Tonight, John and I walked over to a neighbor’s apartment building. Let’s call him Al. We rang the downstairs bell three times, as planned, entered the building with our key, collected the mail, rode up in the elevator, and let ourselves in with the other of the two keys that his wife had made for us before she left for a long distance trip. “Hi, it’s us,” John called out as we walked down the long hall of the apartment towards the dining room where Al was enthroned behind a large dining table strewn with reading and writing materials, a decanter of water, a phone, t.v. remote, radio, back-scratcher, several small bottles of medicine and more. Behind him against the wall sat an oxygen-making machine. In other words, Al, whose mobility is sorely limited, had at his fingertips many of the things that he needed during the course of the day. We were there to help make it possible for Al to remain at home during the time his wife had to be away.
After saying our hellos, we entered the kitchen where John automatically began washing the dishes, and I opened the refrigerator door to remove tomatoes, cukes, onions, eggs for hard-boiling, a package of herring I’d bought from Zabar’s two days before, and other ingredients for the several meals that we would make together and leave for Al until our next visit. We went about our tasks easily, as we’d done the same thing every other day for the last week and a half.
What was not the same each day was what happened afterward. When our hour-long food preparation work was done, John and I sat around the table with Al, a little longer each visit, so that tonight our conversation about everything from D-day in 1944 (Al was there) to Meryl Streep lasted for three hours. At one point, I took a trip down to Milano’s around the corner to pick up a sandwich and salad for John and me. This was our last visit before Al’s wife was to return, so perhaps we sat together for even longer this night enjoying the fuzzy warm success of our elder-care project.
When it was time to go, before John was to take up the garbage on our way down the long hall and I was to shuffle around in my bag for the keys to relock the front door as usual, I looked around at Al and John and knew I wasn’t the only one feeling lucky to be part of the Morningside Village thing.
Irene Zola
