A Good Day

This morning, I was up at 5:30 a.m. for a 4 mile run in the neighborhood.  Listened to Matt Damon on Bill Simmon's podcast as I ran down Belmont Boulevard and across David Lipscomb's campus before dawn.  Now, I'm finishing up coffee at Frothy Monkey before heading down to see my mom.

Our day today?  J.P. has a travel soccer doubleheader starting at 11 a.m., followed by a baseball game at 3 p.m.  Joe has a baseball game at 5 p.m.  That's on the heels of a soccer game for Joe yesterday morning and a baseball doubleheader for J.P.

J.P.'s Dodgers beat the Dirtbags, our longtime rival, 16-4, so there's that.

Yesterday morning, before things got crazy, I went to see my mom.  It's so hard for me to get by her place during the work week because I'm so busy right now.  In truth, that's probably a poor excuse and it makes me feel bad, but I have been crushed last month and it continued last week.

I arrived as she was finishing breakfast.  She drank some cranberry juice I brought, then I rolled her outside to the courtyard we often visit.  She looked at one of the two issues of the New Yorker that I'd brought with me, although she never got past the table of contents.  Sometimes the innocence - her innocence - is almost childlike and I marvel at the things that interest her or amuse her.  We're blessed in that way, I suppose, in that she's not angry, mean spirited or sad.  For the most part, she's happy and blissfully unaware of anything more than what is right in front of her.

Is that sad?  Sure it is, when I think of how closely she followed sports, politics, current events and, most importantly, her children's and grandchildren's activities in what seems like a past life.  I'm trying to find the silver lining, though.  And, for me, the silver lining is that right now, at least, she is, in a word . . . content.

She smiles a lot.  Her sense of humor is intact and she laughs, still, again with a childlike innocence at the smallest things.  She interacts with the staff in the Courtyard at NHC Place and they seem to genuine like her.  As I wheeled her out yesterday, I private pay caregiver I didn't recognize spoke to her and asked how she was doing as she waved at him when we passed by his patient's table.

Back to yesterday morning.  As we sat outside, enjoying each other's company, I read her a couple of poems from this week's issue of the New Yorker.  We weren't particularly impressed with either poem.  Mostly, she just laughed at the name of one of the authors.

Truly, it was one of those intervals I wish I could have frozen in time, so I could return to it in later years, when her conditions worsens or when she's gone.  Maybe I can look back at this post and remember that Saturday morning when, for a little while at least, my mom and sat together outside and I read poetry to her.  And she listened, and smiled.  And loved me.