A Later Version of Now

I never arrived at Mammam’s to find her sleeping – regardless of the time of day. And the fact that she used her queen size bed as a storage surface made me wonder where she slept – as well as when. I remember considering that perhaps she didn’t sleep – that it wasn’t just her mind that wended through memories merged with dreams and vice versa. I considered that, in our absence perhaps her reality shifted to a site, made in part, from an earlier version of then - the places we only find in our sleep and our half-waking thoughts and the space between remembering and forgetting. I make it sound pleasant because I wanted it to be that way – with sepia tones and blurred edges - but I’m certain it must have also been for her, at times, horrifying.

My father remodeled Mammam’s house in the years before she went to the nursing home. The alterations included the addition of a large ‘picture’ window in what was originally the second living room - now her bedroom. The upstairs had been separated into an apartment many years earlier when my parents lived there as newlyweds.

We entered the bedroom with Mammam leading the way – calling us in eager to share her discovery. Laid out on the bed was the entirety of Mammam’s jewelry collection – all that she had accumulated over many years. It was laid down with precision, the necklaces in teardrop shapes with the matching earrings inside. Bracelets lined the one edge of the bed and several small jewelry boxes, now empty, rested on the pillows. Rings were placed in lines and pressed into the texture of the George Washington Bedspread to lay flat. “Look!” she said, “The jewelry store truck just backed up to the window and this is what came out!” She moved her hands in a slow gesture that mimicked that of a magician guiding a levitated body. The jewelry had moved just as we saw it there, from the truck, through the window and on to the bed. All of it was new to her and she was stunned by its sudden appearance.

I have kept one of her clip-on earrings as I found it, in a small leather change purse that she carried in the handbag she had to often hide from the son-of-a-bitch that tried to take it.