Thelma, Games, and Brunch.

Your Weekend Buzz is here.

Happy soggy Thursday friends, 

Last night the kids and I broke my mom out of her assisted living (the Watermark, which has truly given her back her desire to live), and took her to dinner at the Clark Street Diner in Brooklyn Heights. It’s nearby and a solid corner spot and a neighborhood institution, the sort of place where, at 6pm, the gray haired folks are coming in around the same time as the families; wheelchairs and strollers, adults leaning on walkers and toddlers grasping up for hands, bald babies and shiny-headed stooped men, all filing in, two wobbly poles of life, each hoping not to fall down. 

Dinner was great – as meals at diners always are. They really can’t disappoint—they’re efficient, tried and true, any sort of food you want at any time of the day—eggs, moussaka, chicken parm, shrimp scampi, lentil soup, a toasted corn muffin with butter—a coffee cup the color of putty constantly filled to the top, a Guest Check written in ink dropped before you have to ask for it. It’s everything you need whenever you need it. 

After dinner, Sam wheeled her back to her place (she screamed the entire way because Sam was going TOO FAST!!!), and watched Thelma, starring June Squibb as a grandma who gets scammed out of $10,000 when she gets a call from a guy she thinks is her grandson and decides she is going to find the guys who did it. It’s a Mission Impossible-styled film for the grandparent set—montages of her managing to reach a top shelf, get from one side of a room to another, riding a scooter like it’s a race car, and walking a long way to the bank. It’s a tender, true, beautiful and side-splitting film that seemed like it was written for me and my mother at this moment, when we have both been through the process of leaving behind a life of independence, moving out of a home, getting through hospitalization and rehab, and finding a retirement home where she will be happy and healthy and cared for until her time runs out. It’s all too much, really, but the movie helps. 

You hear Thelma’s fears and her anger about losing her independence, being threatened with assisted living by her daughter. Her companion in this caper, Ben can’t understand why she would not want to move into Assisted Living. 

“Cherly used to cook, pick up our socks, keep our place together,” he says. “I like the place. I swim twice a week, there's wonderful classes, cooking classes, painting classes. And they have games, and we learn Oopy Upssy.” 

“What’s that,” Thelma asks.  

“That’s when a professional comes in and teaches us how to pick each other up after we fall. There’s a tub lift, a shower lift, and a dual lift for when a couple falls.” 

Thelma answers: “That’s interesting,” she says. And then” “But it’s not the same Ben. I always picked up the socks.”

The movie is full of little moments, heartbreaking ones like when Ben and Thelma visit Mona, their friend who they used to travel with, who lives alone in a place that is infested with roaches and sits in her chair watching hummingbirds on TV all day. You watch Thelma calling friends, and, one by one, learning that they’ve passed: Oh, a heart attack? A stroke! Sepsis! She fell into a fire pit! Died instantly?” 

In another scene, towards the end, Danny, her grandson and BFF, and Thelma are driving and she sees some very old trees. “Danny! Look at the bottoms of those trees! Look how gnarled they are. They should be dead. They should be down on the ground, but they’re alive. Well it’s unbelievable.” 

Then, in one of the last scenes after the Mission Impossible chase is over, she and Danny are sitting together, visiting the grave of her late husband Teddy. 

“You get very greedy,” Thelma says to him. “You want to see what's gonna happen to those you love.”

“I love you and if you ever do die I am really really really gonna miss you,” Danny replies. “And I know you know that, but I wanted to say that now, while we’re here. While we’re here.”

I was balling at this point, as you can imagine, and I looked over at my mom hoping to see a look of recognition, because that’s a conversation we’ve pretty much had verbatim. But she was asleep in her chair. We rewound the movie so she could see the ending, but she fell asleep again. We’ll try again today. The point was not that she saw the ending, but that we were together watching. 

This weekend I’ve got a couple of fun ideas for you – a new place to play all sorts of board games and more with friends and a fun plan for a jazz brunch. 

See you Monday!

xx