-by Frank Macdonald
At a certain age there is more work to getting up in the morning than someone getting ready for their wedding. First, you lay there taking inventory of your body, a sort of mental CT-scan, if you wish. You do not want to look into yourself as deep as all that, but flexing fingers and toes, taking your pulse to assure yourself your heart is still beating, a general self-examination.
While you do this, you try to recall the dreams you know you had, but they have acquired the same habit as your waking mind, memory of them scatters like autumn leaves in the wind.
As for your waking memory, your whole life is becoming a grocery list left on the kitchen table while you wander around the Co-op trying to remember such exotic foods as bread and milk. There are a few in my age bracket who put their grocery list into the smart phone, a phone far too smart for them to be be carrying without a licence.
You see them standing in the middle of an aisle scrolling through their apps as though they have millions tied up on the stock market but are actually trying to find the grocery list that’s in there somewhere. But where?
But I am ahead of myself. I can’t go Co-op shopping yet. I’m still in my pyjamas, which I need to trade in for an outfit more suitable to the rest of the day. But before I forget, I need to go to the bathroom.
Did I already come here to pee? I did! So I’m here for another reason. A glance in the mirror wins me a smile back from my image. Right! I remember why I am here. Teeth! The me who smiled back at me did so without the aid of his high-priced dentures. Shouldn’t smile or eat without them.
It’s not simply a matter of slipping them back in.
Oh, no! The lower set fits me about as well as a suit borrowed from Giant McAskill. But there is an industry that exists whose only profitable purpose is to make cement safe enough for me to spread on my dentures. There! Ready for breakfast.
Hummm! Ready for breakfast, or should I get dressed first? Never know when a bill collector might knock on the door. If he’s here to take the shirt off my back I would prefer it wasn’t my pyjamas; I’ll need them later this evening when I go back to bed.
So back to the bedroom.
Did I see anyone yesterday who might remember what I was wearing? If not, then I could put on the same clothes I wore just to put off the laundry for another day. But I’m uncertain of my social interactions yesterday so I better not give someone something to talk about.
“Ah, poor Frank, he’s getting so old he was wearing the same clothes he wore yesterday.”
“The same underwear?”
“Well, I didn’t look that close, but I can tell you this, there was a time when I could have told you the size, colour and brand name…”
“Oh, you’re so bad!”
“Not now, but I’ve had my moments…”
So it’s a clean set of everything.
All this fussing around with everything has its purposes. One is to present to the world a solid argument against any suggestions that perhaps you should come under the care of of our social services. Oh, their services matter. But in matters of decisions, they should not matter as much as your knowledge of yourself, or what’s left of your knowledge of yourself.
In the Inverary Manor, for example, I have close friends who are well cared for there, and perhaps myself some day. But not today. I say that because the last time I visited a couple of friends in the Manor a nurse-looking woman caught me at the exit door putting on my boots and tried to guide me back to my room. “My room,” I told her, “is three blocks away.”
But that’s not the appointment I have today. I rifle through the hundred pages or so scattered across my kitchen table, looking for a scribbled hint of where I am going. I find it on the calendar, of all places: blood test at ICMH.
So I go out to start the car and discover that bedroom slippers are no defence against a week of cold rainfall.
Back in the house, I put the slippers in the oven…no, I didn’t turn on the oven! I know what can happen to a pair of slippers when you do turn the oven on! Then I go to my what we used to call pogey boots, huge green foot monsters that slip on as smoothly as glass slippers. Makes me feel like a princess.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I recall that the first purpose of this meticulous attention to the state of my dress was so that I could enjoy a handful of pills and a bowl of fruit. Sitting there waiting for the fog to evaporate enough from the windshield for me to see where I’m going, I have a growl in my stomach, calling for company.
Breakfast?
Did I or didn’t I?