Aunt Lois

I'm trying to imagine what the world looks like to her. I really am.

I'm pretty sure she knows we're coming to Los Angeles to take her to her new home in San Francisco. Last night, the night before she's supposed to move--a move she asked for over and over--she seemed a little unclear, a little overwhelmed when we were going over the arrangements.

Everything now is happening so fast. But she's an adventurer, she can make the change.

I tell her she has to leave her old life--living alone in a big home in the desert where she fell, living for the past 6 weeks in a room at a Christian Science nursing home in LA--so she can live her new life. She seems to hear what I'm saying the way she's heard everything I've ever said to her, as if there may be other things beside the thing I've said to consider.

In an hour she'll be on a plane from LAX to SFO.

On the plane she reads the mail order catalog from cover to cover. I look at her, amazed at her excellent posture. I think of all the planes she's been on in her life--the military transport plane she flew from Paris to Brussels right after the war, hopping on at the invitation of a couple of American soldiers; the rickety planes she rode around in Mexico and South America in the 1950's and 60's. I think of all the stories she used to tell the family of the places where she lived and worked--Mexico City, Buenos Aires, El Salvador, Cambridge.

I tease her now when she says things like, "I feel like my life's out of my control", which she says often since she's had to leave her home in the desert after her fall. I say, "Lois, your life is out of  control," and she laughs, knowing I'm talking about my life too, knowing I'm talking about life.

We land at SFO. Lea Ann wheels Lois to baggage claim while I get the car. We drive down the 280 to 19th, 19th to Wawona and her new home at Arden Wood. They're waiting for Lois there.

I've known her since I was a child. She's my mother's sister, she's known me since I was born, which is like knowing someone forever. Now I'm not sure who knows who, or if we know each other at all, or if we know each other what we know. Sometimes I think that she's waiting for me to become as old as she is so that I can see what it's like.

I'm trying to imagine what the world looks like now to Lois, but I can't.