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Brewer
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Strangers to our AgeChenise is my bus stop buddy. She had met me exactly three times at the bus stop on the way to school. This means, in her eyes, that I am no longer a stranger and she can talk to me now. "Do you know how to fix the time on a watch?" she asks. "Yes," I respond. "Then can you fix mine?" she asks again,
holding out the wrist with the watch. The wrist is very tiny and the watch
a little big. I set her watch exactly ten minutes slower than mine. My
watch is always ten minutes fast, because, while I may know how to fix
watches, I do not know how to fix my tendency to be late. When someone's baby cries in a restaurant or a theater, we think "They should have left them at home, with a sitter." When our in-laws or parents scold us as though we were still children, we are desperate to get away. I wonder if it is natural to spread out from the inconvenience of family obligation, to stick to people of our own generation, with the same complaints and tastes that we have - even though we learn nothing new from them. I've been told that people in the middle east see America as a vast sea of single mothers. And, though we are not all single mothers, we are a very singular people. My grandmother would not come and live with me. She said she was too independent and I really wanted her, but I had to respect her wishes. My mother-in-law is a great pain in the ass. We live several hundred miles away, but David calls her every week without fail. She talks for about 45 minutes straight and David says 'Uh-huh' a lot, as pleasantly as he can. She has lost the ability to listen to others, if she ever had it. But the last time I was with her, I tried to set my frustration aside and see what there was to learn from this woman who had lived so many more years than I had. She is very much like a child. She wants to be loved, to go for walks and see animals in the forest. She crosses her legs every so often so that she doesn't pee along the way. She holds my hand and chatters incessantly. Not unlike Chemise. She keeps trying to tell everyone to slow down. Ok, so if she's yours she's a darling and if she's mine she's a pain in the ass. But maybe that's normal too. Maybe we need to learn extra patience for those closest to us because we have expectations for them that they don't live up to, and because, at the end of the day, we're stuck with them. She is still welcome in my home should she ever want or need to be. She will never go into a nursing home. She will live with us. Because I don't know what she may teach me in the last years of her life. But I'm going to allow myself to find out. by Sarah Byam |
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