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“You don't know that. Please, do this for me. Call your sister, get a recommendation for a therapist, and then go to
The Nutcracker
.”

I called my sister, who gave me the name of her therapist, telling me she didn't think he was very good. With that ringing endorsement, I made an appointment with him. After I filled out all the paperwork, I informed him that he'd treated my sister for the same condition. In fact, my sister in Boston also had plantar fasciitis. I thought he'd find this so fascinating he'd immediately want to do a research study on the genetic component of plantar fasciitis in female siblings, but he was more interested in watching the football game on ESPN. After icing my foot, the therapist used a TENS machine, applying sensors attached to electrodes as part of a protocol to stimulate the nerves. He explained that I'd get the best results from the highest intensity. Starting at the lowest level, he kept increasing the voltage, until we reached a point where I could barely tolerate it. He left it on for fifteen minutes while I practiced deep breathing to distract myself from the zapping pain.

“How's it going?” he asked in between watching football plays.

“Okay, but it's starting to hurt.”

He checked back a few minutes later. “Can you handle the pain?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Give it a few more minutes.”

“Okay, take it off,” I practically screamed. “It's unbearable.”

When he unhooked the sensors, I heard him say, “Oops!” I figured he'd mistakenly put it on the highest level, but he'd actually forgotten to turn the machine on.

Embarrassed, I joked about the power of the mind, but in his eyes I saw Problem Patient. I went for six more treatments, none of which were successful even with the machine on, and finally the therapist said he couldn't help me. When I left, I heard him say to his supervisor, “I'm not sure it's plantar fasciitis. All her sisters have it. I think it's a psychological problem.”

Lee and I went to
The Nutcracker,
where my niece danced the role of Party Girl. She was all grown up and wearing toe shoes. Lee asked if perhaps they'd like to go out and get some ice cream, but Emily explained it was a school night. We walked with them to a corner to share a cab and then dropped them off at their apartment.

The next day, my mother said my niece had caught a chill because we walked too far to get the cab. My sister apparently had wanted to hail one in front of the theater.

“So now I gave her a cold?”

“I just don't want to die without the two of you speaking.”

“I'm speaking. There's just no one to speak to.”

“Patricia, are you aware of how fast the years go by?”

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes . . .

Feetfirst

T
he white squirrels arrived in my parents' backyard about seven years ago. I'd never seen white squirrels before and viewed them as good luck charms. As long as they remained nearby, I clung to the childish belief that they'd keep my white-haired parents safe from harm.

My parents were then in their mid-eighties with the normal share of age-related health problems. Ten years earlier, my father had had a sextuple bypass. He and my mother had been visiting us for Christmas, and as we walked around Greenwich Village, I noticed him lagging behind. With my sisters and mother up ahead, I kept pace with him. “Are you feeling okay?” I asked. He answered, as he always did, “I'm fine.” But it was clear that the man who prided himself on “never falling out of a march” was having a hard time simply walking down the street. I insisted my mother call the doctor the minute they got home, and after my father had an angiogram, he was taken immediately to the hospital for surgery.

From then on, I was on tenterhooks. No Morrisroe male relative had ever made it past seventy-nine. He was then seventy-eight. But after a period of adjustment and denial—my father insisted the doctor misdiagnosed him—he resumed his life, even traveling overseas with my mother. All was fine until Nancy's wedding five years later. Prior to the rehearsal dinner, my mother decided that my father didn't have the right shoes and wanted him to rush out and buy a new pair. In addition to all the pressure and excitement of the wedding, I suspect the shoe problem may have caused his blood pressure to rise. Or perhaps it was just a coincidence. In any event, when he appeared at the dinner, I knew something was wrong and kept asking him if he was okay. Naturally, he kept telling me he was fine. The next morning it was evident to me that he'd suffered a mild stroke, but at the time I didn't realize the importance of acting quickly when symptoms appear. I just knew that if I took him to the hospital, Nancy would call off the wedding and my father would never forgive himself for ruining the day. When my father saw Nancy in her wedding gown at the church, he was beaming. “You look beautiful,” he said, but he had a hard time pronouncing the words. At this point I was a total wreck. I kept a close watch on him the whole time, but my father not only walked Nancy down the aisle but also managed to dance with her to “Daddy's Little Girl.”

The next morning, Lee and I took him to the emergency ward, where tests showed that indeed he'd suffered a stroke. “All because of the shoes,” my mother said. She felt terrible about getting him upset. He felt terrible that he'd ruined Nancy's wedding. (In truth, very few people even noticed.) I was amazed at his strength and resolve. He didn't fall out of a march even after a stroke. Though he took the prescribed medication, he refused any occupational or physical therapy and eventually recovered on his own.

In terms of his everyday functioning, my father's biggest issue was his progressive hearing loss. Though he wore hearing aids, they didn't seem to offer much help, resulting in increased isolation. He stopped going to social functions, and it was painful to watch him struggle to keep pace with family conversations. As time went on, he retreated more and more into his reading.

In the mid-1990s, my mother had been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heart rhythm that could possibly lead to stroke. She also had essential tremor, a neurological disorder that causes rhythmic shaking. After I told her that Katharine Hepburn had suffered from the same condition, she felt a little better but still hated what she called her “shaky, shake, shakes.”

In 2007, we bought a small weekend house, which my mother wanted to see, but she couldn't leave my father alone. In a reversal of roles, she was physically stronger than he was, though you wouldn't have known it judging by appearance. She looked as if a gust of wind could have blown her away, which is exactly what happened when she was nine years old and living in North Andover. She told the story often. Walking across an endless field, the wind howling like banshees, she felt herself being tossed “for miles” like tumbleweed, until she landed on a frozen lake. She broke her arm, the zigzag scar still visible after eight decades. A neighborhood boy discovered her and carried her home.

I found the tale so dramatic that I would forever associate my mother with tumbleweed. She'd always struck me as someone who might easily take flight, a victim of the elements, but I was wrong. She was definitely flighty, but despite her fragile appearance, she was extremely sturdy, with boundless energy that was all the more remarkable given her advanced age. Whenever my mother would describe her week, I couldn't believe she could handle such a packed and grueling schedule. There were countless doctors' appointments encompassing every specialty—cardiology, urology, dermatology, ophthalmology, gynecology, podiatry, nephrology, and so on.

Her one pleasurable appointment was her weekly wash and set, which she never missed, even in snowstorms. Mrs. Godfrey had died years earlier, so she went to another salon in the center of town. When it moved to North Andover, my mother moved with it. Most days, after my parents had lunch together, and if they didn't have doctors' appointments, my mother would jump into the car and drive to Kohl's or Home Goods. She loved driving, and she loved buying things. She especially loved returning the things she bought. It was all part of the rhythm of her life. When she tripped over the vacuum cord and broke her wrist, she still kept driving while wearing a cast. She hated the idea of being housebound.

Remarkably, my mother maintained her frenetic schedule on very little sleep. We both suffered from insomnia and when I wrote a book about it, I thought she might be interested, but after reading the first few chapters, she decided it wasn't for her. “I don't think it's anybody's business that I have insomnia,” she told me. “And I'm very upset that you described Sister Margaret as having meaty hands.”

“She's probably dead now, so what does it matter? And she did have meaty hands. Plus, she was mean.”

“You'll never get on
Oprah
now,” she told me. “She's not Catholic, but she's very spiritual.”

“Okay, but did you get beyond the nun part and read anything about sleep science?”

“No, I was too upset about Sister Margaret. And just wait until your father reads it. He's going to have
plenty
to say.”

“Maybe he can say it on
Oprah.
”

“You're very fresh.”

And so it went.

One year when Lee and I went home for Thanksgiving, I looked for the white squirrels, but they were gone.

“Where are they?” I asked my mother.

“What are you talking about?”

“The white squirrels.”

“You mean those pests?”

It soon became clear that my mother didn't share my feelings about the white squirrels and in fact wanted them dead. She kept a bird feeder outside the kitchen window, and the squirrels climbed up the pole and ate the seeds. My mother began greasing the pole with cooking oil so they'd slide off. I'd be on the phone with her and she'd say, “One of the squirrels nearly broke its neck. That's what you get for stealing birdseed.” I begged her not to kill the squirrels, “because they represent you and Daddy.”

“You think we're like squirrels? Thanks a lot, Patricia.” Then she thought for a second. “
Squirrels!
What about a children's book about two white-haired squirrels.”

“I don't want to write a children's book.”

My mother began rapping on the kitchen window. “
Get away from that bird feeder or I'll take a potshot at both of you!
”

“You've got a gun?”

“Of course I don't have a gun, but if I did, they'd be in big trouble.”

“That's a great ending for a children's story,” I said. “The grandmother kills the squirrels.”

“In
Little Red Riding Hood,
the wolf eats the grandmother, and that didn't prevent the story from becoming a classic. It's too bad you missed your true calling.”

“As a children's book writer?”

“Or a real estate lawyer. Your father thought you'd be very good at it. You should have listened to him. If you had, we'd all be out in the Hamptons right now enjoying Thanksgiving without the squirrels.”

My mother loved holidays. For Halloween, she'd tie corn husks around the lamppost, carve pumpkins, and buy a ton of candy for the trick-or-treaters, eating all the leftovers until it made her sick. Valentine's Day meant more candy, along with hearts and flowers and cards. Christmas wasn't Christmas without a tree, and it couldn't be a fake one, it had to be a Fraser fir. Even when she could barely walk, she'd somehow manage to get a sizable one into her car and then wrangle a neighbor to help her stick it in the tree stand. Nancy, who is allergic to tree sap, was called upon to hang the ornaments, which she did wearing elbow-length latex gloves. Throughout my childhood, my mother had always created such a festive holiday atmosphere that I continued to believe in Santa much longer than any of my peers. When she finally told me the truth, I collapsed on the bathroom floor, hysterical. I was twelve.

Of all the holidays, however, Thanksgiving was my mother's favorite. Though she'd never been much of a cook, she always pulled together a fabulous meal, first driving to Raymond's Turkey Farm for a fresh turkey and then, with the help of my father, she'd tie up the “bird” and “wrestle” it into the oven. While the turkey roasted, she'd make her famous party potatoes, which in her Boston accent she pronounced “pahty badaydoes.” She combined mashed potatoes with a stick of butter and a container of cream cheese, sprinkling paprika on top. One serving amounted to my daily caloric intake. My father always said grace, thanking God for bringing the family together, but for the past ten years, Emily and her family were absent.

In 2013, when my mother was ninety-two and her “shaky, shake, shakes” were worsening, she still insisted on cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Nancy drove her to Raymond's to buy the turkey, but my mother and father still managed to get it in the oven on their own. After we finished the meal and did the dishes, my mother asked me to follow her upstairs to her bedroom. She plopped down on the edge of the bed, “pooped” from all the preparations, and then had me open the bottom drawer of her bureau. Nestled beneath her mother's wedding shawl was a small package wrapped in yellowed tissue paper. I pictured two mummified toes, like E.T.'s index finger. I was repulsed, yet oddly exhilarated. Though I had no idea what I'd do with them, I was touched she'd finally acknowledged their existence. She unwrapped the paper, holding the objects in the palm of her hand.

“These are your baby shoes,” my mother said. “I hope you'll make good use of them.”

I didn't want to appear ungrateful, especially on Thanksgiving, but I casually mentioned that I'd been hoping for toes. At this point, it had become almost a running gag with us.

“
Toes?
What on earth are you talking about?” my mother said. “Why would I keep toes in a bureau drawer?”

“For good luck?”

“You think toes are like
what
? A rabbit's foot?”

“In parts of Asia, they are.”

“We don't live in Asia, Patricia. This toe obsession of yours is totally morbid. You let your imagination run away with you and it certain hasn't helped your career.”

“As a writer?”

“As a
children's
book writer. It's a good thing your father doesn't know about all this toe craziness, because he'd have
plenty
to say about it.”

I went back downstairs, where my father was in his reading chair staring at the
Eagle-Tribune.
I've rarely asked him a direct question but decided to go for it.

“Did I have twelve toes when I was born?”

He put down the paper. “They weren't toes,” he answered readily. “Just tiny pieces of skin. The doctor snipped them off. It was nothing.”

“Oh,” I said. “So that's it. Just tiny pieces of skin?” The mystery was finally solved.

“But you did have jaundice,” he added.

“See,” my mother said, catching the end of the conversation. “I told you!”

“I remember distinctly that you once said I had twelve toes,” I persisted. “It was on the day the police shot the skunk.”

“The police shot a skunk? Patricia, really!”

“About the twelve toes . . .”

“Okay, well, maybe I did say that, but then I took it back.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn't want you to think you weren't a perfect baby.”