your father really cares about me.” I heard a note of genuine surprise when she described how my dad had visited her in the hospital every day and had stayed with her for hours.
They’ve been married over sixty years, and she’s surprised he cares about her.
Was my father surprised at his own anxiety (which I suspect he’d now deny) when my mother was in the hospital? But it was there in his voice. Are they just now coming to appreciate one another?
Or perhaps this is all ignorance or presumptuousness on my part. Perhaps I’ve had blinders on because all I’ve ever seen of them is the bickering (which in my family involves screaming invectives at the top of one’s lungs). If I had to pick words to describe their interactions over the years, respect and sympathy and concern wouldn’t be near the top of my list. But have I been missing something all this time?
And then there’s my mother’s lack of bile, to put it mildly. This trip, she was pleasant. Really pleasant. Which isn’t like her. Is this part and parcel of her recent problems?
Does it take a certain level of mental faculty to harbor spite, resentment, animosity?
Needless to say, we find this all very concerning.
D.
PS: We’re trying to figure out what our turtles were doing in Chinatown. Supposedly, they were rescued from Chinatown. Were they being sold as pets, or proto-appetizers?
My Dad had to have a heart attack before he stopped being so cantankerous and look at his family as people he loves and who love him. The heart attacks gave him a sense of humour. It also made him a bit melancholy that he’d spent all those years before in a state of bullish agitation. I think, for all his life was ill and uncomfortable after his heart attacks, I think he was more content.
Maybe they’re having a similar epiphany?
Does it take a certain level of mental faculty to harbor spite, resentment, animosity?
Well… it takes a fully-functioning frontal lobe, doesn’t it?
Oooh… CSS/Blockquote FAIL.
Lyvvie: yeah, I hear ya.
ps: that’s what I was thinking the other day with one of my patients. Unethical to blog the details, but the whole thing was heartbreaking. One thing when someone in her 80s begins to lose it, quite another when it’s a young person.