No more twinkle in my mother’s eyes
Well, during the downward spiral that mom went through – the reaction to new high blood pressure medicine that almost caused a stroke, then the flu, followed by the depression, leading to the reaction to Zoloft the doctor prescribed for her, ending in the grand fall down the stair – it turns out she cracked her tailbone and is now on bedrest. I forced her to get out of the bed today because she looked puffed up like a poisoned dog from lying in that bed with the heating pad for the last 72 hours.
She’s only 71 years old and she seems ancient – in such ill health – it makes me want to do Pilates twice a day. But the truth is it is the cigarettes, the drinking, and the stress that takes it toll on her. She carries the world on her shoulders as if Atlas told her to hold it for him for a minute. Her eyes that used to glisten with a wink and a smile now look hunted and rheumy.
I keep remembering that woman who passed me by years ago when Steve and I were a Cafe Puccini on Columbus in North Beach. We were sitting in the window and I was facing her as she walked passed the cafe. She was possibly in her 70s and maybe upward of that, but she was wearing jeans and white tennis shoes and she looked almost like Judi Dench and she had a twinkle in her eyes. Much like when I ran into Herb Cain and he had a twinkle in his eye.
I want to keep my twinkle till I die.