My Parents
Recently several people I know have lost a parent and I find it very hard to say anything helpful. Daily, I miss them both. But I would be lying if I claimed I’d rather they were still alive in the world as it currently implodes, explodes, malfunctions, whatever the hell is happening. Also, life is easier without the constant worry about my mother who lived alone in her house after my father died until something in her brain went rogue and she accused me of kidnapping her and pulled a knife on her caregiver. After that it was a lock-up psychiatric place, memory care, a better memory care and then she died. All the time she just wanted to go home to the house she had designed for her and my father’s retirement.
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My Year So Far
2026 has been a clusterfuck both globally and personally. I feel uniquely unqualified to comment on the behavior of our government, so I’ll stick to the personal. January was meant to be my chance to spend time with my new granddaughter and to that end I agreed to cat sit in Chicago for two weeks. As soon as I settled into this glamorous mansion right by the Viagra Triangle so named because it is the hunting ground for older men seeking younger dates, I started to cough like a dying person, to cough like someone you would prefer to avoid. I was shunned by the new parents, chastised for trailing after them to sit at a separate table at Gibsons, gazing forlornly at the lump that was fast asleep in her stroller.
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Teaching the Invisible Man
Today, after yoga class, Stephanie, the beautiful woman who once cherished my infant son while I used the gym, told me she had six relatives die in the hurricane. I stare into her high-cheek boned face and try to recall if she had ever told me she was French Creole. One of them was bitten by a poisonous snake, two were washed from their house into Lake Pontchartrain, one had a heart condition, and the last was so badly bitten by an alligator that he did not survive.
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