Yes, No, I don't know

Aunt Lois has had her Raisin Bran by the time we get there for our visit Sunday morning. Lea Ann's brought her a Henning Mankell book, one in the Kurt Wallender series.

Lois never asks about the ink cartidges she'd asked us to buy. I put the coupon back in her purse when she isn't looking.

"Would you like a radio to listen to?", Lea Ann asks during a lull in our conversation.

"That would be nice," Lois says.

"They still listen to the radio in Scotland," I say, remembeing the picture of Cavell's radio that I'd taken in Inverness. Cavell listens every morning, mostly for the weather reports. He'd been raised on an island in The Hebrides where weather means almost everything.

I ask Lois if she listened to the Presidential debate. She hadn't, but she says they'd shown "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" in the activity center the night before.

"I thought Jimmy Stewart was in that movie," Lois says, "but whoever it was that played Mr. Smith sure didn't look like Jimmy Stewart to me."

We tell Lois we're happy she's making so much progress, tell her how good she looks. She can't walk yet but she's taking some small steps with the help of a walker, and the Christian Science nurse says she's gaining a little more flexibility every day. I can't help but think that if she'd used the cane my brother took to her two months ago--of if she'd come to San Francisco when we invited her back in June--that the terrible fall she took last week while living alone in the desert would never have happened.

It's about an hour's drive from Pasadena to Mission Viejo where Flossie, Lea Ann's mother, lives in a rest home with four other old people and two full-time nurse's.

Everyone's sitting in front of the tv. Two are asleep, their heads on their chests. Flossie smiles when she sees us. Lea Ann and I sit down on the couch beside her.

"That's 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter',"  Lea Ann says, watching the tv screen. We'd both read the book a couple of months ago, the most alive writing I'd read in some time, alive enough to make me want to read Carson McCullers' bio. I remember how often McCullers invoked the Roman playwright's epigram--"nothing human is alien to me "-and tested the brief actions I watched on the screen against that epigram. The book was so good, so right in every word that I guessed that it wouldn't necessarily translate well to film, but didn't watch long enough to make any final judgement.

We got Flossie into a wheelchair and took her to the park. She looks like Queen Mum these days, a little hunched in the chair but pretty, serene, dignified in her wide-brimmed sunhat and heavy sunglasses. After suffering through two strokes she can't say much of anything--yes, no, I don't know--but she smiles a lot and looks serious when she's asked a question, like she's thinking over whatever's been asked.

When we get back to the house, it's lunch-time. Lea Ann stays at the table while Flossie eats. It's hot in the house, at least 80 degrees--old people get cold very easily--so I walk outside and sit on the front porch. There's a comfortable straw chair and I sink down into it. God I'm tired, exhausted really. I feel like old age is something being pressed upon me from all sides, down from heaven and up from hell, like I'm right in the midst of wearing my own life out. I think Flossie's language--yes, no, I don't know--is as elegant as language can ever be. I can't help but think that time is something that's happening to me.