My mom came over yesterday, nearly three months since her last visit. We had invited her on Christmas Day but she said no and again since then whenever I’d asked.

I think mostly it’s the stairs. We live in a house built on the top of a small hill in the woods. The entry is at the basement and garage level. The only way to get to the main floor with the bedrooms and bathrooms and kitchen and living areas is to climb the stairs.

Though my mom doesn’t remember, she fell in our house fifteen months ago and fractured her elbow. She wasn’t yet on the stairs, but they were right there. We brought the ambulance in and took her to the hospital.

Though my mom doesn’t remember, this was traumatic for her. She was a year past her diagnosis for dementia and the lights, the hospital bed, the sounds, the pain all surrounded her and were suffocating.

When she left the hospital four days later she went to a rehab center which she also has now forgotten.

I think the stairs in our house represent those memories for her. She doesn’t remember them, but she remembers the stairs.

She remembers feeling helpless. She remembers feeling scared.

So, I think, she has resisted coming over to our house.

The other day, though, she asked me, “Why don’t I come over to your house anymore?”

Seeing the opening, I said, “Why don’t you come over tomorrow?”

So she did, though reluctantly. The rehab physical therapist showed me an excellent way to assist my mom up stairs and when walking without her walker or a shopping cart.

I use my belt.

Holding the belt from behind, I can keep a light touch and my mom does most of the work on her own.

I am an anxious son, though. Once she’s up the stairs, I am constantly watching to make sure she doesn’t get up on and walk around without her walker.

So yesterday we got some pictures out which she had boxed up ten years ago when she moved out of my childhood home in Indiana. This was, a bit, a tactic, as she was reluctant to help with supper, cutting vegetables.

But those pictures were a wonder for her, boxed apparently with no consideration for decade, some of her childhood, some of mine, some of her grandkids.

Outside the wind assaulted the house, knocking limbs out of trees, pushing our trash can and recycling bins, and, as mentioned in this poem, knocking down our basketball goal.

The goal has seen its trouble over the years. It should be weighted down with water in its base, but that base leaks. The rim has been bent with a U-Haul truck, our pop-up camper, various delivery vans, with other falls in other winds.

And so, this poem exists.

This poem was a bit of a burst, similar to other recent poems where I read poetry and let the poetic ideas fill my head until it’s ready to burst.

Because I write a publish these as a blog, there are probably edits I’ll want to make later. Maybe I’ll make them. Maybe not.

My story here probably gives you enough to understand where this poem originated. The last stanza, in fact, refers to a photo that I found of myself shooting at our old basketball hoop in Indiana.

But a poem shouldn’t need such background. You shouldn’t need to know that I spent many of those years watching The Jetsons and Bewitched, shows about the future and magic.

You shouldn’t need to know that I worry about someday developing dementia as my mom and dad have now both done. As my grandma did.

Or that I worry about our house that can only be lived in if one can climb stairs.

Or that I have already researched elevators and have two spots picked where they can be installed without too much fuss.

You shouldn’t need to know any of those things to appreciate this poem. At least that’s what I hope.

Except maybe this blog is part of the poem. Maybe it is all tied together.

Maybe the future really will be all elevators and magic.

And poetry.

So let’s see what WordPress’s AI Image Generator has to say about this poem:

Nailed it!

The featured image here is a shot of a hallway at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. It has nothing to do with the poem, save that it is a picture.

Perhaps not everything is connected.