“I know you don’t live here ’cause that dog’s too big.” I just got in trouble for walking my dog, Jayla, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, on the streets of a senior living community. Tonight was a warm summer evening, and I was feeling nostalgic. My mom used to live in a similar community comprised of short streets of pre-fabricated mobile home after mobile home, with fairies, religious statues, and wind chimes tinkling in the small strip of front yards beneath two big windows, carports on one side, and little patios on the other. They kept them up well and some of those pre-fabs were bigger than a few of the houses we lived in while I was growing up.
My mom was surrounded by a lot of nice people in that community. Next door lived a fireman with his wife and little girl who checked on mom and her second husband frequently, and came over more than a few times to help him up and back to the chair or bed from which he tumbled. The fireman’s wife was the one who called me when my mom had a stroke. The neighbors on the opposite side were a nice Italian couple in their sixties. I remember that woman made the best trifle, all layers of scrumptious ladyfingers, custard, and fruit, generously infused with some type of alcohol, always beautifully displayed in a large transparent glass bowl. There was a man in his late fifties or sixties who stood in his front yard every morning (somehow he scored a big lot with a nice grassy border) wearing his bathrobe, smoking a cigarette, and waving to whoever passed by. Of course there was always a grumpy old man in a golf cart tooling around, complaining to whoever would listen about the absence of available guest parking spots, but for the most part the community was friendly, and they enjoyed living there.
Throughout her whole life, my mom loved to host parties; dinner parties, birthday parties, weddings, baby showers, even funeral receptions. I learned how to cook from my mom and she taught me everything from the intricacies of formal dinner parties (if I never see chicken ala king again it’ll be too soon) to how to bake and decorate a cake shaped like a bunny rabbit (lots of coconut). Using the silver and china was a must to show respect for your guests. And no-one was ever going to convince her that cheese fondue had gone out of style. One year for her 80th birthday, I rented the community’s clubhouse and threw her a big party. Relatives from all over the country arrived on that hot July day and we had a grand old time. She looked so pretty in her gauzy top and flowery skirt, drinking champagne with her shoes off. I took a photo the next day of her sitting on the carpet in their guest room with a coy smile on her face, completely surrounded by a big bunch of mostly-deflated colorful latex balloons left over from the party.
The community I visited tonight didn’t have a pond like my mom’s did. I remember her taking my nephew down there when he was small and the two of them throwing bread crumbs at the ducks, and how we all sat out on the grass on blankets on the banks of the pond watching the fireworks from a nearby amusement park on the fourth of July. I remember jogging the streets of the community when I lived with her, helping to take care of her and her husband while he was dying of cancer. And her leaving this earth just four months later. I remember talking to her one night in her hospital bed as she lay there, unresponsive, telling her not to worry, that I would take care of everything. I remember her dying that very cold January night on my birthday. I remember having to pack up her home, keeping a few cherished items and having to distribute the rest of her belongings to my sister and other assorted scavengers, and finally sell it.
