I don’t normally eat meat, but I never argue with Alice when meat is set before us. It’s just not worth it, especially in public. We were in the dining room at The Place when the meal arrived: ham so thinly sliced it was nearly transparent, a milky clump of scalloped potatoes, and a patch of broccoli.
So we ate this Easter lunch I would not want to eat again, a meal not so much prepared as enforced by a cook who may have last really thought about food in 1994, and served by a sweet young woman perhaps born in 1994, who found herself pushing a cart around and pouring something she called “cherry lemonade” into tall plastic glasses, an imitation of wine, I guess. It was, after all, a holy day.
Let’s mourn the pig who was sacrificed for this unholy effort and hope he had a happy life.
We then walked all the way around the outskirts of the building, a long journey for Alice. She’s been cooped up inside so long she fell in love with everything she saw, especially these trees.
By the way, that is the pregnant Virgin Mary I’ve mentioned that Alice is fascinated by. She had never seen Mary with the baby Jesus still in her womb until she moved here. Maybe this stage of things isn’t allowed to be on display in the Midwest. Don’t go thinking those are real flowers at Mary’s feet. We checked and they are not. With all the flowers in the area and with all the trouble Mary went to, you’d think they wouldn’t cheat on something like this on Easter.
The trees were all around the yard. Alice wanted to get close up to one of them. In this photograph, I think her head looks almost like one of the blossoms. Her age has not affected her sense of smell too much. She still enjoys fragrances.
Does anyone know what kind of trees these are? We thought apple maybe, but then second guessed ourselves. Any ideas?
Once back in the apartment she looked over her new library books. 
One of them is about New York, where she has never been. “But your father was there once,” she told me. “He was on a buying trip for garments for one of the stores where he worked.” She looked off into the distance, thinking hard. “And something… happened there.”
She thought and thought. I held my breath. What could have happened to my prairie-born father in New York City? An encounter with a famous person? A breathtaking experience at a museum? Mugged? Lost in the subway system for a day or two?
Then it came to her. “Oh yes,” she said, “he brought me back a robe. It’s in the closet.”
“That’s what happened to Dad in New York? He got you a robe?”
“Yes! That’s it! And now that robe is fifty years old.”
Fifty year old robe.
She told me she has rarely worn this item, but it came from New York, after all. Exotica.
She admired the flowers I brought her. Here they are keeping Martha (the original Great Mother) company.
Martha
She asked me to fix the external speaker used for extra volume on her television set. It had come unhooked from its power supply, and then she wanted me to leave so she could nap. And so I fixed the speaker, hung up the robe, kissed her cheek, and came home.
A good day. Except for the poor pig. He made me think about sacrifice, a notion we take for granted now because of the long-ago sacrifice of the man at the center of attention for the day, one who may often have found himself wondering: Are people really worth it? I can’t guess his feelings, but I think I know what the pig would say: Double up on the helping of broccoli and leave me out of it.
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