As I sit here writing this, it is pouring outside. It is so
RARE that it rains hard here that I videotaped a sample.
It's funny how (and why) memories embed themselves in your head.
Whenever it rains...every. single. time....I am immediately transported back to a
rainy day in San Francisco, when I was living at home, and probably in the last year or so
of grammar school.
We lived on one of the steeper streets in the city. Not
"the" steepest (that honor belonged to the hill around the corner from our flat)
and I was in grammar school before automatic transmission, power brakes and all that good
stuff. When I was learning to drive, my father would not let me get my license
until I could parallel park on the hill in our standard transmission car. I
was a whiz. Nowadays, they have changed the street to all diagonal parking.
Wimps.
But one of the fun things to do on a rainy day was to watch people
try to drive up the hill. If you ever heard Bill Cosby's early recordings, he had a
bit about driving in San Francisco and about barely making it to the to of a very steep
hill and finding a stop sign at the top. That was our street. You got to the
top of the hill and had to stop and I can't tell you how many cars couldn't hold their
cars at the stop sign, especially in the rain, and would back down to the bottom of the
hill and take another route. The lucky ones backed down; the unlucky ones slid
down, their cars out of control.
Our living room had a big bay window with a "window seat"
on which our TV lived, but there was space on either side to sit. I loved to sit
with my back propped up against the TV, my feet curled up under me, and watch the cars
struggling to make it up the hill while the rain poured down.
When I moved out of the flat I always loved being in a place where
there was a roof on which the rain beat hard. I loved to fall asleep listening to
the sound of the rain on a roof. Now that I sleep on the couch, there is a whole
floor between me and the roof, so I can only hope to fall asleep to the sound of rain if
it is pelting down sideways and hitting the window.
I also love the sound of the rain on the roof of a car, but I'm not
that crazy about heavy rain because it's scary to drive when you can't see clearly --
especially when the daredevils on the road think they can see and are driving as
if it were mid-afternoon on a sunny day.
This rain isn't going to last. They have issued flood warnings
for parts of Yolo County, but not where we live. It would have to be a major network
flood for us to be affected. Rain never lasts all that long and may even be gone by
the time I get this posted, but I sure enjoyed it, however briefly.
Things move forward slowly with plans for my mother. Two days ago she was furious with me, accusing me of charging things on her bank account which caused an overdraft, though I reminded her I have no access to her bank account and that she herself had given Covell Gardens permission to charge on her account. She never did believe me, but finally decided she was just "stupid" and apologized. But today she brought it all up with Ed again and he got her calmed down, but an hour later she called him back and argued with him when he told they had already discussed this an hour ago. Again, she just said she guessed she was just stupid.
When she talked with me 2 days ago, she told me that it was all moving too fast for her, that she didn't think anything had been decided that she thought we were going to get together and have a discussion about it. I reminded her that we had that discussion here in Davis and that she had signed the papers to move in. She has no memory of that.
My cousin told me she had spoken with my mother, who told her that she guessed that this was going to be the chapter of her life with me, and that it would be nice to be able to see me so often when she moves, but she doesn't remember that.
She also doesn't remember that Tom and Laurel are taking the dishes and was thrilled when I told her that they would be coming to pack them up. It's kind of like Alzheimers (but isn't, the doctor says)...you get to experience the joy of good news over and over again because you don't remember when you heard it before!
I know that it's all coming at her too fast, which just points to the need for getting it done as soon as possible. Things are going to be confusing whether we move her this month or 6 months from now and prolonging it is only going to increase her stress, which is increasing her memory difficulties.
I hang on to the hope that once she settles in and gets used to the routine of life in her new place that she will stop worrying about "all this crap" because it will all be out of her sight (and will be our problem to deal with!) and she can start making new friends and concentrating on the fun things that she is able to do instead of worrying about getting her place cleaned up.
I am going down to her house on Wednesday, because I took last week off. I'm bringing boxes and I'm going to have her start going through a room or two to decide what she wants to bring with her and trying to get her to let go of everything else. Leaving the boxes there, visible, will, I hope, help ease her into "moving mind."
Maybe.
No matter what happens, it's going to be uncomfortable for everyone. Please, dear God, let it be over soon!
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