The kids and I were sitting at the kitchen table last night, eating our healthy meal from McDonald's (at least I substituted their fries with apples, so kiss it). We heard the doorknob turning.
"Mommy's home!" Zoey yelled. Ella was working late. "No, that can't be Mommy," I told her. "She would've called first."
I went to the front door, expecting to see one of the neighborhood kids. It wouldn't have been the first time one of them has walked right in our house to see if Zoey could play. Instead, I saw the elderly woman who lived across the street.
"Can I use your phone?" she asked. "Sure," I said, handing her my cellular phone. She had a sheet of paper with three phone numbers written on them. She was having trouble dialing the numbers, so I offered to dial them for her. The first one went to voice mail, the second one was disconnected, and no one answered the third one. She thanked me and left.
This morning, when I was hauling the trash to the curb, she came over again and asked to use the phone. She called a number and left a message along the lines, "My car's broken down and I left my cell phone at work. Give me a call when you get this." I thought it was strange that she would tell someone to call her when she obviously didn't have a phone, but I didn't say anything about it.
About 10:00 AM this morning, I heard a knock at the door. It was the same woman. She asked to use the phone again. "I need to call my daughter," she said. She stood there talking to her daughter and I heard her say, "I have no way to get to work." That's when I told her I'd be glad to take her to work. She said, "No, you've got your little boy to take care of." I insisted until she finally agreed.
But then I asked her where she worked. "Downtown," she said. "Where is it?" I asked.
"I don't know," she answered. That's when she explained to me that she had a disease (it wasn't Alzheimer's or dementia, but I'm sure it was something like the two) and she had trouble remembering things. That's when everything started clicking: the turning of our doorknob instead of ringing the doorbell, the long list of numbers on a sheet of paper, etc.
"Do you know anything that's near where you work?" I asked. "There's a newspaper rack out front." Of course, there are newspaper racks every block downtown, so that didn't help. I told her to go home and get ready and I'd be by to pick her up in ten minutes. I called Ella to let her know what was going on just in case I wasn't back home in enough time to pick up Zoey from preschool.
When I got to her house, she had a business card that had the name of the place where she worked and the address. Luckily, I knew the street so we started on our journey.
Along the way, she told me that she actually owned the business. I felt really sorry for her, owning a business that she couldn't tell me the name of or where it was located. She told me her family lives in another state and they've been trying to get her to move in with them and she's finally coming to terms that it would be in her best interest to do so.
When we pulled in the parking lot, I didn't know if I should go in with her just to make sure everything was okay. But then I saw her sole employee that she had told me about. Since he was the guy that also mows her lawn, I assumed she would be alright. I gave her my phone number and told her if she ever needed anything, even if it was in the middle of the night, not to hesitate to call us. She thanked me and went inside the building.
As soon as I got back home, I called my Mom just to see how she was doing.
Song of the day: It's Oh So Quiet by Bjork
An Odd Evening Turns Into An Odder Morning
