Shall I write about Estelle?

Took my new expensive shoes back to Faherty's in Southampton for an adjustment. "My ankles bend," I said to Tom. I'd brought in a packet of reading material from the Abington Library to read while I waited. There were no seats. On the floor were open boxes of shoes w/tissue paper spread out on the floor. The room was filled with old people with aching feet.

I sat down in a cushioned chair and the woman next to me began complaining about her feet. Ah! Conversation to while away the time. She's a walking ad for Medicare, bunions, joint replacement operations (Dr Booth), and family lore. Her son Lance sat several seats to her right. He was reading a Time mag and thought Bill Clinton was on the cover. She kept correcting him and saying No, it's someone else.

So, your son drove you here, I said.

Lance? I wouldn't trust him to drive. I drove myself.

Oh, great that you're still driving, I said.

I'm 82, she said, I'll never give it up. She was wearing a gorgeous brown curly wig and had gold hoop earrings. Small things like barnacles grew from her face and her neck. I don't have any yet.

I told her Faherty gave me exercises to do for my PF. She'd never heard of PF but liked the idea that it was so excrucatingly painful I limped at my son's wedding.

What dyou think of the David Letterman extortion, I asked her. She wasn't aware of it so I told her she'd find out on TV.

I'm under a lot of stress, she said. I looked her over and wondered what kind of stress she was under.

"A friend of mine taught me yoga to get rid of stress," she said. "It works. I used to have asthma and used a nebulizer but it got rid of the asthma too."

"Show me the exercises," I said. I forgot to tell her my daughter is a yoga teacher and that we did outdoor yoga in Dan's backyard before the wedding.

I do it in bed, she said. This one's for the neck.

She showed me a rolling neck exercise that I said I'd do cuz I have neck pain from sitting at the computer for hours at a time writing blogs like these and grants. If ONLY I can remember to do the neckercises. I told her about a pain in the middle of my back and she showed me exercises for that. I like the idea of doing them before getting out of bed on the soft mattress instead of the hard floor.

Then she planted the bombshell. She told me about the stress she's under.

"Both my children have Alzheimer's," she said.

"What? How old are they?"

"Lance is 48 and my daughter is 47. She's the worst."

Lance was a schoolteacher but had to quit his job cuz he couldn't remember where he parked his car. He's the one who thought Glenn Beck was Bill Clinton.

The daughter lives w/her husband and 3 kids in Huntingdon Valley on Mettler Lane. Her husband has moved her downstairs and is isolating her. She wears Depends. She can't remember words. She's afraid to go up and down the steps. The 8-yo said, Why not build a ramp?

The husband is not interested. He's the boss said Estelle.

"I wish I had never married my husband," she said. "He had Alzheimer's. He died at 52. His father had Alzheimer's. It's in the genes."

"She shouldn't be isolated," I said. "She'll only get worse."

"You're telling me! That's what I told him but he won't listen. He's the boss."

I suggested she join a caregivers group for Alz patients. "What's a caregiver?" she asked. I explained it and suggested she contact Holy Redeemer Hospital nearby. She won't.

"What dyou do for yourself?" I asked her. "Dyou have any girlfriends?" She's meeting some friends in Bristol on Sunday but she doesn't like leaving Lance home alone. They live together in a second-story apartment in Krewstown.

She went out with an Irishman after her husband died. He was very good to her. He died.

Tom came out after half an hour with my newly built shoes. The shoemaker himself, wearing a darling red apron, would come out from the back and stare me down hard. Did he know my sins from the way I wore my new shoes? He sure looked at me funny. He was a young man, walked bent forward obseqious-like.

"The shoes fit good," I said to Tom walking around in them. I was wearing black fishnet stockings cuz I'd bought another pair of shoes earlier today at Walmart. We opined that folks are buying shoes now before it snows.

I said my goodbyes to Estelle and Lance, walked out of the store, and turned my ankle slightly. When I got home I received an EMAIL FROM STEPHEN!!!