The Robert Update:
Robert has tested negative for Covid twice which gives him the “freedom” to move out of a Covid facility and back to where he had come from in Queens, however, at the time of this writing, the social worker from where he is has not had any communication from the Queens facility since she left a message last Friday. I would just as soon he stay in a rehab at his resent location in the Bronx, for now, as I can’t visit him anyway. All this moving is very disorienting to everyone involved.

I asked for a speech and language evaluation; the therapist could not have been nicer: In my observation from afar, Robert needs help with pragmatics, his breathing, self-monitoring, if possible, of his tone and prosody. He needs daily orientation to his time and place, how to make a phone call, how to maintain boundaries. Apparently when someone comes into the room to speak with his roommate (who was described to me as “more with it,” which reminded me of how pained I feel), Robert jumps into the other person’s conversation. He always had this kind of need to be in the middle of things, but he has to learn what is his business and what is not, lest he come off as a yenta. Anyway, the therapist was constructing a plan and had more to offer. I asked her to see if he still had his phone in his possession. The good news is he does. The bad news is there is no charger and the phone is dead.

I have spoken to him with the therapist in the room and he has on an occasion been crying. I can’t tell you how this pains me. We were discussing how he was going to get therapy, how he was a good sport and made it through the evaluation. But on a deep level he knows he is in need, failing and losing himself.

So, let’s break off to a happier time and go back to the past.  It is the summer of 1977. That infamous summer of the Blackout. The Son of Sam was still striking fear in the hearts of the NYC denizens. Let’s leave. Let’s go to England, Ireland and Wales. It was 104º in New York when we took off and about 50º at Shannon airport when we landed.  I sat on the floor of the airport and unloaded my suitcase on the floor, then put on every layer I could find. I was still cold.

It was so chilly one night in Wales, in Portmeirion (where they filmed * The Prisoner—remember #6?, and, they make the most divine floral pottery), that we ran the shower constantly trying to make the room steamy, and drank cup after cup of hot tea.  But, this was about our stay in St. David’s, the time we spent between Penryndeudraeth, Wales,  and traveling to  Hereford, England. On Sunday, August 7, we walked down the Penbrokeshire Coast Trail while listening to bells ringing. In town, I bought a tiny Paddington Bear: I still have it somewhere; little Paddington with his floppy hat and yellow boots, in a blue felt slicker. As big as my thumb.

So many years later.

On Monday, August 8, 1977, we walked to town to buy carrots for two donkeys we met, Hee and Haw, and to look for a newspaper. On surrounding paths we saw bees, snails and boys. We drove to Whitesands. Dinner included a deep chocolate mousse.

But, it was that morning that still sticks in my mind, the way the day began with a moment of semantic confusion and a cultural gaffe. Breakfast like in most places, was served at the hotel. I was already missing the sumptuous Irish morning meals we were served at Sweeney’s Oughterard Country House Hotel, the week or so before: The freshly baked brown bread, the sausages and eggs. The winter-kind of food served in summer on mornings in a place where the sun set close to midnight and white horses by the fence glowed in the twilight. A place that was so country that I couldn’t use my hairdryer and had to go to a local hairdresser who set my hair in rollers and left me with a 1950s bouffant.

This was about food, one of the great joys of travel. So here, in St. David’s, the waiter came to take our order and Robert ordered cereal, I recall cornflakes. Robert stopped the waiter and told him he would also like to try an order of sausages. Bangers. “Well, when shall I bring them?” asked the waiter, and Robert replied, “with the cereal.”

Breakfast was delivered to the table: Robert got his cornflakes in a white, shiny bowl, garnished atop with two bangers.

The three of us looked at one another not really knowing what to do. Robert’s first reaction was: “Oh you silly man!” I think he thought the waiter was kidding, but he was following the directions he heard. That made the waiter’s embarrassment worse: Embarrassment is a contagious disease; it hurts to experience and it hurts to watch. The waiter was asked for a plate for the sausages and disappeared, devastated.

All three of us had a lesson in linguistics: you might think you speak the same language but you don’t. Moral: When you travel, watch your prepositions and keep an open mind.

Oh, and you might be wondering how I recalled dates and places: Robert kept a record of his/our life since the 1960s on a Peanuts wall calendar. He wrote everything about the day and he squeezed it into each daily box in a tiny, neat hand. When we travelled, he notated EVERYTHING in a spiral notebook and transferred the data onto the calendar when we got home. He constructed pockets for cards, he listed credit card and traveler’s checks information, phone numbers, addresses, he sent postcards with lovely stamps, daily, in that same small hand fitting pages of poetic descriptions onto postcards. He made notations of all the photographs we took on every trip, often recording the light settings and aperture data.

They no longer make those Peanuts calendars. He switched to an Ansel Adams wall calendar a number of years ago. In September he asked me to order him one for 2021. He stopped recording his notes in November 2020. He never got to open the 2021 calendar. His tidy, clear handwriting began to morph into wavy-lined constructions that climbed up imaginary hills.

Now that I’ve brought you up-to-date and you’ve shared my flashback, let’s visit the 4th art gallery.

The Observer Highway; Hoboken, New Jersey
Oil on canvas
1977

 

☞ Fun Fact: The above was exhibited at Queens College. Someone approached Robert and said she had to buy it: he refused the offer. Apparently the woman grew up in the building, in the apartment just under Frank Sinatra’s.

 

View of the Harbour at Naufrage, Prince Edward Island 1981
Oil on canvas

 

Mobil gas station
Solona PA 1981
oil on canvas

 

 

Olema, California
Oil on canvas
1987

 

*And for your edification, here is the first episode of Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, number 6. Note how he awakens in that strange idyllic town. That is Portmeirion on The Irish Sea, an actual hotel, and one of the most memorable places we ever stayed in.

📌The series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

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