Mom Flies to Texas

Mom was in a good mood when I woke up. She and James were already preparing for the flight to Texas. The medication had worked. She wasn't quite normal yet, but she was much better. There would be no need to worry about if she would panic on the flight. I drove home, hoping everything would turn out all right.

Mom's Medication

The biggest problems with Mom was that she hadn't taken her medication for several weeks. We didn't know what she had done with her pills. The only way for us to get her medication was for someone to track down the doctor who prescribed them to her when she was in the hospital and get a new prescription. Our phone calls to that hospital, Chapman Medical Center in the City of Orange, and to the doctor himself yielded nothing but messages that the doctor was out to lunch or unavailable. I decided to drive to Chapman and make them pay attention to me until I got the prescription. It turned out that the doctor had his own office in Costa Mesa. After I drove around in the summer heat and traffic for hours, I met the good Dr. Alva and got the prescription. More hot driving and I was back in Sun City at Best Pharmacy, filling the prescriptions.

It took a little persuasion, but Mom eventually took the medication. The first one made her quiet. At first, it was a nice change from all the manic behavior, but she was scary quiet. She took a chair outside and sat in the driveway under the night sky, saying nothing, almost catatonic. I sat on a landscape wall, watching her. After an hour or so of this, I helped her stand up, leading her back into the house, feeling like I was teaching her to walk again, maybe a bit like she way she once taught me how to walk. Later, she woke up from that zombie state. James convinced her to take the last medication for the night.

Looking After Mom

I drove for two hours to take care of my mother. A neighbor had complained to the police that she was letting gas from her stove fill up her house and was using her microwave oven, making the neighbor think that Mom was about to blow up her house. Two sherrif's deputies were there when I arrived. They told me about what was happening until a social worker from adult protective services showed up. Mom was, in her own words, "out of touch," but with the way she was worrying about losing her keys and all the ways people could break into her house and whether the power company would do something to make her computer blow up, she was really in more serious condition than that. I stayed with her for the next couple of nights, waiting for my brother, James, to fly in from Texas to take care of her affairs and move her back there with her.

Writing In the Park

Sitting on an iron bench
At the corner of the park,
I look at the statue of Amelia Earheart
Holding up a propellor.
Should I write about
The racist kids who beat me up
When I was small?
Cars at the stoplight grumble and roll,
Drowning out my thoughts.
The sun is bright, but
A tree covers me with shade.
Should I write about that woman who fell for me
And trashed me when I couldn't fly
Around the world to see her?
An insect crawls across the paper.
A horn honks.
A man sleeps on the grass nearby,
His blankets and clothes in a shopping cart.
And what about those dreams of wealth,
And that golden statue, all that fame?
When will I see that?
The paper flutters in the wind.
I hold it down.
I haven't given up yet.
I'm glad to see
The yellow and orange carnations
Growing around Amelia
In plots with little fences.
I'm glad to feel
The cool summer morning,
Glad for wide green grass
And two dogs smiling as
They stick their heads out of a car window.
This is good enough for now.
I'll read this later
And be glad again.