After breakfast I said to Grandma that it might be nice for her to join me in the piano room while I play. She is eager to go. "I'll just get ready," she says.
So I am sitting on the floor playing Grandpa's guitar waiting for her. She turns from me towards the hallway leading to her bedroom, which is an arc that almost guarantees catching sight of some letter or magazine or card. Indeed, she's been caught, now hunching forward and hovering over a paper on the table. I don't have it in me to snatch it from her and tell her it's pointless to read, it's an events flyer from last July, it's a waste of the time I'd like to use to walk down to the piano room with you, so she carries on reading it while I cringe a little. "Easter Carnival at Clark-Lindsey" she reads out loud, like she's an audiobook narrator reading the title of a new chapter, giving each word a wide berth. She reads the rest of the flyer slowly and carefully: "...from one PM to three PM...games, caricature drawings, face painting..."
"Any music?" I ask. The subtlest hint I could muster.
She does not hear me and instead continues at her steady pace. "Funnel cakes, popcorn, and Other. Light. Ree-freshments."
Eventually she reads to the bottom. "July 16........ oh." She breaks from her reading and looks up at the wall and then turns back to me and looks at me looking at her and she asks "What was I doing again?"
I tell her that if she'd still like to, we were about to walk to the piano room.
"Yes, OK," she says as if deciding for the first time. She looks down at her hands on her walker. "Well I am ready."
"Grandma," I say, standing to face her. "Allow me to suggest that you may want to put on pants."
She looks past her hands this time, down at her wrinkly ruddy pink legs in a pair of Grandpa's briefs. She gives a soft giggle and says, "Yes you are probably right."