Wolf and man are getting closer to each other, we had to wait for the moment when an acquaintance would come face to face with a wolf. Yesterday was the day. An old neighbor of my mother emailed a photo of a wolf in the garden of a nursing home where my mother stayed for a very short time. She had included a note with the text: “Suppose Paula were still alive, then she might have been eaten by now.”
My mother has been dead for two years now, apparently the time has come to put things into perspective. I don’t know if it is true that the wolf would have survived a possible fight with my mother, for the same price she would have stuck a pastry fork in one of its eyes, she also poked me with it once and I am her son.
A memory did surface. It was in the early days of the corona pandemic, the residents of the home ate in the garden. There was a musician strumming a cello and a singing conductor.
My mother stood up, started singing along loudly and knocked the pan of sausages out of the nurse’s hands
My mother listened reluctantly, she was fine with the distance from her fellow patients. The woman next to her was waving her arms wildly. Suddenly there was a nurse with a pan of sausages. There were always frankfurters there for lunch. Always house brand too. The song On the Amsterdam canals was deployed. My mother stood up, started singing along loudly and knocked the pan of sausages out of the nurse’s hands. Then they all crawled on the ground to pick up the frankfurters. When the nurse had them all, she said: “I’m going to rinse them in the toilet. Then we can just eat them.”
She went to rinse the sausages. When she came back, she went around with a sign. My mother refused a sausage. The nurse put one in her mouth. It took her a long time to start chewing it.
I cannot rule out that she would not have minded a possible visit from a wolf at the time.
