Nothin' Could be Finah

I'm just back from four days in North Carolina, visiting my 88-year-old widowed Aunt Louise. She doesn't have a computer, and even if she did, she wouldn't be online, so I had little opportunity to add to my blog. I apologize to those who made the trip to mylittlefarm in vain.

My aunt had a wonderful marriage to my Uncle Carlton. They absolutely adored each other for the whole 54 years they were together. He was six years younger than her. They met at a dance in ... I want to say Bangor, but I'm not sure. It was one of those deals where he spotted her and decided then and there that she was the woman for him. She says she was in her thirties when that happened.

With that in mind, I made an impulse buy at Target yesterday, Saturday -- "When Harry Met Sally." The previous night we'd watched "Narnia" and she fiddled with the volume all through it, driving me almost insane, and she didn't follow the plot very well, either. I thought we'd have greater success with "Harry/Sally." I thought she would really relate to those aging happy couples interspersed throughout the movie.

Alas, the show had barely begun when she fell asleep. She only woke up if a telephone rang in the movie; she thought it was her own phone. Then she'd watch for a couple of minutes, the volume zooming up and back down like a little boat on ocean swells (and I'm not exaggerating when I say it made me slightly seasick). The next thing I'd know, she'd be fast asleep again.

It wasn't the most exciting four days of my life, but we both got a lot of rest and we enjoyed comparing pills (hers are mostly medications; mine are mostly vitamins). I made a cool birthday cake for her son, my cousin Kevin, who turned 48, and he never even came over to pick it up. I told her she should call up a few of her friends and invite them to share it with us. The hell with Kevin! But she said Kevin told her to box it and freeze it and he'd come over next week. Hmmmm. I'll believe it when I see it. But I helped her stow it for the day hell freezes over.

I wish I had a picture of that cake to put on here. It was shaped like a fish and had M&Ms for scales. It was supposed to have NECCO wafers, but who sells those any more? Nobody in Wake Forest, N.C., I can tell you that!

Aunt Louise jokes a lot about having CRS -- "can't remember s---" -- but it clearly frustrates her. She's a pretty smart lady, and has a great sense of humor, but she is bummed that her mind doesn't work so well now. It was hard for me, too, for example, when she'd try to remember where her doctor's office is -- all I can say is, it's a good thing we left the house 45 minutes early!