let's keep moving

We went out for lunch to our usual place after mom's acupuncture appointments. It's a chain place in a small shopping center with other chain stores, a dry cleaners and a place that sells lotto tickets. After we finish, I push her back to the car figuring she will want to head home. She's been really tired lately, though the acupuncture gave her enough energy to come here for lunch. It's a beautiful fall day and I think of asking her if she'd like to stop by a lake to feed some ducks ( something she asks to do on days she has more energy ) I start putting our things in the car and ask her what she'd like to do now.

"Push me around for a while"
"You want me to push you around?"

I look at where we are---the middle of a parking lot edged by a small sidewalk, a circle of stores around us. My first thoughts are how we should leave here-it's boring, concrete, ugly--and go to the lake, be out in nature, it's the perfect day for it. We we could be hearing ducks and geese and the wind in the trees instead of cars pulling in and out of spaces and people chatting with each other. But getting in at out of the car is such a task, and if she is not ready, the lake is not an option. So I close up the car, undo the brakes and start pushing.

She seems to like to be in motion sometimes, it doesn't seem important where we are going or if we are going anywhere at all, it's more about moving. She gets antsy at restuarants when she's done eating or sometimes even before the food comes. She often asks to be wheeled outside and that is enough to get her to relax for a while.

So we go back to the sidewalk. It's such a beautiful day out, I start wondering how important it is where we are---the sun is so nice, and though she doesn't say anything about it, I guess that it feels good just to be out in it. The big open space of the shopping center works well for feeling the sun and maybe that is more healing than I'm giving it credit. I wheel her up and down the sidewalk a few times, wondering if people outside for lunch notice we aren't really going anywhere, just doing laps from one end of the stores to another. I take her behind the stores, where there are trash bins and back doors and and other than the occasional person stepping out from them to set something out, it's completely quiet, and it's just us. I think 'this is quite a scene, the two of us back here, not coming or going from anywhere, just wandering, wheel chair and all' I feel like I'm in some slow movie where nothing much is happening, we are moving through the still frame, no dialogue. I still find myself thinking about the lake, about how it would be 'better' how she should be somewhere really special and beautiful. I look at mom and she has her eyes closed; it isn't a concern of hers how pretty the landscape is. She just wants to be warm and moving.

We keep this up for maybe an hour and a half, I lose track of time going in circles, retracing our path a few times. I keep looking to find somewhere 'prettier' nearby to go, but it's too hard to cross the street cause of traffic, to go up a big hill that would be needed, and there isn't much around us anyway besides other buildings, so circling the shopping center it is.

At least two times I take us back to the car, ask her if she is ready to go, but she isn't.

"In a bit" she says "Just push me around a little more"

This is the kind of day she barely says more than that to me, and she seems in a state between awake and asleep. I feel lucky to be spending time outside, thinking of friends stuck in offices and how that could be me and how the previous day mom didn't leave the house at all. So really we are doing pretty well, I think, we are moving, even if we are not going anywhere.