Things change.

While I was on Maui, Mother went to the hospital. Joannie thought she would die soon and I planned to go straight to Texas from Maui.

As she has done many times in the past, Mother rallied and was taken back to the nursing home. When I first saw her, she had been wheeled out in the sunshine of the nursing home porch to greet me.

She was very frail and feeble. Her speech was hard to understand. For a few days, my assignment was to spend a few hours with her mid-day and feed her lunch. Each day, she became stronger until she was eating lunch by herself and we were engaging in some wonderful conversations. Precious time. I did not know how precious.

Joannie has worked very hard to make Mother’s environment interesting and stimulating. Calendars and pictures were posted around the room.

She had a headset for listening to television shows and Joannie wrote the times and channels for favorite shows on post-its. A favorite is Jeopardy and Joannie was usually there to watch it with her.

Mother always wanted to know what she was going to wear each day of the week and Joannie put coordinated outfits together on hangers, down to matching socks and a scarf for her neck for every day of the week. She asked Joannie again and again at the end of the day to remind her what she was going to wear the next day. I think this was perhaps to keep Joannie there as long as possible before saying good night. Mother’s long-time housecleaner Ann picked up Mother’s laundry each week and took it home to wash and iron.

Then, unexpectedly, the sky fell. With no warning, we got to the nursing home one morning to be told that there could no longer be any visitors. We understand that, but the care at that facility without family and friends pitching in is sadly lacking. Without the stimulation and care of others, the meager staff there is not able to provide more that basic care Mother has deteriorated greatly. Her clothes, lovingly chosen by Joannie and cared for by Ann, are now tossed into a huge industrial washer and dryer.

Of course, this is heartbreaking for Joannie who now visits with Mother as best she can several times a day through a screened and closed window. Sometimes Mother is able to reach and hold her phone during these visits.

This is how I said goodbye to her.

Down the hallway, another resident starved to death this week because she simply refused to eat without the food her family provided and fed her.

And that was that.

Since we could no longer be with Mother, Joannie and I took some time to do two of our favorite things before I changed my flights and flew home early:

Ride around and explore the country side:

And eat Mexican food!

Then I hurried home to shelter in place at 1880.

Occasionally in life things are so mind-boggling with their immensity that I think we have to try to look at them from a different perspective.

Remember the drawing class where you were asked to draw something upside down?

I have this clock that Meg brought me from her South American adventure. I love it!

But it’s very disconcerting. It runs counterclockwise.

What if we tried to look at things this way?

It’s crazy-making. When I’m studying a map, I actually need to turn it so that the top is north-facing and then I need to face north too.

But how do we reframe a pandemic? Maybe think of it as a war.

Specifically WWII into which I was born in 1943.

Everything in the country was focused on that war. In fact, everything in the world was.

There was a dearth of healthy men between the ages of 18 and 40. Everyone had someone at the front. Families lived in terror that their loved ones would not be coming home. Many of these men did indeed die in action. My own father, a very young lieutenant, was wounded in action while leading his platoon through the jungle in the Philippines. He was patched up and sent back in.

Women were doing jobs outside their homes, working in factories which were now manufacturing materiel. Food and clothing were rationed. Front yards were turned into vegetable gardens. Socks were knitted for soldiers. Socks at home were darned.

And after the war, things were never like they were before.

The pandemic is like a war that we lost because we had no materiel at the ready, no ships, no planes. And now we are trying to get back to center. Like a war, we are waiting to learn who died in action. We will all know someone.

And my part is to stay inside my house. I wish I could go work in a factory making PPE. Or that I was a virologist working on a vaccine. This not doing anything to help is more crazy-making than the fear of getting sick and dying.

Women during WWII liked to quote Milton’s Sonnet Nineteen: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Well, screw that.

I’ve been trying for a month now to write my post about my trip to West Texas. I just can’t get there. Two months ago, I was getting organized to go to Maui. Then I was re-organizing to go to Texas. And now, it’s mid April. On the one hand, it seems like yesterday that I got off the plane and Meg put a beautiful lei she had made around my neck. On the other, it seems like that happened in another life altogether. We had a world-wide cæsura and now we can’t remember what the meter of our poem was.

I like to post here in chronological order, but the past six weeks, the world began to spin out of orbit.

I left Maui and then dashed off to Texas because Mother had had a down turn. I never fly anywhere unless it’s impossible to drive there in the time allowed.

Saw a couple of interesting amenities in airports.

In Phoenix a doggie restroom:

In Midland, a business that never got any business even before the plague:

Well, there are a lot of people there who wear cowboy boots. Mostly oilfield workers going home for the weekend. Maybe they like to show up with shiny boots.

It mostly had to do with chickens and very fresh eggs.

Here I am feeding my grand-chicks.

Fritz, the magnificent rooster, who is on a weird neighbor’s hit list, is very protective of his ladies.

Egg production from six hens produced six eggs every day, so most days breakfast was a big event.

I didn’t get a picture of a couple of big Dutch Babies but other offerings concluded with macadamia nut crepes on my last morning in paradise.

We did enjoy some wonderful food out. In Kihei at Nalu’s on the way home from OGG, an amazing cheeseburger which is always my test of how good a kitchen is:

and delicious posole on the evening of a street fair and a movie at a tiny venue:

I had researched tres leches cake way in advance and had learned that the best on the island was from Roasted Chiles. We went back on my birthday and got some for takeout since my entire time there was spent celebrating Meg’s and my birthdays.

In Wailuku, some interesting dishes at a Puerto Rican place. The place had formerly been Thai so the decor was very eclectic.

And for my birthday, a drive up to my favorite restaurant on Maui, the Hali’i Maile where I pigged out on Beverly Gannon’s paniolo ribs.

I have her barbecue sauce recipe. It has sixteen ingredients. If I can ever have company again, I’ll make it for you.