Traveling with My Sainted Mother
At 85, it’s getting harder to get Mother out of the house without curb-to-curb service. She’s pretty spry, but I am learning that as we get older, the specter of a fall is never too far.
I like to stop at Banning on the way from California to Arizona to get something at Starbucks. I think that store is one of my favorites in the chain; the space is inviting and the baristas aren’t texting like they do in LA.
This is true, if you can make it into the store, which is ‘guarded’ by a sloping curb that runs from the handicap parking to the back door. Stepping up to the back door is easy if you know what foot will hit the edge of the curb first, as the height for each foot will be different. Add to that the sprinkler runoff from the manicured landscaping and the motor oil from the adjacent parking space and you have a brew for a possible disaster.
I let go of Mother for an instant to open the door for her – turned around to help her up the curb just in time to see her hurling toward me like Supergirl. She hit the curb with her shins before I could do anything about it.
She recounts the incident as an aside at a breakfast chat during a week that I spent introducing her to Arizona country living:
Drinks Taste Better When They Are Complimentary (I Reckon)
I guess she was lucky to end up with skinned knees and some lost pride. Starbucks was magnanimous and sent mother 5 coupons for complimentary beverages to assuage any lingering misgivings that she may have had about returning, which were enough to treat her family — if she didn’t get a drink for herself.
For the rest of the visit, she preferred to have me make her tea at home.
Postscript
It wasn’t all skinned shins and tea. Mother found time to play with the dog:
and to do her imitation of Debbie Reynolds‘ role with Albert Brooks in the 1996 feature film, Mother.
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