We had flown two thousand miles,
from Virginia to Colorado,
rented a car, and driven ninety minutes
to her nursing home, with small gifts
and a hard-to-find candy she liked,
knowing we only had about an hour
before she would sag and need to sleep.

Mom was happy to see us, of course,
and she always did like my second wife,
so the visit went pretty well at first.
On her dresser was a landline phone
with an extra-long cord that could reach
any point in the small room. This cord
dangled over the edge of the dresser
and had curled around itself almost
into a knot, in a way that bothered Mom.
Sitting in her wheelchair, near the phone,
she kept trying to untangle the cord,
without success, and grew more and more
frustrated when she couldn’t get it to do
what she wanted. Eventually Linda and I
each took a turn at trying to straighten out
the cord, with some improvement,
but not enough to satisfy my mother,
who kept glancing at it the whole time,
as we brought out photos and tried
to talk of other things. As expected,
she grew tired after fifty minutes of this,
and we called for the attendant to help
transfer her into bed for her nap.

Next we drove to my sister Kate’s house,
where we were staying for the weekend,
had a nice dinner with her and her husband,
and learned about the latest frustrations
of her own tangled history with our mother.
Linda and I slept poorly that night, knowing
we would try again with Mom the next day
and then one more day after that.