Watching: The Sports Night rerun from Tuesday, which I taped.

Baking: A blueberry pie for our next door neighbors. Bogdan brought over a bag of baby cucumbers yesterday from their garden.

A Wish

Last night Tab's cousin Barbara called to ask if we had reported Lorraine to the city health department. Lorraine, who is Barbara's sister, had stopped over at Barb's house on Tuesday night ranting and raving that the health department has a vendetta against Animal Allies, the animal rescue organization to which she belongs. She is the third member of her group to be investigated in recent months.

So apparently Lorraine hasn't yet figured out that we were the ones responsible, albeit inadvertently. Instead, she's trying to turn this into a racial thing, claiming that the investigator involved, who happens to be black, is targeting "overweight white women," in the words of Lorraine to Barb. Oh. Please. The people involved could have been purple with orange spots, for all that investigator knew when he showed up at my door.

Barb suspected we had something to do with the matter, though she didn't say anything to Lorraine about her suspicions. A few months ago Tab had told Barb that we are getting sick of the dog problem but that, for the sake of family harmony, we would wait to do anything until after Noelle's wedding in June. (Noelle is Barbara's daughter and Lorraine's niece and goddaughter.)

So Tab told Barb that we had written city council, and the letter must have been forwarded to the health department. Barb said she wouldn't have blamed us even if we had filed a formal complaint against her sister. She herself has told Lorraine many times that she has gone too far on her animal rescuing crusade.

The twins and I walked over to see Nana today. She was lying in her hospital bed and looked very weak. Rita said it is a struggle getting her to eat or drink anything lately. Nana recognized us and seemed especially happy to see the boys. I tried desperately to understand what she was saying to me, but her voice is so low and so much of what she says does not make sense any more. She is living in two worlds now, the physical world that we are in and the twilight world of her own mind.

Nana always loved coffee ice cream. On the way home from picking up Tab at work this afternoon, we stopped at an ice cream place and bought her a coffee ice cream milk shake. Then Tab dropped off Daniel and me at Nana's so that Daniel could visit a little with Nana, too. Nana was sitting up in her chair by the window then, and Rita was just finishing giving her dinner. She drank nearly half the milkshake for me, which made me glad.

Daniel and I walked home. My eyes kept filling with tears, which I tried to blink back. One of those wispy, airborne seeds we always called "wishes" floated by me and I picked it out of the air. I don't have any more prayers left for Nana, but I made a wish that her death will be an easy one. I hope she will be asleep in her own bed and that the end of her life will be a simple as a breath that never comes. I closed my eyes, wished, and released the seed into the breeze.

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