Key Under the Cat

A number of years ago a neighbor of mine gave me an odd gift — a small metal green and gold statue of a cat with a pair of wings. It has beady little eyes and huge golden painted claws. Sometimes I look at it and think it is one of the spookiest gifts I ever received. Other times I ponder whether I might use it for a book cover as a metaphor for my rather unconventional life. Right now it is in front of the door of the apartment my brother, Owen, and I share in Palm Desert.

Recently I left my apartment key at a friend’s home in Los Angeles. She intended to send the key but I haven’t received it yet. In the mean-time my brother and I are sharing the key.

When I’d lost the key, my brother and I had to come up with a game plan on how to share the remaining one we had. He told me, “Put the key under the cat”. This would be an absolutely nonsensical comment if taken out of context but it made sense to us. I knew he meant the winged cat statue outside our apartment.

Owen and I are rarely at the apartment at the same time. We’re both taking care of our 96-year-old mother. We do it in shifts---one week on, the next week off.

I know my brother and I sharing the apartment and portioning the time we take care of our mom, is a fairly original idea. I’ve never heard of any such arrangement before.

I cherish the time I have alone in the apartment. I work full time at a nearby hospital. When I’ve worked a long day and it’s my turn to be with my mother, I’m too exhausted to enjoy her company. I want my own space.

The view from my brother’s and my apartment is stunning---with palm trees, jutted mountains and blue sky. The swimming pool in our complex sparkles in the sun. It’s very peaceful.

My mom is relatively independent for a woman her age. She still drives (albeit with my trepidation). It’s limited but she still has a car and a license.

She reads voraciously. She speeds through novels and is partial to the “New Yorker”. She loves watching The Cooking Channel and Home and Garden Television.

Although my mother can’t hear worth beans, she’s a great listener and confidant. My brother and I are both adjusting to any number of things and when there are set backs, she’s the one we seek out for counsel.

My mother claims she doesn’t need either one of us staying with her, but I suspect she’s rather relieved. A lot of the time we’re knee deep in taking our mother to medical appointments. My mother has had her share of falls. She’s broken her right arm twice, and her left, once. She has had shoulder and bilateral knee surgeries. She also has considerable G.I. problems.

My mother has an odd way to deal with her medical problems. For many years she was very healthy. When my mother gets sick, her first response is to deny there’s anything wrong with her. Then when reality hits, she becomes hysterical. How could Pollyanna be compromised? Fortunately, eventually she’ll calm down.

Owen and I share all of the food shopping for my mom. When it’s my turn, I’ll shop for food for the apartment as well. I’m constantly telling the people who are bagging the groceries at the store that certain items go in one bag, others in another. My brother and I also keep her happy by buying cookies and Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia.

My brother helps my mother with her financial and legal issues. I’ll accompany her for a manicure/pedicure or buy her a new dress.

My brother and I worry more about my mother than she does about herself. Our roles have been reversed but when my brother and I try to make adjustments to her life, she will be the first one to tell us to back off.

Nonetheless, Owen and I take everything in stride.

Regardless of our sense of responsibility toward our mother, the three of us enjoy each other’s company. We eat dinner together a couple of times a week. My mother still enjoys going out to eat. We find excuses for going to our favorite haunts much of the time.

Owen and I landed in the Coachella Valley at about the same time due to varying personal circumstances. Palm Desert had been our parents’ home for many years. It wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be but my mother is my Northern Star.

My mother’s condo wasn’t big enough for the three of us. So my brother and I decided to rent an apartment together and split our time between our mother’s place and our apartment.

When I am on my own in the apartment, my food choices are pedantic. I’ll eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or make guacamole or just eat Greek yogurt out of the container. I suspect my brother does the same thing.

There are a number of snags with sharing the apartment with my brother

I am far more tidy than he is. We’ve been at the apartment for awhile now but he hasn’t completely unpacked his stuff. He’s very good at putting together piles of papers, hand scribbled notes to himself, large legal documents, bills, envelops, etc. God forbid I move a pile of his papers. There is a method to his madness.I suspect that if my brother was writing this essay, he’d bemoan how bossy I can be. However, in response, I’d point out that I am his older sister. It is my birthright to push him around.

When my brother and I switch days (on Sundays) there’s a lot of preparation that goes in to the move. We invariably forget our phone chargers. My car charger has never worked, so I watch as the bars go down to zero.

I can recharge my phone at work but it’s a nuisance.

I’m prone to leaving my medication at either my mom’s or at the apartment. This can be more of a hassle than not. There are certain meds I have to take every day. I use a weekly pill container to guarantee I take the right medication at the right time. And I have a cloth bag with the medications in their bottles. But the two never seem to be at the same place.

I need to keep clothing at both apartments and I’m expected to wear a lab coat at work. I have three but there’s always the possibility that none of them will be wherever I am staying.

Owen has the same problems. He’s been schlepping the same large bottle of Dr. Pepper from the apartment to the condo for at least 3 weeks. He has a computer at both places but his printer is at the apartment. This can be problematic when the information he needs is not on the computer he’s using at any given time. He’s always going back and forth between the two places to get his work done.

Recently I ate ALL of his sugar-free 4-pack single serving chocolate puddings within an hour. His error was leaving them in the presence of a known chocoholic in the first place.

Yesterday my brother had minor outpatient surgery at a facility about two hours from where we live. It fell on me to take him. It took 15 hours before we returned home. As we drove at night on a desolate highway in the middle of the High Desert, the full moon beamed down, making the lonely desert look hauntingly beautiful. Owen and I talked a little bit about everything---our childhood, our shared years at the University of Oregon and our deceased father. And we spoke about our love for each other.

In the meantime, the key remains under the cat statue---the bizarre statue of a cat with wings---keeping our key safe for the other to get into the apartment.

“Key under the cat”. “Key under the cat”. “Key under the cat.”