Amy

Revolutionary Spirit

My sister-in-law Amy lives in our town’s subsidized housing. It’s a bad fit. In the sixties, Amy was a Greenwich Village beatnik turned Berkeley hippie, and has worked as a potter, art framer, organic gardener, and baker over the course of her eighty-plus year life. Now, surrounded by folks with novelty wreaths and American flags on their doors, she’s a bohemian outlier.

Amy isn’t happy with the meals they serve there. I don’t blame her. To go from homegrown and homecooked to factory-canned and overcooked runs counter to her palate and her principles. But she complains only a little, to me and her children, and only suggests things to the chef, like optimal cooking times for vegetables and perhaps adding a seasoning that’s not table salt.

Amy calls me daily to ask questions about her two remote controls. With them, as much as COVID and winter keep her inside her apartment, things are new.

“I’m watching this great show on Netflix. It’s called “Grey’s Anatomy.” Have you ever heard of it?” she asks.

“I have,” I say.

“Well, not to give anything away, but it’s about doctors at a hospital and the different cases they have to treat. It’s fantastic,” she tells me.

Amy loses things frequently because her studio apartment is hopelessly cluttered. Her phone, her mailbox key. It’s always a near-crisis, but always, she finds them.

When I visit her, I sign in. The desk attendant, a sturdy, no-nonsense woman named Pat, takes my temperature, which is always 97.6. If the weather is decent, Amy and I stand outside on a patch of sidewalk. If it’s not, I go to her room. Most of the time, I have to remind her to put her mask over her nose, which I feel bad about.

I always try to bring her something healthy to eat. Right now she’s enjoying my contribution of Asian pears. Like “Grey’s Anatomy,” she tells me they are fantastic.

We live, and then, we die. Toward the end, too many of us subsist.

Not Amy. She rejects the intermediary fugue state. She power walks the corridors, four feet, seven inches of defiance to the prevailing culture of grimness, her pocket holding a small Tupperware full of crushed red pepper to sprinkle on pretty much everything the dining hall serves. Today, she wants to talk to the administration about composting.

They don’t know what to make of her, but Amy knows what to make of herself.

Vive la resistance.