Sagepaper

Monday through Wednesday I spent the late afternoons and evenings "senior sitting." I have a 90-year-old grandmother, and an 83-year-old great aunt. They live together at my father's house. They have a paid care-taker, but she has been ill this week. Dad is normally home on Tuesdays, but had an important meeting to attend. So, I was the pinch-hitter.

I smoke entirely too much when I am over there. There are two primary reasons for that. First, I can smoke in the house. I do not smoke in my own house. Second, I get nervous and worried about how to talk to them. These two sisters are very different. It is not easy to do something with them which will be engaging for both of them.

I think I found the answer to the second problem. The first night, I came prepared with a bunch of jokes from the Internet. I didn't bring enough, so I started reading them Reader's Digest jokes. The second night, Dad's meeting came up suddenly, and I was unprepared. I don't remember why the subject came up, but I told them the story of Trotsky. They were very interested.

On Wednesday, the caretaker was still ill, and I had to rush after an appointment to get there in time to sit with them. I was upset and worried. I have fragile lungs, and had just spent two nights in a row smoking like a chimney. I didn't know if my lungs could take three nights in a row. I was completely out of ideas. I had no plan for interacting with them, and thought I had already exhausted the possibilities for the time being.

We had caught up on some news before my telling them about Trotsky. There were no new significant news developments that I knew about. Asking them what was going on flopped. They hadn't seen any news that day. I told them my husband wanted to see a late movie after dinner, but I wasn't sure what might be available that we hadn't seen.

I said we were keenly interested in seeing the new Harry Potter movie, but that I didn't think it was out yet. They didn't know about Harry Potter. I told them how Harry Potter had become so popular, and about how adults were really enjoying the stories, too. Aunt J wanted to know if it was just about some little boy. I told them the story of Harry Potter up to his arrival at Hogwarts. There was enough interest that I stopped and told them I would come read to them. Besides, it was dinner-time.

I did not eat with them. I was waiting to eat with my husband, before possibly catching a late movie. The explanation for my just keeping them company through dinner led to another surprisingly easy way to talk to them. I wanted to know how the new War of the Worlds movie I saw compared with the original broadcast and 1950's movie.

I asked if they remembered how War of the Worlds ended, saving humanity from the invasion. Neither of them did, in fact, neither had heard the initial broadcast nor seen the 1950's movie. I told them I would go ahead and spoil that story for them, since they were unlikely to get to the theater themselves. So I told them the story of War of the Worlds.

It was sometimes difficult to tell if Grandma N was listening. She has been very depressed and withdrawn lately. She does not make eye contact much, but she is hard of hearing and tends to position her head for optimal hearing. She falls asleep in that position, too, though. I was pleased, though, that she made short, but relevant and insightful statements at the end of each thing I discussed. She was listening!

Now, we have the makings of a match made in heaven. I am a born story teller. In fact, in my cosmos, it is okay for something bad to happen to me, as long as it makes a good story. If I had a flat tire, and pulled into a convenient place, and changed the tire without incident, I would be very unhappy about it.

On the other hand, there was a time my roommate and I followed a deteriorating dirt road down the side of a mountain in West Virginia. The road turned into a dry stream bed, and we had no hope of turning around -- it was too narrow. Our hopes waned as we began driving down steps in the stream bed. Even if we could turn around, we would have to move some considerable rocks to get back out.

Finally, we got to a ford across a medium-sized, swift moving stream. Upon evaluation, it was clear that my little Toyota SR5 Sport coupe was not going to make it across the river. There was, however, enough room to turn around with a lot of backing-and-filling. We started back up the stream bed and went to our first impasse.

I got out and got some tools from the trunk that I thought would help us. I went forward to examine the rock, and wanted another tool from the trunk. My roommate said the trunk was closed, so she needed me to get it. I got a lump in my throat that fell through my heart and stomach and into my ankles. I had locked the keys in the trunk.

Believe it or not, that is just the introduction. The real story starts from that moment when I locked my keys in the trunk. Here's the point, though: I would rather have that event in West Virginia than the ho-hum tire change. Most folks aren't like that. If they had a choice, they would take the simple tire change over the predicament in Somewhere, West Virginia. (My roommate had been upset that we were lost long before we took that dirt road. She soon lost interest in where we were, since, in her mind, we were never going home again anyway.)

Anyway, everyone in my family is sick of my stories, dislikes my intensity, and is too wrapped-up with other things too listen. My dog knows most of my biography. Here, though, are two potential victims -- they LIKE stories. They are used to the good old days when the family would gather in the living room around the radio and listen to stories. There is enough of a generational difference that I actually get higher ratings than the television.