IN THE MORNING

I wake up, alone.

Because it's (less and less) clear to me if I'm capable of taking care of myself (if it's prudent) - there ARE unseen dangers; using the bathroom, boiling water, pulling up my pants... swallowing water. Everything I do requires focus and patience. I put up signs around the apartment that say, "CHARLIE, TAKE AS MUCH TIME AS YOU NEED".

So today, after days with my mom at sea, and a week with with my aide, Mary, I wake up alone feeling vaguely exhilarated.

(I guess I'm a loner).

I'm in the living room in the new hospital bed (stiff, homely with noisy motor) -my old bed, (antique, capacious and untouched in the next room).

I wheel into the bedroom to dress and stop to stare at the bed. The bed is a prize. High and wooden with clean deco lines, I covered it in a white, chenille, Martha Washington bedspread I bought from Bates Bed Spreads of Maine, on Ebay.

I have new respect for the bed.  The bed seems smug and confident. The bed seems to say, I'm fine, I'm better off without you. The bed has moved on.

But this morning, I wake up in the practical, hard, hospital bed in the living room. I wake up chilled because I can't get under the covers. It's physically impossible (for me).

When I get into the bed at night, my sheet and blanket are folded up at the top of the bed by my pillow.
I use the remote to make the bed sit me up and then unfurl the sheet and blanket toward my feet. I can never get it to cover my legs. But I have a talent for sleep so even though I'm cold and lie awkwardly constricted  with my arms wrapped around the metals side gates of the bed (it's a single, I'm used to a double), I'm able to sleep, deeply.

When I wake up, I find the remote. push a button and the top of the bed lifts me up.
I push my useless legs over the side. I grab the arm of the wheelchair. I sit up.
My upper body is unstable (like I'm being tossed around in the back of a truck).
But once I am right and still, I find the sliding board and put one end under my butt and the other end on the wheel chair and slowly glide into the chair.

As I slide into the wheelchair, I hear morning traffic on 42nd Street. The gentle morning roar comforts me. I know who and where I am.

I hear a dog yelping. I hear the exhaustive gunning and breaking of the M42 at the bus stop on the corner.  I hear the Falun Gong protesting the Chinese Embassy across the street. There is one last square of morning sunlight in the corner of the room, the last of the summer sun.

Looking out my window, I can see the color of the the city is changing; more black, more contrast, more saturation. The cool air warns, "Be industrious, Embrace ambition, Make a list".

And so I do.

Brooklyn

Brooklyn
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

PILGRIM

The boat is monster huge.

As we pull up to Pier 12 in Brooklyn in the "Access A Ride" van,  my mother points up to our cabin like she's pointing to a constellation in the sky.

"We're on deck eight, all the way past the life boats on the right side, unobstructed view. There! That's our room. See? We have our own little balcony!"

I look up high, as high as a city building, past cargo rigging, past rescue boats, past swimming pools and try to make out the area my mother indicates. I scrutinize the white ship but can make no mental picture of the innards in which I am about to be swallowed up. (Like when my parents pointed to my first college dorm from our brown Volvo station wagon, I stare cluelessly, my ability to visualize beyond the aloof facade is wholly absent.

I didn't look at the brochure or website. I haven't mentally prepared for this voyage. My sister recently asked if I was excited to go and I told her I really hadn't thought about it.  My doctor encouraged me to go. I was told it would be good to travel, NOW. "I took that same exact cruise last summer" he told me during my last clinic visit. "You'll have a wonderful time. Never slept so well in my life... the gentle rocking of the boat."

So the cruise seems like a done deal, a ritual required of my clan, an end of life obligation.

(I have photographs (black and white and shiny) of my grandparents posing on decks for cruises to Hawaii and London. They look austere and real in the photographs. They've made it onto the happy boat but they're old and tired.

And it seems having your picture taken is a cruise ship requirement, like sipping champaign as you disembark. As we approache the gang plank, my mother and I both in tired, heedless mode, slip past the ship's photographer.  Mom, however, takes a step back and asks if we HAVE to have our portraits taken - like a responsible kid on a field trip.

"Mo -THER! Let's GO! - he doesn't care!"

And I wheel away from her, irritable and old man-ish.

This characterizes my behavior for most of the trip.

Because I've done none of the planning, because I've no concept of what to expect, and because I have less and less control of my limbs, my ability to speak, to eat, I am short tempered and humorless.

Once settled in our fancy stateroom, it dawns on me - (not in words or thoughts, but through an innate sense of survival) I will need to stay keenly aware of my every move or something terrible could happen to me.  It's that feeling I had as a young teenager, when I went off in a car, to a house, with a group of kids I knew I shouldn't be with, out of my safety zone, there is no turning back -nothing to do but doff a tight smile.

I decline the complimentary champaign left on our single coffee table - if I topple off my chair, how will my eighty-one year old mother ever get me off the floor? Why did I not think of this!!

My mother mixing her required vodka and ice, is impervious to my stints of fear, anger or trenchant instruction; something I both loathe and adore about her.

I hang onto the arms of the chair. My mother sips her vodka. The boat sways.

New Canaan 1960's

Indian Guides
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

Indian Guides