Sam and I before the garage

I'm too lazy to go start Walker's computer, which has the majority of our photos on it.  I like this picture a whole bunch anyway.  My Dad chose words the way a Hasidic Jeweler chooses diamonds.  On the back of the photo, in a hand I used to describe as "seismographic" (jagged vertical and diagonal lines), dad wrote:

"Sam and I before the garage."

Mostly what I have from this flood is survivor guilt.  I have a new job that focuses on providing mental health support for disaster recovery workers who will cover a 10 state region and even muster to other parts of the U.S.  I'm trying to learn my job and all around me people are mucking out and helping each other in these small, really cool ways.  Our house and stuff are fine.  We didn't really consider flood plain issues when we bought our lot.  We can't take credit for choosing our location.  Got lucky.  I feel selfish sitting at a baseball game, but I'm really tired.  Between leaving Four Oaks, Diana dying, new job, and the disaster all around us, I'm just spent at the end of the day.  My body cries out for NAPS!

Mom's birthday was Friday.  After some consideration, I decided that what she'd really like was to be taken out for a cocktail.  I was correct.  We went to Beckett's and she had a glass of shiraz.  I had a shot of Laphroaig (sp?  Kev.  Go buy a bottle and tell me!) and a Bass.  We ordered mussels, cooked in wine and herbs and butter.  Yum.  We dribbled on ourselves.

Mom always tells me how she really wants to move, to get out of "that place" and find a little house.  She doesn't really need a car and she'd like to live where she can walk to things.  I talk about this a little and she won't back down or be distracted.  I go over the recent history of her discharge, the choices, the move, the need for assistance?

"Why?  I feel fine!"  Thankfully, she can't remember all the mistakes, miscues.  She feels like her old self.  Because of this, she remembers us.  Because of this, history must repeat itself, as we drag it, like a corpse, through the middle of an otherwise happy evening.

"I'm the only person you can talk to about this," I comment to her, and Mom smiles.  She's pleasant to everyone,  and a little distant.  She hasn't made any close friends like Ruth, her drinking buddy across the hall at Ridgeview.  For a minute, she realizes that we're doing this again, ruining our night.  She gathers herself and sips her wine and we talk about Caitlin and how independent she is.

She is seventy-two.  She thought she was seventy-two last year, and she remembered this when we talked about it, laughed, and agreed that this actually gives her two years at the same age.  A bargain.

"I'd like to live to be eighty,"  Mom said.  "Nobody in my family ever lived to be eighty."