“We could play another round tonight,” Mom says, “but maybe you’re too tired to lose again.”
If there’s more trash-talking somewhere in the world over a game of Bananagrams, I don't know about it.
As I sit at my 81-year-old mother's diningroom table, flipping letter tiles to prepare for the competition's opening “Split!”, I think of her recent misadventure on the farm and how, on August 30, 2023, her three-legged dog and riding companion on her EZ-Go mashed his furry body on the accelerator and sent the golf cart crashing into her house, the impact ramming the steering wheel into her ribs and catapulting her out of the driver's seat and into her garden.
They call it an accident because it's unexpected, undesirable, unintended, and not directly caused by humans—or so says Wikipedia. That last part makes me think the internet knew all about Mom's mainly Australian Shepherd/Sheepdog/Blue Heeler mix.
After The Accident, Mom heated up a bowl of tomato soup for her lunch. A thought nagged her, though, and she could almost hear the words of my nurse-sister: “Get it checked out.”
She drove herself to the ER in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, and won a bed and overnight stay in the hospital. The doctors, after viewing the results of her liver scan (don't mess around with internal bleeding, people), sent her by helicopter to Fargo, North Dakota, where she found her next bed—this one in the ICU.
After Mom's release six days later, we four sisters staggered our visits, each of us spending a handful of days on the farm to oversee her transition back to life as she knew it. Healing, like life, takes a whole lot of farmhands.
I form words from the little tiles in front of me. Because of Mom's recent accident, I could restrain myself from a Bananagram victory today, but I don’t. Why go easy on this woman who can hold her masterful own in this world of words? I assemble something creative.
“No, dear,” Mom says, eyeing my string of characters. “That's not a word.”
Busted.
“Husband's looking for zucchini for a recipe,” I say, changing the subject. “Got any you want to get rid of?”
“No, but I'll check with Bernie.” Mom texts her mailman like it's the most normal thing in the world.
His answer comes faster than I can spell joist (which is fast because I already had all the letters on hand.)
“He says he can get some zucchini from so-and-so,” and Mom mentions the name of a lady in town who has the summer squash Husband wants.
“Seriously?” I think about Mom's mailman now, rolling up to her rural mailbox in his vehicle, deploying his Super Soaker on her two dogs when they trot too close to his tires but also bringing them deer legs for treats when they're lucky.
Days earlier, Bernie texted her: Broken rib medicine in garage
Mom found potatoes, onions, cabbage, leeks, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, and a bouquet of sunflowers. Another day during her convalescence, Bernie brought her old Reader's Digests. Today, he dropped off an old peanut jar “vase” filled with his homegrown gladiolas—to go with her mail.
This mail delivery arrangement seems heavy on the gifts, but Mom says she once loaned Bernie her chicken plucker so maybe it all comes out even.
Mom cleans up at Bananagrams while I imagine her life in the country, replete with love, mail, humor, and all the garden veggies required to heal a broken rib and hematoma on her liver.
It's not a bad gig, this visiting a recuperating patient on the farm. Not a bad gig at all.
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