Thinking of Mary

Mary called last evening. She calls often enough that, if I’m busy, I sometimes hand her off to Dave while I continue what I’m doing.

He stayed on the phone with her and later, when I slowed down, told me why she called: She was being treated for a hole in a retina. I have not yet started researching what on earth that means, but I’ll call up all the forces Google can muster and be an expert in a few days’ time.

For now, we’re trusting her insistence that she is being treated well and expects to make a full recovery. No one wants to damage an eye, but can you imagine how frightening it would be to a professional musician?

We call Mary our German daughter. She’s lived abroad about 25 years, has played keyboard – meaning piano, organ, cembalo, harpsichord – for several opera companies.

She teaches singers their roles and the correct diction of unfamiliar languages. She practices hours a day and obviously needs her vision.

Enough that her hearing is not what it used to be. That’s what she gets for being 50. Fifty!

We got to reminiscing about her life, half of it lived in Germany.

You recall my saying that our advancing years require two people to make one functional. Never has that been truer than now.

Whenever someone says, “Well, you must have wonderful memories,” we look at each and silently say, “Huh?” He has his, I have a few of my own, and, by carefully putting together the pieces, we can recreate some of the better memories at least.

We liked road trips, but had no idea how hard it is to travel with a toddler, a small car and smaller budget. So off to Niagara Falls, our first major destination with our firstborn.

I’m not sure about our itinerary. Dave says we approached the falls from the U.S. side, and I picture us on the QEW on the Canadian side which runs along a wonderfully scenic bluff overlooking Lake Ontario. QEW stands for Queen Elizabeth Way, for the late Queen Mother, not for Queen Elizabeth II.

We (both of us) clearly recall that we were carrying food in a large cooler and when we started getting hungry, decided to pull into one of the many pull-outs where we could view the lake’s great expanse. We’d slow down, check out the place, then reject it because the piles of garbage would prohibit letting the baby roam for exercise.

We were carrying one of those crib/playpens that fit in the backseat of a car. Mary didn’t really need more exercise, but we were in high dudgeon about the disgusting conditions. I probably wrote a letter to Buckingham Palace.

After a dozen such disappointments, we decided to into the next one, messy or not. It was messy, to put it mildly, but we sat in the little English Ford station wagon to eat, change the baby, swat flies, and stretch our legs. As you can guess, the next rest stop, was a provincial park: immaculate, scenic, glorious – and about two miles away.

The significant memory of this trip was that Mary stopped eating. She was cheerful, as always, but ate next to nothing at all. I think she was still nursing, maybe not enough for a nearly one-year-old child.

I do remember one motel stay, trying to feed a child who was hell-bent on starving to death. “Wheeeeeee! Open the door! Here comes the airplane! Wheeeeee!” Didn’t work. Nothing worked.

She did, however, invent a new game. She climbed to her feet on the bed where Dave lay reading a newspaper. She didn’t know how weak a wall a newspaper makes, and fell crashing through it, startling Dave, who offered a colorful commentary, until he realized what happened and laughed with the baby.

When Mary realized she was not hurt, she shrieked in delight and could hardly wait to do it again. And again. And again.

But she still didn’t want to eat. It was not until we got home and saw her doctor that we learned that babies often quit eating at about nine or 10 months of age, only to resume in their own sweet time. She didn’t lose much weight; only her parents were concerned.

Dave remembers this trip as the one in which we were asked to leave a rather nice restaurant because Mary started to cry about something – who knows what? – and would not stop. We were mortified. I don’t know whether we ate or took turns sitting in the car.

Funny thing is that she was ordinarily such a cheerful child, with huge blue eyes and spun-gold hair. What set off the caterwauling neither of us recalls. Probably starvation.

We did all the touristy things at Niagara, and agree that it was one of the few things we have ever done that equaled or exceeded our expectations.

Dave recalls riding in the boat at the foot of the falls, “The Maid of the Mist.” I loved walking the ledges behind the cascades, shrouded in yellow raincoats (I think).

We also rode a cable car from one side of the raucous river to the other, and at last had the good sense to be scared. It was basically just a little cage with a few seats in it, as well as grips to hold while standing.

But there was not one inch of mesh or fencing around the bottom. The gap – between the wet and slippery metal floor and the cage that had no restraints – was at least eight inches, plenty large enough for a curious and wriggling baby to slip her daddy’s tight grip.

I still feel sheer panic when I think of her twisting loose and …

This is one of those memories we’d both rather lose.