Oranges, a Sweetness so Tart

While I was living with Mom during what has turned out to be the early days of her decline, she said to me: "Eat oranges. You know, eat oranges and citrus- they'll help burn the belly fat you're amassing. It's no good to carry belly fat, Dave." I was fixing us a dinner. One of the signs I now recognize as a signal that she was "losing her marbles" (as she had put it) was not only that she had been forgetting to eat, but that she had made no real effort to cook for me while I was checking-in on her back in early May. Mom would almost always be planning the next meal. If she hadn't been soliciting a request for the next night's supper while we were eating tonight's meal, she had something brewing in the crockpot in the morning while cooking up breakfast.

Lots of times I'd ask for a salad. A request for salad would sometimes get me a roast, broiled asparagus and brown rice. Mom knew healthy eating. Mom loved oranges.

I've met lots of the families that visit loved ones who share Mom's Adult Family Home. Today I visited with Lois's husband Myron. Lois and Mom would share lots of fundamental connectivity; they were both professional women, each of them with similarly advanced educational accomplishments and each from New York State. Neither women any longer have an ability to communicate in the convention of language, but hold in ephemeral reserve a connection through those who love them. Myron and I talked in reverent witness to our loved ones lives in action. Maybe they might not have been fast friends, but colleagues indeed no doubt. They would certainly have respected one another's status and maybe even have shared professional contacts. They might have even bumped-in to one another on a flight to Hawaii at one time, who knows?

Myron's Mother happens to have also achieved the same Duplicate Bridge Life Master status that Mom has. As Myron rose to leave to walk to the bus stop he mentioned purposefully- in the way that a person is entitled to after having shared personal anecdotes with a newfound soulmate- that he's 92 1/2 years old.

I'm 42 1/2.

The staff of Mom's home want to oblige her preferences for food and music and comfort. I told them she dislikes bananas, peanuts, peanut butter and cats. "Cats?" they say. "But we have many cats here!" So, I can keep the bananas at bay and the peanut products aside- but there's only so many cats I can shoo away, as for the rest I hope the staff ladies abide.

But I can eat oranges, for Mom.