Untitled--4.

4. 
I didn’t want to tell this story to anybody because I thought it was somehow more proper to try to keep it secret. There are only women of our blood left, so maybe this could be a secret ritual between us. Nobody would have to know. But you were wife and mother, and that work is long-uncelebrated. So there is reason to speak of it now, there is reason to tell this. You were wife and mother. What they used to call the most important job.

Time does strange things when you are this age. We review names. You are Doina. You are. I am me, I am your granddaughter. This is your daughter. Your other daughter, Christine, lives far away. Who is this woman next to you? My daughter, you say. No. We have to keep reviewing. Your kidneys tick-tock your life. But time doesn’t matter to you. Everything old is new again.

You watch Jimmy Stewart movies and fear-based news. I used to joke that the news kept you alive. When I could joke about things. And to other people. But I don’t know what of it you remember or understand. You are losing your English. I wonder whether the movies are just replaying old reels in your mind that were already there, that you already knew about, that you had seen a thousand times already. When Jimmy Stewart made you dream of a geewhiz America. I wonder how much you understand right now.

But time will move on somehow. One day I will be back here doing this with somebody else. May that time not come for as long as we can postpone it. The way we come back around to things. Round, like a clock. But soon you’ll have to be going. And all the most sacred sites were swept away.