I was having a regular day, you know, teaching my class while hoping my mom would stay docile and self-entertained, then the long stretch of the afternoon sitting in the sun, with her there, hoping she will not need too much, trying to fill up on outdoors, trying to do what I would normally do, just with her bigness her illness that keeps her next to me wherever I am, and sometimes it is too much all that importance I am to her even though it is what I want, at the same time, all the attention, and to matter.
I got to get out to ride while b watched her and then I came back and she's there so I blew the whole backyard with the blower like a hurricane, and I gave her a rake so she would pick up poop not with her hands and this little fledgling is trying to heft up this rake of horse of poop but you know what it'll make her strong. Then the sun is going down and I have to feed them all, and we go inside and it's a good night because the kids are in the kitchen and the dogs and my mom has been okay, even though she eats the chicken sandwich from the top down, layer by layer which is against sandwich rules.
Somehow the day is over and we're walking out to find her sweater because she's worried she put it somewhere weird and I tell her we keep an eye on her stuff and she says God is good and I say Julie is good and then she suddenly starts crying and I stop and suddenly there is my regular mom crying and her regular voice saying "I can't do things the way I used to" "I see you doing so much" "I don't know how you're doing it" and I hug her and I'm crying because there's my real mom being a real person knowing something is so wrong and not being able to -- like she's holding up a handkerchief and here comes a tidal wave.
She knows something is wrong.
The moon is full and illuminating this one powerful moment where I'm glad I have my mom and I'm glad for all this tedium and hard work every day because I'm getting this one moment where she is wrapped up with me and still mine. I tell her mom you might not be able to still do everything but you still have me.
I see what I am doing, I feel her all wrapped up. I am doing something right. Not right by the supreme court or by the law of daughters or by my god Bernie Sanders, right because she matters to me and it's not fair to throw people away just because it's hard to take care of them. She's still in there, crouched under her broken brain and poking a stick out through the hard rocks at the moonlight. She can see through that one sliver and she gave what she had to me, all rushing out in that instant, emotion and arms all bursting out. I do understand that, feeling and touch, that's our language.
I held onto that hug a while. Then we kept walking in and it helped me to be patient getting her on the toilet and getting her teeth done and getting her to take off her shoes and not wear them in the bed. She got a moment of mean viper aiming out at me, saying she would sleep in her shoes, gripping the shoes with her toes and I saw that it was because if she took her shoes off she might never find them again. Instead of being mad I understood, I promised her they would be right there by the bed when she woke up.
I can never tell how it'll be tomorrow, both horrible and, at some points, hilarious. But I had a moment in the moonlight.
