Long Island

The old ladies (Mutti and Great Oma) are inside with Elisabeth. I am out on the front porch bathed in the Long Island breeze, beneath a cloudless sky. The shuffling sounds from within are a combination of Elisabeth’s attempts to attain domestic order and the competing geriatric chaos. It is an endless loop of forgotten moments. It is Elisabeth’s persistence. It is the squabble of retreaded motions of love and strain and concern. The “white noise” of the traffic on Stewart Avenue is punctuated, every fifteen minutes or so, by the wail of the Long Island Rail Road at the nearby crossings.

Mutti is complaining that she does not want a bath. She cannot be heard clearly from the porch but I can tell (mostly from Elisabeth’s end of the conversation) that that is the problem being worked on at that moment. Mutti doesn’t believe she has a problem with hygiene. It is not her fault but it is still a problem. She can not remember five minutes ago. She can not remember if she has had a shower or bath today or yesterday. Bathing is not among the small group of biologic urges to which she will automatically respond, those being-eating, urinating, defecating , sometimes sleeping and , of course, breathing and maintaining a flow of blood trough her veins and arteries. She might forget that she has prepared four variations of lunch. She might take out bread and cheeses for sandwiches, and then forget the sandwiches and begin to defrost three or four casseroles within one hour’s time…That is behavior you expect when she becomes hungry. But one need never fear that bathing will be overdone-or done at all. It is not one of the biologic imperatives and is, therefore, never done without the aid and urging of others. Even the smell of the body “aroma” is insufficient impetus for her to bathe. (It is overpowering when one first enters the sealed up atmosphere of the house. They insist that all the windows be closed, and all the doors locked). She is immune to her own odor, whether by acclimation or mental defect, but she is not without opinion on the matter of taking a bath when urged on by her daughter. She believes that she continues her life-long habit of cleanliness and she fights and complains when Elisabeth begins to prepare a sudsy, warm bath. She chafes at the thought (however fleeting) that she is dirty. That she needs her daughter’s aid in keeping clean. That she has not attended to her own most basic functions and maintenance. Just as she “knows” that she shops daily at the Key Food (she has not been to the Key Food in years). Just as she keeps the laundry clean and stacked neatly in the dressers for both herself and her mother (her daughters-Kathy and Elisabeth-shop and do the laundry and clean and scour every square inch of the house each week) and if she feeds the cat seven or eight times a day or forgets to feed it at all (the daughters take the cat to the ‘vet’ and it is to them that it owes it’s skinny little life!) Mutti’s life is one long illusion of self-sufficiency.

Come the afternoon on this gift-from-God day the windows of the house and basement will have been opened and the air exchanged, the sour for the fresh. The shelves of the refrigerator will have been cleaned of the rotten and fetid leftovers that Mutti and Oma cannot bear to discard. In place will be fruit and new bread and cake. In the freezer there will be fresh casseroles for the week, labeled Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, all the way to Saturday when fresh ones will magically appear again. The two old women will have emerged from their fragrant baths renewed and dressed in fresh clothing.

Elisabeth comes out and sits next to me on the porch. I noticed she has been limping a little bit. She “shooed” me out of the house a half hour ago while Mutti complained loudly from inside the little first floor bathroom where the water was filling the tub. Elisabeth loves to sit on the beach on beautiful days like this one. Instead she attends to the raving needs of the two blood relatives for whom she is named. Sitting for a moment in the sun, on the porch, she lays her head back and the rays strike her face squarely. She drinks in the warmth. She doesn't need me to remind her that a few more times around the earth and the sun’s slanted, weak rays will have given up their warmth to another winter. There will be ice and snow but Elisabeth will still be making the trip to Long Island.