Invariably, on the day you need to be in your car for 8 to 10 hours, that is the day, all hell will break loose.

My go-to girl is my amazing 85 year-old mom. Weird, for a caregiver, I know. But she is a former nurse and raised six kids, so she knows her stuff. She pours all the meds for my brother-in-law, she helps me out in every pinch and she loves going to the ER with me. So when she calls, I answer…immediately.

“Hello?”

“Cathy?”

“Yes, Mom,” I say on my handsfree car phone as I’m driving 65 miles an hour down the turnpike on my mission to hit as many major cities in the metropolitan area for various necessities on Easter weekend.

“Um, I’m at L’s apartment, and his wheelchair stopped dead. Can I release it and push it down the hallway to the dining room so he can go to dinner?”

“Wait, no, you can’t push it. You are 85 for crying out loud, that wheelchair weighs a thousand pounds without the big guy in it.” (See When Wine and Wheelchairs don’t mix….)

“Look, Mom, since he had the wheelchair fixed, there’s a button on the back that sometimes disengages his controls. Can you see the button on the back?”

“No, I can’t get behind him, he kind of stopped weirdly in the middle of his room, and I can’t get behind him.”

I can’t really figure that one out, but okay, I’ll work with what I’ve got here.

“Okay, can you stand on his right side and look behind his head area. That’s where the button is. See if it’s red or green.”

“Oh, ok, yes ok it’s green, wait, now it’s red.”

“It sounds like it’s cycling through. Just turn it off and then back on and then see if he can use his own controller. And stand far away, he’s been known to take off like a bat out of hell when we are trying to figure this out.”

“Oh…..okay.”

She fiddles with it a few times and it doesn’t seem to work. I’m still stuck between 5 eighteen wheelers on the turnpike and going nowhere near L’s apartment.

“Okay, Mom, I’m gonna’ call for reinforcements to come help.”

“What? I can’t hear you, you’re cutting out.”

“I can hear you perfectly,” I say.

“Well, I can’t hear you,” she says as her pitch rises in frustration. But of course she could or how would she know I said that?

“HANG UP, I WILL CALL YOU BACK!” Because somehow I think yelling is the answer.

My reinforcements are hard to find, so I call her back to say I’m working on it.

“Hello, Cathy?

“Yeah, Mom, I’m trying to get you help.”

“Oh, that’s ok, I was waiting for your call to tell you that as soon as you hung up it started working. He started to drive toward me, and that seemed ok, so he went to dinner.”

Ummmm…you couldn’t call me?

“Ok, well that’s good, thanks for the update.”

“Oh and Cathy?”

“Yeah?”

There’s a big hole in the wall where his headrest got imbedded into it when he went too fast in reverse, so we’re gonna have to get that fixed.”

You just have to Laugh……

Cathy Sikorski