Happy day

Sweet grandbaby visits Mom two weeks ago.

   If the person you've come to the nursing home to see is asleep when you get there, he will wake up for you or he will not. The outcome's easy to predict: There's asleep, and then there's asleep with the mouth open.
   The mouth-open sleeper is a deep diver, unreachable.
   After missing more than a week of visiting Mom because of traveling to Indiana and then coming home with the grandbaby's chest cold, finally today I felt well enough that if I didn't go see her, guilt would wreck my night.
   It's about a 30-minute drive on a Sunday morning, or maybe 25 minutes. And so the car's air conditioner was doing an excellent job by the time I parked, shut down the engine and popped open the door to the reality of hot air. Gathering an armload of good-bet children's books and a laptop loaded with new baby pictures, I made myself smile and walked into the building, past the nurses and down the long hallway to her room.
   Where Mom's mouth was open.
   Some days, that is my best case scenario, but after such a vacation, it was deflating. Was I really going to drive all that way only to turn right around and head back? I cast around the room for chores to make the trip worthwhile.
   I stroked her hair. Nothing.
   Maybe I should sit and sing at her. But no, I was still wheezy.
   The potted plants needed water, and so I switched them from one side of the TV to the other. I plucked a bit of paper off the floor. Wrote a note to Mom's roommate Sunny and left it by her bed.
   I stroked Mom's hair again.
   Noticing that her teeth were stained with a brown line, possibly leftover from chocolate pudding, and that they looked uncomfortably dry, I decided to risk moistening her lips. There were three plastic-wrapped sponges on sticks atop the TV cabinet. I opened one, got a glass of water to dunk it, and wiped her teeth.
   Without opening her eyes, she peeled back her lips. Uppers first, then lowers. She went on snoring gently, and yet she moved her lips out of the way so I could clean them.
   I squeezed a sip of water into her mouth.
   She spoke! She said, "Happy day."
   Nothing more, and her eyes stayed closed. Just "Happy day." She was under deep again, mouth gaping.
   The exchange took maybe a minute and a half, but I felt as justified and acceptable as though I'd sat with her for an hour and a half. I stole from the room and drove home to spend the rest of the day making pottery.
   And I'm pretty sure I won't be waking up to worry about my selfishness and failures tonight, either.