60th Anniversary, Der Rosenkavalier
At the top of the 60’s, Mom and Dad were married on a very frigid January 2 in Albany, NY. Following an ice storm which meant that half the people didn’t show up. Don’t they look adorable? Mom was just 23 and Dad was just 25.
(by their first anniversary, they had a 2 week old baby - Sibling Sam - and I came along four years later)
And here it is, sixty years later. The last two months have been hell on wheels for Mom and Dad (and Sam, too, who’s in the same town and providing support). Mom was in the hospital in mid-October, then couldn’t eat solid foods and was diagnosed with esophageal and liver cancer the week before Thanksgiving. She was in the hospital again over Christmas, coincidentally and simultaneously with a plumbing problem in their condo building which made the apartment all but uninhabitable. (oh, yeah, there was a car accident somewhere in there too, but that actually wasn’t a big deal, just a cherry on the shit sundae)
By the time C and I flew down on New Year’s Day, the plumbing problems had been resolved and Mom had been moved to assisted living. Dad had been doing a fine job of taking care of her, but her increasing needs and confusion level had started to make it problematic. So once we got to their condo around noon, and sandwiches were had, Dad took us to the … home? Facility? Let’s call it a home, that’s simple. It’s really nice! Mom has her own studio apartment, more of a hotel room essentially, with its own bathroom and fridge and microwave and stuff. When they moved her in, there was nothing for furnishings or furniture except for a single bed, so Dad and Sam spent a day moving stuff over to make it home, including stuff for the walls. Mom has her recliner setup with her laptop and her books and everything she had at home (well, minus TV and we had a lot of discussions about whether it was worth getting her one, as she probably wouldn’t be able to operate it on her own).
And then we brought her home with us - first time she’d been home since the hospital - and spent the afternoon there, which was nice for everyone.
And when Dad brought her back to the home late afternoon, Sam and C and I got to have a great talk about what was going on and what was going to happen next. Mom is signed up for hospice care, and they are basically in charge of her medical stuff now, working directly with and in the home (the home also has medical staff on site). At the moment, she actually seems OK, other than the dementia, which means she remembers nothing, and she’s frail. But she’s not in pain. You can see that some days she’s more lucid and responsive than others, but if she’s ‘there’, she’s fine. My mom is still in there. She’d also been through a round of radiation treatment on the throat cancer, which worked (!!!) and shrunk the tumors and she can eat now, which is great to see. (over Thanksgiving, she couldn’t swallow anything and had constant nausea. That seems to be gone for now.)
Once Dad got back, the four of us went out for Chinese food, and we got to have the discussions with Dad that would have been tactless to have with Mom in the room. Important people in her life have been contacted. Some of them are coming to visit, including her brother, who Mom was, well, not exactly estranged from, but just not in contact with for a long time. We probably won’t do a memorial service locally (or anywhere), but there may be some sort of gathering, which C and I would probably host. But that’s down the road a bit, we hope.
On Thursday, I took a power walk around the ritzy neighborhood down the street, and C made us breakfast. C had to work remotely, I worked on my resume and helped Dad with stuff. We went and fetched Mom from the home mid-afternoon, then went to Parizade for anniversary dinner. Again, Mom did far better in a restaurant setting than she has in weeks - was able to eat (she had gnocchi and creme brulee) and seemed to have a good time. We all had a good time, and the food was excellent.
Friday, we had a 3:00 flight home. I wasn’t sure what we could do with the morning (not much, it turned out), but C still had to work, after making us breakfast again. It was unclear whether he’d have time to visit Mom before we left (if he hadn’t, Dad and I would have gone, seen her, and come back) but he did, so we went to the home on the way to the airport. Mom was having lunch, so we got to see that setup (very nice). Mom was eating couscous and then had cake and coffee. (‘c’ day for lunch, maybe?) My own C and I were discussing that it’s not obvious how to spend time with her - talking with her directly is tough because even dumb conversational gambits like ‘how was your morning’ or ‘what did you have for breakfast’ don’t work any more. It’s really better and more entertaining for her if you talk to each other and she can follow along the conversation, and then you can throw remarks to her as it goes on, but don’t require her to participate.
And then we flew home and had sandwiches and watched Christmas Hallmarky movies, which was nice. Not set in stone yet, but my current plan is to go down again for the last week in January, and then again every few weeks until the situation changes. And I’ll try to get temp work in between the trips. Something I was worried about, but now it’s clear - even if there’s nothing specific for me to do while I’m down there, it’s still good and helpful for me to be there.
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Saturday was my big Christmas present - Der Rosenkavalier matinee at the Met, with brunch at the Met’s Grand Tier restaurant beforehand. It was great! (oh, except that I grabbed the wrong suit out of the closet and it was a little tight, and by the time I realized it, I didn’t have time to change. But it was fine.) We took an Uber in (good, because it was raining). Brunch was very fancy and lovely, although I was reluctant to have coffee since we’d be trapped in seats for big chunks of time. I started with a charred octopus salad, which was excellent - it had greens and chopped up pickles (!) and crunchy baked chickpeas. C had smoked salmon, which was very attractively presented. Then I had gnocchi and he had a really impressive-looking eggs benedict. We were too full for dessert (weird!) but we had espresso (him) and decaf (me) and stalled for time until it was time to take our seats.
Der Rosenkavalier is a fantastic and beautiful and complex and very adult opera, and I’d never seen it live before. This was a fairly new production, somewhat updated, and I didn’t particularly like the production (my own fault for missing the very traditional and beautiful production that the Met had used for decades until just recently). We had excellent seats on the floor (‘in the orchestra’ in American parlance) near the back, which is ideal for seeing, although sound is better at the Met if you’re up higher. The performers were really great. The big roles are the Marschallin (the older woman), Octavian (the seventeen-year old count she’s sleeping with, who’s played by a woman), Sophie (the sweet young thing who Octavian falls in love with) and Baron Ochs (the disgusting man who Sophie’s supposed to marry). They are all terrific roles - plum parts - and there are sopranos who have gone from Sophie to Octavian to the Marschallin as they aged - and all the performances were good. The Marschallin (Camilla Nylund) wasn’t my favorite of the four, but she was fine. Baron Ochs was terrific (usually he’s played by a fat old guy, but Gunter Groissböck, who I’d seen as the guest on an opera quiz at a previous Met visit, is tall and handsome - but was amazing in the part). Loved the Octavian (Magadalena Kožená) and Sophie (Golda Schultz, a South African woman of color who I’d seen in Falstaff last year). Shultz was adorable and somewhat goofy, which worked very well. The (very famous) conductor was Simon Rattle, and the orchestra was fantastic as always. I'd heard that one of the singers was married to the conductor, and assumed it was Nylund (who, again, I thought was not as good as the others), but it was Kozena, who was wonderful.
Anyway, it was a terrific day (and then we cabbed home and watched more Christmas movies and ordered Chinese). Only downside was we were kind of tired from the trip and, given our druthers, would have preferred to lie on the couches like slugs all day. But it was great. Thank you, my sweetheart, for all of that and for giving up your day to spend with me!
Now we move on to REALITY. I try to find work, I spend very little money and so on. But hey, look, a new year!