23 February 2011

The Green Fairy


(The Green Fairy- in fin de ciecle France, five pm was called “The Green Hour.”)

The last thing I recall about yesterday- it was a day that had just about everything in it, by the way- was the hallucinogenic color of he Absinthe.

The Iraq1s at the Liquor Store in Ann Arbor had recommended it, and proudly boasted that the real stuff was in it- the wormwood that was said to drive one mad. Sunny and I each bought one of the little bottles and I had not gotten around to opening mine.

“This is real thing, my friend. Distilled macerated whole herbs and botanicals in alcohol and water. It contains grand wormwood, anise, fennel, other whole herbs and botanicals. Pour over a sugar cube. Do not mind the cloudy appearance when you make your cocktail, like a Baghdad sky in spring. Is like jellybean taste from the anise. Is very good. You like.”  

I felt bad enough about the whole Iraq War that I threw it in with the Diet Schweppes and the 1.75 Liter of Pearl. The Absinthe bottle was a deceptive a little thing. “Lucid Absinthe” read the label: product of France.

The orange price sticker on the metal screw cap was not quite big enough for the whole price to be shown- it was $12.50, not $2.50 as it appeared.

Sunny was still muttering about that as we left the bottle shop.

“Better be goddamn good wormwood,” he said. “I mean, shit, that is four dollars a shot. Christ.”

“It has been illegal here since 1912, so it has got to be good. Aren’t you supposed to mix it with sugar and water?”

“What’s the point of that?” he said. “Waters it down. If I am going to pay that much for a small glass I want it concentrated.”


(The delivery mode of The Green Fairy. Photo Lucid, a Product of France.)

I nodded, the Lucid absinthe- if not lucidity as well- went back in the bag when we did not get to it that night in Ann Arbor, and there it was, still lurking, as I packed to get out of Petoskey. TSA would never permit it to go on the jet back to DC, so I put it on the list of things to take care of that day.

It was an impressive list. I had to clear the house, shut it down, get packed, figure out where the doctor’s office was located, get the elderly to lunch, get them to the Doctor’s office and then deliver them back to Potemkin Village and ensure they were tucked in before driving downstate again, wondering what the roads were like. I hoped to make it in daylight, but it was completely open-ended and based on the roads.

The SE corner of the Wolverine State had got slammed with a dozen inches of snow, but I was optimistic I could make it and bed down with friends to make an early flight back to Washington in the morning.

There is no easy way to get to and from the vast Northland. It is either a half day in the car, flogging it across Maryland, Pennsylvania and Ohio and the length of the Wolverine State, or sitting in a series of airports. The closer one tries to fly to the little city by the Bay, the more airports there are in between, and the more opportunities for weather and scheduling mischief.

We managed to get a joint session for Raven and Magpie with Doc B. I called his office in the morning to confirm the time- it had changed- and that meant lunch was going to be rushed, if we were to make it on time.

I had never met him in person, only hearing his brusque voice on the phone. I was looking forward to the first frank talk about what was going on with Raven.

I threw things in the roller bag and did the counters and the floor. The Lucid absinthe went in the briefcase with the other contraband material that TSA would confiscate.

When I arrived at the Village, I discovered Magpie had apparently got them up for coffee and donuts in the morning down in the lobby, which was a good thing, since the had been sleeping until noon recently, and being awake in the middle of the night had apparently contributed to Raven’s periodic jailbreaks. The broken collar-bone has apparently slowed him down, that and the deadbolt lock the staff secured in the evening.

I noticed Magpie was not wearing her key, but maybe the situation had evolved. This was a process, I had to remind myself, with constant and inexorable motion south.

Anyway, the little girls in the lunch-room were accommodating when we got there early and seemed to understand when we explained that we had an appointment with the Doc. A couple other residents were there, and two of them made public complaint about the change in routine.

The girls brought out some soup in a cup and a plate covered with loaf-cut turkey with brown gravy and cranberry sauce smeared on it, and a lump of industrial-grade mashed potatoes. Magpie ate her soup and a slice of custard pie, while Raven ignored the soup, ate some of the turkey I cut up for him and mostly concentrated on his cherry pie.

Magpie does not like the food at the Village, and said so, after noting that the staff seemed to be students at the local college, an observation she makes at each meal. I think the food is too bland for her, but the deserts are always good, and it is nutritious enough to keep them going.

I didn’t have anything except a cup of coffee. I was strung between worlds and present in none of them.

Anyway, I looked at my watch and left them to finish their coffee, decaf for Raven and high-test for Magpie, and went up to the apartment to retrieve hats and coats for the trip to the Medical Clinic. It seemed to me that we were going to be painfully early, but there seems to be no alternative. Early is better than futilely attempting to hurry things up.

More lessons-learned as we penetrated the veil of the health care system. Where to park the car; the criticality of having the health insurance cards- thank God Magpie had them in her clutch in the purse she carries religiously. We went through the wickets and gatekeepers, step by step.

The billing is the most important, of course, and has to be taken care of first. Then another waiting room around the corner and down the hall. I removed Raven’s porkpie hat and unzipped his parka. I have been cold since I got here. I was reluctant to heat up the house much, and the cold was penetrating and brutal. My Cathartt work jacket and hoodie were stylish enough, and suitable for the Virginia winter, but not enough to keep the chill of Up North from squeezing my heart.

I picked up an issue of Town and Country in one of those plastic folders and turned the pages as Raven alternately dozed and looked at the images of stylish people and bold fashion. Magpie chattered away on the other side.

“Socotras?” came the summons to the inner sanctum from the waiting area. The words came from an impossibly perky young blonde woman in scrubs with a floral top. She was wearing a nametag that proclaimed her name to be “Amanda.”

She had a clipboard not dissimilar to that held by the Candidate Officer who received my younger son into the tender mercies of the US Navy, and just as ominous. Collecting the vitals was a challenge, but Amanda has the drill down pretty well. We got Raven up on the digital scale, and numbers were written down.

We were shown to an examination room, provided a chair for the three of us, and the rest of the vitals- blood pressure and like- were accomplished with efficiency.

“Doctor B will be with you shortly,” said Amanda brightly, and vanished. Raven nodded off, and Magpie and I had one of the conversations we have, over and over.

When the door opened and the white-smocked Doc entered I was taken aback. Doc B might be in his 40s; hair a little long over the ears. It is always disconcerting to be reminded of our collective journey through this life. First it was the Captains who began to look like kids, and then the Admirals. Then Presidents.

It should have come as no surprise that the medical profession should be the same. Doc B could work on his bedside manner, I thought, though he was good enough. He looked at the clipboard and quizzed Magpie on the blood-thinning medicine she is on. I assured him that the staff at Potemkin Village was diligent about getting the meds, and he nodded. “We will draw blood today to ensure that everything is OK,” he said. “But we can wait with the results until I am over there. Now, let’s check out Raven.”

I ran down the list of immediate concerns, starting with the collarbone he broke eight weeks ago. Doc B scooted over to Raven and palpated the boney protrusions below Raven’s neck.

“Looks symmetrical. Raven, does this hurt?”

To my surprise, Dad nodded, interacting with Doc in a way he does only sporadically with me. I had no idea he had discomfort, or if this was an attempt to be agreeable to the Doc, who spoke at twice normal volume, with precise slow diction.

“I think he is healing nicely. There should be no requirement for surgery or anything like that. Now, “ he said, turning to me, “About the wandering. Has there been any further occurrence?”

“Not to my knowledge. The fall seems to have taken the wind out of his sails.”

Magpie chipped in. “There was a rumor about that,” she said. “Bu people gossip in that place.”

“No, Mom, it was all quite true. I talked to Doctor B about it when it happened, and whether Raven would have to go to more supervised care at Bay Bluffs.” Mom frowned, but did not contradict me.

“Are you happy at the Village?” asked Doc.

“The food is not so good,” said Magpie. “I think it is very bland.”

The Doc nodded, and then looked direct at me, still speaking very directly and clearly as Raven dropped off again, his head back and mouth agape.

“Your Dad has lost 13.9 pounds since the last office visit six months ago. He is starting to waste away.” I did the math in my head. Twenty-eight pounds a year, it would take five years on the nose for my father to weigh nothing at all, and vanish. The Doc leaned forward.

“I don’t see that splitting up your mother and father will achieve anything, and they seem happy. I think the wandering will continue to decline. At some point along the process, my recommendation is that we will transition to hospice care. We will look at that at the next appointment in August.”

“Six months to that?” I asked. The words had finally been said. We all knew this, or at least the kids did. Magpie listened intently, and then said:

“He is not going to get better? I thought I could nurse him back to health.” Her blue eyes got moist.

“No, I don’t think so,” said the Doc. “I am prepared to intervene with Potemkin Village in case there is another incident of wandering, but absent anything like a hip fracture, we will just let the process continue.”

“It is a process, isn’t it?” I said. Raven dozed.

Doc B nodded, done with us until August, or until something lurched forward. We were ushered out of the examining room by perky Amanda, and I got Raven into his hat and parka. Magpie was quiet, as we made the trip down to the lobby and I found them seats while I brought the car around. Next stop SE Michigan, I thought and I should be able to make it all in daylight.

Once I got Raven in the passenger seat and strapped in, we drove slowly back up the hill. “Nice car,” said Raven, out of the blue. I thought it was a piece of crap Toyota and the accelerator did feel strange under my right foot.

“We should talk for a minute,” said Magpie.

“Yep.” I pulled up to the portico and got Raven moving toward the lobby. I wanted to stay and I wanted to roar off immediately.

Magpie was weeping quietly as Raven slept in one of the armchairs. “I thought this was going to work out,” she said, looking at me closely.

“Well, it still might, Mom. Remember the Doctor said “if” and stuff like that.”

She nodded, but lacked any conviction. She looked so sad and completely mortal. I was ripping my heart right out through my ribs. Damn.

We sat for a while, and I got a staff member to take our picture. Then I hugged Magpie and kissed her and got the hell out of there.

(The Socotras. February, 2011, at Potemkin Village. Photo Socotra.)

It was four hours to get south, not a bad technical drive, though the snowbanks got higher the further south I got.

At the end of the day, I drank the Lucid Absinthe. I don’t know about the hallucinogenic effects of the wormwood, but I will tell you that I slept through the night for the first time in years, and the light was full bright and flooding in the window as I realized I might very well be late to the airport.

I made my apologies to a silent house and fled to the Camry.

I needn’t have worried about the airplane, or the schedule. There was no airplane at the end of the jetway at Gate A76 at DTW, though the nice lady at the Delta console kept saying one was going to magically appear from a place she called “the hangar.”

Crap. I have to tell you, though, the aftermath of an Absinthe buzz makes the wait almost tolerable. Purely lucid, in fact.

It is part of a process. The only way I really wanted to go fly this morning was with The Green Fairy.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
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