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At the resthome, the one resident who's over a 100 years old says that when she was a baby, her dad got very very sick and ran a high fever from the (Spanish) flu, and her mother thought that he was going to die.
And, she said that her dad served in the War.
One afternoon last month as I was going to go catch the subway and go head into work to go work at my one assisted living client's with disabilities, I could start to smell something as I was going near the highway that's by the stop, and then I realized that something was burning, and then I saw smoke, and so all of a sudden I decided to stop going where I was going and so I went and I got up near the fence that looks out over the highway, and from there I could just see this car aflame.
And, I took two pictures, and as I went to go start taking the pictures, I thought of the person inside.
There's nothing that you could do, but you wanted to commemorate it as an event, separate from anyone even being in the car; it's like they didn't exist, but the event did, and I suddenly understood about why rubbernecking happens.
The subway in my city has tracks above ground for its portion near the apartment of my one assisted living client's with disabilities, and like a month or so ago when I was leaving work and I glanced way up the street, I realized that I can see the headlights coming from the next train that'll be arriving at my stop to go home, if the train happens to cross the tracks going over the street way up the street just as I cross the street in front of her apartment building as I leave my shift to go head home from work that night.
And, I realized that that means that if I then hustle and even run a little bit to the subway stop, I can manage to catch that very same train home, and so I hardly have to wait at all for one to arrive.
Like a week later at the resthome, the one resident who buys Jolly Ranchers for me asked me for help getting a big suitcase down off of a high shelf way up high in her closet, and then setting it up in her room near her bed where she could get to it easily for packing, since her son was coming to visit and she was going to be heading out for like a week.
And, after I did that, I remarked on how the suitcase was just the right size to fit a body.
So, riffing off of that, I was like, "So, you know, please, please, whatever you do, please don't call me up to haul this out after you start putting a body in it, I don't want to get involved on that level."
And then, the resident looked me straight in the eye, and all out of nowhere she behaved very calmly and was like, "My son's a murderer," and then she pursed her lips and shook her head a little bit and was like, "That's why they won't let him in the building," and then during the ensuing pause when I didn't know what to say, she was like, "I actually walked into his apartment and I saw the body."
And, I just didn't know what to say.
Then, she was like, "I'm kidding!", and she laughed.
And, she said she was surprised that I believed her.
The other month at my one assisted living client's with disabilities, I took stock of all the boxes that are sitting all around her apartment in preparation for her upcoming move, and with one in the hallway that had a list of kitchen supplies on its side, I took a marker and tried to match the handwriting and added in at the bottom of the list:
- EX-HUSBAND'S MUMMIFIED REMAINS
. . .
And, after weeks went by and nobody noticed it, I made sure to point it out to my one client's (lesbian) sister.
...with my one (Tibetan) coworker who was born in Nepal:
1) She sees my new haircut and says it's nice, and then she says that hair is like a frame for the face, just like you put a picture in a nice frame and it looks better, the same thing goes with your face and the hair that sits around it.
And, she gestured around her face very decisively, as she said the word "frame."
2) In our resthome office, she sits at the staff table that's in there and she folds up a number of small paper boxes out of stray sheets of paper, that are like the size of packs of playing cards and that have very thin lips that extend up just like a centimeter or two from the table.
"If you're eating chicken, you can put the bones in here, if you make boxes like this," she was like, and she handed me one of the boxes.
Back in April I was catching a beer after work on an outdoor patio at a bar near the resthome on a Friday night, and I encountered two surprises.
First, inside the bar, at one point they played a minor song from Katy Perry's new album, which really hasn't been all that popular or really played anywhere, from everything that I can tell.
And, that bar and another one that I passed on the way to the subway stop, they were just *packed* inside, where the air must have been heavy with breath, even though tables weren't always right on top of one other like they used to be.
I could see everything through the windows.
