It was Billie’s 90th birthday party and we drove over 200 miles each way to attend. I have known her since 1969, but Gary has known her longer and she remembers him with great fondness. Back when I met her, Billie’s hair was a curly mass of mostly-gray tied into pigtails. She was the picture of the Hippie mama, beautiful in that particular Billie-manner, and uniformly kind and wise, and full of fun.

Gary sat down next to her yesterday and she said, “Gary, you’re not a kid any more.”

Long ago she told me a story about a chair that has stayed with me. This would have been in the early 70s that I heard the story. She wanted a beautiful wooden rocking chair she saw in an antique store. She could not afford it, she said, on her teacher’s salary. So she calculated what smoking cigarettes cost her each month and gave up smoking. She put the chair on layaway and paid it off from her nonsmoking funds. Her children, who are mostly younger than me, had never heard that story but were delighted. “It sounds just like her!”

These days Billie is frail and her hearing is poor, aided somewhat in one ear (her left) by a hearing aid. While I sat on the ottoman next to her, trying to be loud without actually shouting, she leaned to me. “Is that a baby over there?”

“Yes,” I said. Across the room a beautiful women held a sleeping child. It was her granddaughter holding Billie’s great grandson, 17 month old Enzo.

“I would like to have that baby. If I kept him for a couple of years, do you think they’d notice?” She looked at me with a twinkle in her eye. She was teasing me. Yeah, that’s Billie.

She still lives in the same house where I first got to know her. On her shelves are some of my favorite novels. She has Smiley’s Moo (the black book on the second shelf down behind her toward the right) and Carol Shield’s Unless (my favorite of Shields’s novels on a cart a few feet away) and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. She has some of the same poetry and Norton anthologies I love. There are books and photos and works of art all over, a wedding certificate from over 150 years ago. It is a well-lived home. She is greatly loved.

During the week, she has some sort of professional care. On weekends, some member of her family stays over. Her children and grandchildren take turns. This way she can stay in her home and manage quite well.

 

My “Gaga,” my mom’s mother, managed to stay in her home until shortly before her death. My grandmother’s second husband, Papa, brought her coffee each morning before leaving for work. Later, as her health failed, he carried her up and down the stairs until he could no longer manage even her slight weight. Then he cared for her in the living room, carrying her only as far as the bathroom. They were in their seventies by then.

We had cared for my mom for years before it occurred to me to ask my mother if she or her sister had ever provided respite for her step-father.

No, she never had. She seemed surprised at the question.

 

Yesterday we left Edmonds, Washington after staying only a short time at the party. We generally avoid driving in the dark but we arrived home in the recent dark, tired, too tired to eat. Gary had a beer and brought me tea with brandy in it. I don’t usually drink whiskey but it warmed me and made me thoughtful all at once. That rocking chair was still right there in Billie’s living room where it belonged.

My husband’s Billie Playlist (with links to the videos—he says you have to watch the videos): 

• Start with “Veronica” by Elvis Costello
• The Buddy Holly song by Weezer
• “Africa” by Toto
• “Don’t Stop Believin'” by Journey
• and finally “Dani California” by Red Hot Chili Peppers

You might cry along with that first one, but you’ll end in a great mood.