The Hymn My Mother Still Knew
She has been in the memory care wing two years. I sold the walnut spinet to a family in Calmar with three little girls, and I cried harder over that than I did at the auction.
In two years I had never once seen her go near the piano in the dining room. I had tried. I walked her over to it the first month and sat her down on the bench and put her hands in her lap, and she looked at the keys the way she looked at me. She was polite about it. She said, “Isn’t that nice,” and asked if it was time to go home.
So I had stopped trying. I thought the music had gone wherever my name went.
That night Pete got in at a quarter to seven. He drives a bulk feed truck for the co-op, and on Tuesdays his route runs clear up to the Minnesota line and back, so I have never asked him to do Tuesdays. Tuesdays are mine. Sundays are his. He goes after church and sits with her through the afternoon ball game, and she calls him “that tall fellow” and pats his arm, and he says he does not mind a bit. He says it is the best review he has ever had from a mother-in-law.
I had pork chops in the skillet. I told him the whole thing while he washed up at the kitchen sink, and then I told him again when he sat down, because I had left out Walt’s cap.
He did not say anything for a while. Pete is not a talker. He cut his pork chop and thought.
“All four,” he said.
“All four. And she held the last note.”
“She would.” He chewed. “I couldn’t get through the first one at our wedding. You remember that? I stood up there moving my mouth.”
“I remember. Dad sang loud enough for both of you.”
“He did.” He smiled down at his plate. Then he looked up. “What about the girl? Where’d she learn it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask her?”
“Pete, I couldn’t talk. I could not make one word come out. And then she got called down the hall.”
“Well,” he said. “But it’s a funny thing to hum. A girl that age.”
That stopped me. I had been so full of my mother standing up that I had not thought about the other half of it at all.
He was right. It was a funny thing to hum. A girl of twenty-three hums what is on the radio. She does not hum a Swedish cradle hymn out of the old red hymnal while she pours water.
“It’s probably nothing,” I said. “Her church sings it. Half the county sings it.”
“Could be.” He buttered a piece of bread. “It’s one question, Anne. Go ask it.”
Wednesday is not my day. I went anyway, on my lunch hour, with a sandwich on the seat beside me that I never did eat.
Mom was in her recliner in the day room with an afghan over her knees, watching the birds at the feeder. I stopped and kissed her.
“Are you the one who does the hair?” she said.
“Not today, Mom.”
I found Marcy in the dining room. Lunch was cleared, and she was at one of the round tables folding a stack of the cloth clothing protectors they use at meals. She saw me coming and her whole face went worried.
“Mrs. Larson, I am so sorry about yesterday,” she said. “I asked the nurse and she said it was all right, she said it was a good thing, but I felt awful. You looked so upset.”