It’s been a minute since I’ve updated THE RIGHT TO FOLLY, this diary of my struggle to get my mother to accept help. Partly because, thankfully, things have smoothed out, partly because I am out of the country, and partly because I've shriveled a bit in my creative output. I’ve been tired…
…
19 August 2025:
Yes, I am leaving the country for seven months, and yes, my mother is unhappy. I made one final trip to Santa Cruz, both to check on the details of her life which I now manage, and to offer hugs and reassurance.
“Why?” she again asks. “Why so long?”
“What about me?” she again demands.
“I’m not happy about this,” she again declares.
She is watching a baseball game and says all this during commercials for trucks and deodorant. When I was a kid she never watched sports. Now she watches the SF Giants because, she says, it eats up a big chunk of time. Days are long. She is lonely. It crushes me. And I must remember that the life choices which landed her here are not mine to carry. I mean, they are logistically, but emotionally, they are not my responsibility. She built her life. And of course this is easier typed than lived.
What we did on my visit—went to lunch everyday, to her favorite restaurant. We sat in the ‘greenhouse’ which honestly felt more like a swiftly converted garage, a plastic skylight with fake ivy stapled up the wall. On our final day, at the table across from us, a woman sat with her aged father. She with coiffed red hair, his gray hair sticking up in tufts like a freshly hatched eaglet. They’d ordered hamburgers and cokes. This man was not bright eyed, not taking in the world. His meaty hand rested loose around his burger which was slipping out from the bottom of the bun. His daughter, with her back to me, dipped her head like a drinking bird each time she took a bite of her lunch.
My mother was bright-eyed with wonder, as if she’d forgotten all about restaurants. As if we weren’t here just yesterday. “The waitress is really nice!” she said. “I’m ordering a steak sandwich and wine.”
“Excellent,” I said. My mother is an aspirational orderer so I chose a side salad knowing she would not make it through the steak and fries. The wine… no problem.
Halfway through our meal, the man across from us simply tipped over. “He had a procedure today,” his daughter cried. Two business men at a nearby table jumped up to right him. I rushed for the server, calling out to dial 911. “No don’t. He would hate that,” his daughter grabbed for my arm. She tried to walk her father, who was quite tall, out of the restaurant. When he nearly collapsed in the dish pit, I was in the right place to jam a chair beneath him.
Now we were clustered in a narrow hall, clogging up the lunch service, the man semi-conscious, his daughter kneeling before him, the business dudes and I in a half-circle around the chair until the EMTs arrived.
And my mother, who’d tossed her napkin onto her plate of barely touched food, had ordered a second glass of wine, and was rapidly slugging it back. “I feel so sorry for him,” she said, flicking her wineglass with her fingernail. Ting. Ting. Ting. “So sorry. So sad.”
Wonder and joy had leaked from the day. Perhaps my mother had drawn a line from the man, now on a gurney with an oxygen mask over his face, to her, recently on her own gurney when she fell in her home. I don’t know if she felt fragile or was able to pull off the hat trick of denial.
“Let’s go.” She fumbled, her shoe catching on a chair leg. When I bent to help her I saw that her shoes weren’t a match. The only similarity was the color. “So what!” she said when I pointed it out, and I supposed she was right. An old man had just left the restaurant in an ambulance. Shoes? Who cares! And then she stumbled again, and I caught her by the elbow.
My mother couldn’t stand on her own. Yes she had her cane which she mostly carries around stuck beneath her arm like a baguette. And yes, she couldn’t walk. I wished the EMTs were still there. She leaned heavily against me, I squeezed her arm, worried about her falling, worried about leaving a bruise, worried about leaving the country. In the parking lot she tilted far forward, walking on her toes, as if tipping into her next chapter. She touched each car as she passed. Stopped. Somehow we managed to get her in the car, back to her place, in her bed.
“You cannot drink anymore. You just can’t. From now on I won’t go with you if you insist on a drink.”
She pulled a pillow over her head and I texted her circle of friends.
I took Ellen to lunch at Cafe Cruz, she ordered a glass of wine, and then a second, which wasn’t great, and after she literally could not walk. I had to nearly hoist her to the car. Be warned. It was terrifying.
…
There is a song I love, by a singer my mother loved when I was a child.
And I could sleep the day away
And it won’t cause too much sorrow
Not tomorrow
So tonight this cat will play
She’s got a small day tomorrow
Believe me, my mother played. She lived a life full of friendships and lovers, big feelings—delight and worry. (Just ask her to tell her Duke Ellington story!) So perhaps, her small day is today.
As always, amazing writing. and such loving care for your mom!