Time in Victoria

So much for my vaunted calm, mom and I have already had another screaming argument.  It’s easier to be patient with strangers than with your mother who’s every move and word elicits a conditioned reflex that probably had its source in the womb.  Mom is capable of sitting in her plaid flannel pajamas on the stool of her vanity that has functioned as her desk for the last 25 years looking over papers and cards that have come in the mail for I don’t know how long, and I don’t intend to find out.  I walk into her room and suggest that we set a time for when we will leave.  It can’t be less than 45 minutes because it takes her more than that to prepare for the day, dress and put her face on, as she calls it.  I then go back to dad’s room, get ready to go and vent my frustrations on this laptop.  Yoga breathing just doesn’t do it; I’d hyperventilate before she finally hung her cane on the front door, so as not to forget it, as she frequently does, and sat down to put her boots on.  At 66, kids tire you out with their unstoppable activity and older people wear you down with their unbearable immobility.  The former make you feel old and the latter make you realize that you almost are, so you’d better get moving because time is and soon you won’t be able to.

Enough!  The sun just burst into the room.  It was really cool and rainy all yesterday and today started in the same way, but perhaps it will stay bright and I will walk by the ocean after mom and I shop for groceries, I drop her off at the hospital and come back to unpack and prepare dinner.  I have to say that when mom isn’t worrying bones to no purpose, she is spunky.  This morning as I was doing my physiotherapy exercises on the balcony, she arrived lugging a pail half full of water for the plants.  I helped her and then she started worrying again about how I was going to carry all the heavy groceries into the apartment.  I had to remind her that I am 25 years younger; she almost seemed surprised by the fact.  Ever since the time about 30 years ago when she returned from a trip somewhere south with a bikini for Cathy, Bill’s wife and I grant you about 5 years younger than I, and a bathing suit for me that was the same in everything but color as the one she had bought for herself, I’ve suspected that she’s slotted me into an age bracket so similar to hers that it’s hardly worth noting.  Enough!  For sure this time.

Dad has had a bit of real luck.  The people at the hospital have decided that rather than send him directly to the Aberdeen Rehab. Unit, they will keep him where he is, only moving him from the recovery to the rehab section of floor 6.  Now he’s in a room with a nice man named Steve, and he will be getting really good physio.  The exercise room that they have would be the envy of any health club.  He seems to be in better health and spirits every day but still worried about his ability to ever get moving.  He was nervous about going to the Aberdeen, but he may not have to.  As mom says, he didn’t walk well before the fall, so if he can just get back to that point, they can continue as they were for a while longer, or forever, in their apartment.

It’s one of those, ‘wait 5 minutes,’ days in Victoria today.  I’ve just returned from a walk along the shore that included: blue sky, sun, rain, wind, hail and merely grey.  Now I hear hail again tapping lightly on the window as I type.

A heron walking along the shore at low tide this afternoon

The Oak Bay Beach Hotel across the street from mom and dad's