Welcome to the 5th Sans Souci art gallery. This section of the museum will close after this exhibit. But save your ticket, you will be returning. The stories will continue.

A health update: I have had one FaceTime call which upset me. Robert’s voice is weaker. The man who never shut up, who knew everything, who read every page of The New York Times, daily, had little to say. The onus is on the caller to be neutral and to keep things rolling. Robert does not initiate, ask questions, offer much beyond “OK.” He’s been working on intonation in speech therapy; he doesn’t even know he is getting speech therapy. When I spoke to him while the OT/PT were present, he was screaming, “Don’t pressure me!”
It is difficult for him to carry on a conversation: He needs time to process information and formulate a response. He does not want people to call him. When I manage to get through with the help of someone on the floor, he cries.

 

Despite every argument, disagreement, feeling of fury or exasperation I have had toward him in the forty-four years of our marriage, these days have humbled me: no one deserves to exist this way. Understand, you people who think he is going to walk out of here and just go home and resume his old life: He needs help with every activity of daily living. Every one.

 

 

He cannot walk. He can sit with assistance briefly. The man who would fly down the street and leave me in the dust is bedridden. The man who was always excited about a new museum exhibit, going to a new restaurant, subscribing to a chocolate company from Brooklyn, going to a Mahler concert, is bedridden

 

 

 

The Robert I knew is gone. He’s been abducted, hidden within another body; occasionally I recognize bits of him if I trigger something, from afar, in his memory: his is languishing. He is now Covid negative and is supposed to be moved again but there’s been no word, likely no beds available where he was  and the current placement in Riverdale cannot accept new patients.

 

ADDENDUM: I just received a phone call from the social worker in Riverdale that the Whitestone facility, where he was before, where he had 3 falls from bed, two head injuries, and contracted Covid, is taking him back.

He was 112 pounds when he left the hospital, and once in Riverdale went up to 113, then 117 and now he is 111.
One hundred and eleven pounds. I told the social worker in Riverdale to make it clear that Robert have bed rails. The NYS law against “restraints” can be stretched if they say that the patient needs them to turn in bed. Why wasn’t that done before?

 

 

 

 

 

Let me stop here and take a big, teary breath and move on to something more cheerful.

 

 

 

I decided to re-post the poem about one of our trips to Lyon, France: We can all use a smile.
We stayed in Lyons twice and visited Paul Bocuse both times. It was an education and it was terrifying.

My panic attack in a 5-star restaurant in Lyon, original post 4/13/07 ART&Poetry by author Before our son was born, and because we were teachers and had the time, my husband and I traveled extensively through Europe. Nine summers. I could say, “filler-up” in French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Spanish; but don’t ask me to now. That part of my brain has become a gray viscous puddle. As much as I enjoyed my travels through France, I was always under stress. I studied French for eight years, read the classics, blah, blah, or as Seinfeld would say, “yadda, yadda, yadda,”
I would drag old textbooks with me and study conjugations at night because I was terrified of making a mistake:  That doesn’t fly in France.  So you can imagine my humiliation when in Rouen I was buying postcards in the Museum of Locks and asked for “tous les cartes,” “instead of toutes les cartes.” I thought they would lock me up on the spot.
I mean, just shoot me, right there. The lowest menial worker, the toilet patrol lady can knife you with the tongue of correction.So that was my mindset.  Joy and fear.  To me France was like a footnote to Marat de Sade.
Pleasure and pain.  Feed me truffles and just whip me.

 

We splurged on dinner at master chef Paul Bocuse’s Restaurant, outside of Lyon.
I actually had a panic attack; the onus of ordering was on me. Some fool was smoking a huge cigar and it hit me between the soup and first palate cleansing sorbet. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t smell, I couldn’t taste and I thought I was going to barf. All for $150 per person. This was in the early 1980s.

Here is my verbal photograph and art piece. We were on this trip in the early ’80’s; as you can see, I lived to tell the tale of a dinner that scared me like a Friday the 13th slasher movie.

Birthing At Bocuse
11/2001. ART and Poetry from The Cerebral Jukebox 

I

The scene

Chez Paul Bocuse, a 5-star event

just outside of Lyons

serves one hundred-fifty dollar dinners

of endless courses:

soups that wear a pastry chef’s hat,

swimming pools of butter with drowning snails,

goose paté from ripened, grain-fed, white honkers,

wine and more wine,

and the intercourses;

sorbet between this and that,

cheeses and breads,

carts of custardy pastries

and superior chocolates

from Maurice Bernachon.

THE chocolatier of Lyons.

This is THE place.

The place where I seared my mouth on the soup,

and feared I was going to use the wrong fork.

The place where I assented

when le garçon recommended

La specialité de la maison:

Chicken cooked in a

pig’s bladder.

II

Reconsideration

But now I have second thoughts

as my head reels from:

the fog of cigar smoke,

the murmuring around me

of the incomprehensible andproper French,

the wine,

and more wine.

My nasal interior rebels and swells

leaving my lungs spasming for air.

I AM HAVING A PANIC ATTACK.

Into my consciousness creeps a vision of

comfort and safety:

America.It’s Golden Gates:

McDonald’s.

I have been transformed into

a soldier who is about to meet the enemy:

MY DINNER.

Then fight to the death,

en garde!,

at this very table;

I wonder:

is a chicken cooked in a pig’s bladder

armed with a bayonet?

III

Religion

Oh God, please help me,

Next time I promise to stay home,

Stick close to the Kosher Deli,

order hot pastrami with those fat fries

the size of

Paul Bunyan’s fingers.

Just don’t let me faint and fall,

at the sight of a pig’s bladder,

face first into my foie gras.

Amen.

 

IV

Labor

I start to take

deep Lamaze, rapid panting breaths

as the huge silver, domed-covered tray is escorted to the table,

by the entourage of waiters.

The tray cover reflects a terror-stricken woman who

is about to lose the first six courses of the meal

on the floral carpet.

Waiter number one raises the cover in slow motion;

My life revisits me in a rapid succession

of cerebral film clips.

There it is, a five-star, smooth, pink mound on a tray,

a pregnant woman’s stomach, without the woman,

THIS is the one hundred and fifty dollar

“chicken cooked in a pig’s bladder,”

(it sounded a lot better in French)

but I don’t see a chicken.

And now my eyes are totally dilated:

breathe, breathe!

Waiter number two takes the cover away.

Waiter number three holds the huge tray,

while waiter number four approaches the

pregnant stomach,

the smooth, pink hump,

surrounded by little diced white and orange vegetables

WITH A KNIFE!

I think: this hump must be in its ninth month of gestation

And then I realize ready or not,

I AM ABOUT TO WITNESS A BIRTH–

Or maybe a murder.

 

V

Birth and Revelation

He lifts a paper-thin corner of pink membrane

with the knife

and knicks it,

as an act of a covenant,

a circumcision?;

it shrivels

like the Wicked Witch of the West,

And reveals:

A chicken.

A regular, normal, Frank Purdue

oven stuffer roaster from which

more of the diced vegetables are spilling.

The chicken, a cornucopia of joy.

The chicken, a familiar vision, at ninety-nine cents a pound.

Le poulet.

Waiter number four, having completed the c-section,

now carves like an experienced surgeon.

 

 

VI

Renaissance (Rebirth)

My breathing has begun to regulate.

My nasal passages are retreating,

permitting oxygen

into my lungs, aorta, extremities.

My being relaxes,

the six previous courses are no longer a threat

to the carpet.

I look to heaven with thanks.

Birthing can surely make one hungry.

 

[You can see Paul Bocuse’s  actual dish, thanks to youtube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Njgdh-U-P8]

 

 

And now that we’ve been to France for lunch, and a story, let’s visit the 5th and final gallery of paintings.

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed the art and stories. Please return for more memories and words.

 

 

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

The previous post is here

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