“Mom said she wants to take a vacation,” my sister Nancy reports.
“Really?” I say.
Most evenings when Nancy and I talk, the Mom report is more or less the same. Mom’s feeling tired. She was asleep on the couch when Nancy arrived to visit. She seemed to enjoy a game or two of Scrabble. She didn’t, or maybe she did, feel like sitting outside for some fresh air.
On a bad day, the report might include lack of appetite, a lost emergency call pendant, or on a really bad day a gushing nosebleed that wouldn’t stop, necessitating an ambulance ride, an ER visit, and professional carpet cleaning.
“What sort of vacation, exactly, does she have in mind?” I ask.
“She said, and I quote, ‘I have to get out of this place,’” Nancy says. “I suggested a trip to the MFA.”
On a really good day, Mom, a lifelong Bostonian, would jump at the idea of an outing to the Museum of Fine Arts. Well, not jump exactly, but certainly brighten.
At the MFA, Mom visits her old friends. The young couple at the Dance at Bougival always makes her smile. Mom loves the way he’s looking at her, the rosy blushes on their cheeks, the swirl of her dress and its generous tiers of peach-colored fabric.
But approaching her 101st birthday, Mom hasn’t had a really good day in months.
Nancy and I discuss.
Mom might enjoy a trip to some other museum filled with Renoirs and his signature blushes. I suggest the Clark in the northwest corner of Massachusetts. Nancy reminds me that Mom’s last trip was eight years ago when we visited our North Carolina cousins. Afterwards Mom announced that it was, indeed, her last.
Mom needs a dose of beauty and a change of scenery, but driving six hours across the state and back is too much. Realistically, we doubt she even has energy for the MFA.
It’s not a long walk, but it’s never been a quick walk, from the blushing French dancers to Mom’s favorite painting in the MFA’s American gallery, Sargent’s Daughters of Edward Darley Boit. No swirling dresses here, no movement at all, so little color in the four sisters’ faces, so much shadow. Along the way Mom has always wanted to absorb everything. Even with her walker tottering right and left with every step, attention must be given to the signage. Homage must be paid to the art.
There’s that coffee table book of the MFA’s highlights that I sent for her birthday. But we think it’s too heavy for Mom to lift now.
There’s the framed print of the Dance at Bougival that we gave our parents decades ago. We agree. Tomorrow Nancy will hang it so Mom can see it from the couch where she naps. When she closes her eyes, maybe she can manage a getaway with her old friends.
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Dian Seidel’s work appears in Passager, Anak Sastra, Lucky Jefferson, Pen in Hand, Bethesda Magazine, and The New York Times. Her award-winning memoir, Kindergarten at 60: A Memoir of Teaching in Thailand, was published in 2023 by Apprentice House Press. Visit her at www.DianSeidel.com.
© 2025, Dian Seidel
Halfway Down the Stairs 