And she was being fascinating. Perky and pretty, she sat up in bed, alternately exclaiming and furrowing her brow at a National Geographic documentary about the Ganges. All sorts of creatures Mom did not recognize went tromping into the Ganges up to their gazoos.
"Look at that thing. What is that thing?" she said.
"Crocodile."
"Will you look at that? What is that?!"
"Elephants."
Yes, Mom, I thought, yes. How interesting you are. Knit, knit, knit.
Leggy storks flapped into trees.
"Those are beautiful birds," she said.
Fascinating, I thought, she's forgotten elephants but not birds. Fascinating. Deep.
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Imagine a 60-year-old woman whose friends are all 85 or 90 or 85 or 90 and demented. So many days, Sunny's in the front room of the home with her cheek propped on her fist because someone has been taken to the emergency room or someone has fallen or someone has died. Tedious needy old ladies who mumble endlessly or stare with round sad eyes without speaking attach themselves to her and crowd their chairs close to hers.
As you might imagine, she is a source of news. The aides are all terrified of her.
And she's Mom's protector, alert to missing socks and coverlets allowed to become dirty and teeth going unbrushed. So when Sunny announced she wanted to show me her little photo album, I angled myself to glance from Mom to Sunny's photos.
Mom went on trying to decode the Ganges, but without my direct attention, she said less and less.
Sunny was, "Here's a photo of my cousin at his wedding."
Villagers who boat on the Ganges had gathered up a little fleet and paddled to a spiky mangrove forest to slice half moons of honeycomb out of trees. They pacified the bees with smoke.
"Here we are with my cousin's good friend," Sunny said.
"They need the honey," I said. "It's important for their economy."
A tiger with huge feet came padding past the camera, and we heard that 100 villagers a year are killed by tigers.
"Here's my cousin's pastor and his wife," Sunny said.
"The tigers want the sugar," Mom said.
Knit, knit, knit. Smile at Mom. Look at cousins. "They want the sugar." Knit, knit.
Page after page of cousin's friends later, "They want the sugar," Mom said, and I realized it was suddenly. She had fallen silent, and 20 minutes had evaporated.
The Ganges was gone, replaced by Rick Steves somewhere in Europe. Europeans were walking on shiny streets.
"Here's my other cousin's pastor and his wife and their neighbor," Sunny said.
"They are after the sugar," Mom said.
I looked at my knitting. A mess of dropped stitches.
Sunny had reached the last of her photos, and was starting to work backward through them. I gave Mom my best direct and rueful smile, hoping she would see me trying to draw her back out.
She grinned, but simply in response.
Just then in came the aides with Mom's lift. It was get outta there time.
I said, "Time for dinner, see you ladies tomorrow" (although that was a lie). I watched Mom, fearing her crestfallen goodbye face, but instead she said, "And your phone number is ... "
"My phone number?"
"What is your phone number?" Mom asked.
I told her and she repeated the numbers, getting all of them right the first time.
She asked again and I told her again, and she got only one of them wrong.
"Great," Sunny said, "now she'll be saying numbers at me all night."
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