“MORE ON THIS TIDY STORY AS IT UNFOLDS
“Here are your sheets, Mom, warm from the dryer. I’ll make us some lunch while you fold.”
Elsie knew not to do everything for her mother because getting her mother active would help her blood circulation and help dispel the swelling in her feet. She dropped the armload of laundry on the ottoman beside her mother’s lounger.
“I can’t fold sheets alone. Help me with these.”
Of course. What was she thinking? Elsie turned to grasp a couple corners of her mother’s queen-sized fitted sheet. “I need to relearn how to fold these things, anyway.”
Mother and daughter pulled and halved, tucked one corner inside another, and brought the ends together like partners in a square dance. Suddenly, Gail growled, “Oh!” Fed up, she grabbed the sheet from Elsie and wadded the whole thing into a roll. “I don’t remember how to do these things! Just stuff them into the linen closet, will you?” She laughed.
“Okay. I was hoping you’d teach me how to do it.”
“If you don’t know by sixty, daughter, it’s too late! My mom was always so good with linens. You should’a seen her linen closet. It was like the linen closets at Macy’s, all lined up. Mom took pride in her housekeeping, but I just don’t care anymore.”
Elsie was noticing how she no longer cared about much of anything either. The proverbial rug had been pulled out from under her, and though she went through the motions of taking Gail’s vitals, dispensing her meds and massaging her feet, they often had little to say to one another.
“Mom, why do you think the Bible says so often to remember this or remember that?”
“Does it?” Gail gasped, “—talk about remembering?”