Groundhog Day has always baffled me
in that it seems to be a holiday without any social
purpose whatsoever. There is nothing to say or buy or
do, nothing to decorate, nothing to give or sing, no
one in whose honor one could hold a storewide clearance
sale. It follows then, that of even less usefulness
is today, February 1, which was described to me by my
children in a pre-dawn encounter this morning as “Groundhog
Day Eve.”
Apart perhaps from this specious distinction,
this Groundhog Day Eve was fairly unremarkable—following
the festive Groundhog Day Eve greeting from my kids,
I awoke, annoying at having to do so, but somehow finding
fortitude in a shower and some fierce coffee; I drove
to work, annoyed at having to survive the deadly inattention
of drivers putting on eye makeup at ninety miles an
hour in a dense fog, but somehow finding my balance
in the mellow and modulated voices of those oh-so-calm
commentators on National Public Radio; I did my job
for the prescribed nine-hour interval, annoyed at the
drudgery and pointlessness of some little of it but
finding joy in the complexities and social good of much
of it; and then I drove home; annoyed at having to survive
the deadly inattention of drivers explaining their tardiness
on cellular telephones at ninety miles an hour in dense
traffic, but somehow finding my solace in the mellow
and modulated voices of another shift of those oh-so-calm
commentators on National Public Radio—and other
than being the first day of February, then, this day
was much like every other day, until I reached the very
end of it.
There was a minor change in plans:
instead of picking up my children from my mother’s
house, where she often minds them after school for us,
I was to pick them up at my grandmother’s house.
As it happens, my mother also had to care briefly for
her mother, filling in for a few hours between the shifts
of her live-in caregivers.
My grandmother requires live-in caregivers
because disease has deprived her of most of her mental
functions, nearly all of her useful memory, much of
her vocabulary, and the better part of her personality.
She still looks and sounds like my grandmother, but
what little she has to say makes no sense at all. Her
emotions are profoundly muted, and when evident at all,
they are seriously inappropriate. She spends some part
of every day and every night sitting in her own filth,
oblivious to the indecency of it and barely aware when
she is found out, showered, and redressed.
My mother had prepared her a bowl of
fettuccine with clam sauce, one of the few remaining
meals for which she expresses any opinion at all. I
sat with her and my mother for about an hour at her
dining room table while my children played in the adjoining
living room.
The three of us were sitting at a table
at which I had eaten weekly, if not daily, for the first
several decades of my life, in a kitchen that had
provided thousands of spicy and sturdy meals for a spicy
and sturdy family, a kitchen that had supported more
than its share of wedding receptions, baptismal celebrations,
and funeral gatherings. I had learned to write in cursive
at this table, and how to do long division, and the
right way of telling if a mango is ready to peel. It
had been clearly and patiently explained to me at this
table that the Damn Republicans were ruining this country
and the Damn Democrats would ruin it just as fast were
we ever foolish enough and gullible enough to let them
have a crack at it, although in some years this lesson
had been reversed. At this table, I had read The Yearling
for the first time while eating fried egg sandwiches;
at this table I had attended to the ruminations of a
few Methodist preachers over key lime pie; and at this
table I had courted my bride-to-be with trophies of
lychees and jaboticabas. I had been bandaged and kissed
at this table, spanked and hugged, fed and watered,
nurtured and loved.
On this Groundhog Day Eve, though,
I was sitting at this table watching what little there
was left of my grandmother gently and intently scoop
up some noodles on her fork, spin them and tuck them
until they were just so, lift them to her mouth and
brush them faintly against her lips, then return them
studiously and deliberately to her bowl. She then would
put down her fork, push away the bowl, and wipe her
lips with her napkin. Then she would pull back the bowl,
lift up her fork, and begin the entire process over
again. She did this quietly and contentedly for the
entire hour, swallowing by accident no more than a quarter
of the food set before her.
My mother and I shared more than a
few telling glances and meaningful shrugs about all
of this. My grandmother’s disease is the sort that
takes a terrible toll on the patient’s caregivers,
and it is not surprising that my mother’s beautiful
bright eyes have lost some of their luster these past
few years, her husky good-old-gal laugh often muted,
her boundless patience and good cheer often clouded
by frustration, fear, anger, and sorrow. My mother and
I spoke of little things, happy things while we watched
her, comforting one another while we sat at this fine
old table together. After all, went the unspoken question,
how many more times could we count on sitting at this
table together?
Abruptly noticing some sign that my
mother and I had apparently missed, my grandmother pronounced
that the meal had been concluded, and that was that.
We lifted my grandmother up so that she could limp to
her bathroom, we said our good-byes while I collected
my children, and my mother scraped up the tattered noodles
to take home to the dog.
While I was leaving, I was struck by
the bittersweet intimacy of the whole affair: the kitchen
table with all those memories, my children playing with
toys that had been passed down from mother to me and
now to them, the emptiness in my grandmother’s
face and the worry in mother’s. I thought about
the coming day when this old house would no longer be
occupied, its rock-hard cypress planks standing silent,
and its century of secrets and surprises slipping away.
I thought about the my mother’s dark fears that
she might one day find herself playing with her food,
as oblivious as my grandmother to the love and concern
of those around her. I thought about the strangeness
of a time when we can keep our loved ones alive long
after their minds and souls have worn out, when we can
fritter through our workdays obsessed with ourselves
while those who changed our diapers can sit with strangers
who are paid to change their soiled bedclothes, when
we can find little to do or say about the untidy ways
in which many of us end our lives.
Leaving my grandmother’s house
on this otherwise unremarkable Groundhog Day Eve, I
drove home, annoyed at the quiet desperation of everyday
life, but somehow finding solace in the silly chattering
of my children and in the steely courage of my mother;
annoyed at the struggles that so many us of face in
secret, but miraculously soothed by my wife’s welcoming
me home under a typically glorious Florida sunset; annoyed
that we know so little about so much, but secure in
the sweet and certain knowledge that family cares for
family, no matter what, no matter when, no matter why.
And so now it is several hours later:
everyone but me is long since a-bed, the dishes from
our own dinner have been washed, the doors are locked,
and the stars are spinning overhead same as they ever
were. The dog has had a fine noodle dinner, and I have
had a few hours to reflect, to brood, to wonder at the
spinning stars, to be thankful for the blessings of
life, of love, of family. Somehow, in the spirit of
Groundhog Day Eve, all seems right with the world.
