¶During
my mother's last visit to was taking had taken all
her strength just to get on the airplane to come for a visit[LTE1]. We had made arrangements for me to pick her up at BWI, something she would never had agreed to before
and I would take her back to the airport
after the visit. These arrangements she would never have agreed to before[LTE2]. Perhaps one thing I have learned that one should
not force people to do things that are impossible for them. Parents learn that
when they raise their children. It will take several tries, possibly weeks or
months more than would be optimal in the eyes of an impatient spectator to
learning, for Billy or Sally to learn to tie shoelaces or learn the thousands
of things that must be learned before little Sally or Billy become adult. The
same is the case with children when parents get old. Just as there is conflict
when the older teaches the younger, so there is conflict when the younger has
to do things for the older. This time it is important for the younger to be
forbearing, a role switch that is not easy to achieve[LTE3].
¶During
our time in , soon.
There is no real formula here, the key is being there[LTE4]. ¶So, after her
return home[LTE5],
I headed down to Spring spring for
well over a decade. Needless to say,
my mother was greatly surprised to receive a visit form from her
son in the middle of April, and I must say I
did not feel exactly on solid ground myself. I had was expecting four weeks of
vacation, jealously hoarded vacation, and a lot
of projects, requiring lots
of intervention and yet I am was in
would could not
be able to leave to resume my busy regular [LTE6] life.
My mother needed someone to live with her,:
to tell her what day of the week it was, to make sure she took all the right pills were taken,
to prepare her meals were prepared, and to plan her activities planned[LTE7]. Up to that time, my mother
had done all that either helped
herself in some ways or arranged for help in others[LTE8]. She had her weekly routine,:
friends would come to visit, we hired someone
to come read her mail and write her checks and take her shopping, and
she spent much time was spent on the phone, much of it on calls to chatting
with friends and relatives in
¶But
that Spring spring the normal routine was no
longer possible. We Since she had
been diagnosed with received a diagnosis of cancer, which made even
to her routine of getting up and
dressing for the day was impossible. Her Keeping keeping track of time became
impossible as well, so she depended increasingly on a
full-time activities [LTE10] manager
who would gage gauge the her strength
level and say, “OK,
lets let’s go
eat Chinese and then take a walk by the lake. Or: “lets Let’s go
watch some television,.”
or Or: “lets Let’s have some soup,.”
Or: “lets Let’s go to the post office or go shopping or go to
the hairdresser[LTE11].” That Activities management would be became my role. While this was nominally a full-time job, there
were lots of free periods, when I could read, work on the computer, do
research, whatever. Gradually So I
adjusted to my new routine. I would get her up, fix her a
bran muffin, arrange all the her pills, get help her
to the telephone in the sun room next to the telephone, and go out to find
a New York Times New York Times (the
provincial edition from
¶We
would have good days and bad days,; some days she was too weak to get up
and would sleep all day. Sometimes she would be up all night. The point Soon I realized
my role was not to fix things, but just to help
her as best as I could to be there and
to be helpful in the appropriate manner[LTE13]. Of course, there was a the regimen of pills for
chemotherapy for the cancer, and there
were visits to the doctor and to clinics,
all of which took on the form of became major expeditions. Yet, by and large,
we did well. In fact[LTE14], I
was reconnecting with my mother, something a connection
I had not had since I was a child, and, to my surprise[LTE15],
she was planning and arranging my days for me.
¶I
had already [LTE16] arranged to quit my job in that a meal was consisted of just a bran muffin
and a orange juice.
Being [LTE17]back in my mother's kitchen
released a flood of food-associated memories. For Mother's Day
I decided to cook a full Austrian lunch: soup, veal, salads, potatoes, and
desert. Of course, it is hard to make a great tasty [LTE18] clear
soup in a lot of the trouble of acquiring
bones and root vegetables not easily available. So I found some German instant
beef soup in the pantry, a product that is all the
rage with even among the new generation of
housewives even in the villages in Salads there There would
be three salads[LTE19]: potato, cucumber and Boston
lettuce. "Wienerschnitzel," Wiener schnitzel[LTE20], breaded
veal cutlets, would be the main course. For a side
dish, I decided on peas and on small red potatoes with parsley. To
gilde gild the
lily, I went for prepared [LTE21] a
shrimp-and-horseradish-sauce appetizer. A slice of apricot
cake from a French pastry shop [LTE22] with
ice cream would finish the meal. I had already
found a case of Gruener Vetliner Gruener Vetliner at a
local wine store, so everything the ingredients
[LTE23]was were ready.
Page: 1
[LTE1]AU: OK to delete for
conciseness?
Page: 1
[LTE2]AU: transfer OK for
coherence?
Page: 1
[LTE3]AU: OK to delete the passage
since it seems digressive in the context of the paragraph?
Page: 1
[LTE4]AU: deletion OK?
Page: 1
[LTE5]AU: added transition OK?
Page: 2
[LTE6]AU: OK to substitute regular
since your life includes vacation?
Page: 2
[LTE7]AU: change OK to achieve
parallel structure?
Page: 2
[LTE8]AU: change OK for accuracy?
Page: 2
[LTE9]AU: changes OK for a
stronger organization of points?
Page: 2
[LTE10]AU: OK to insert activities
for preciseness?
Page: 3
[LTE11]AU: OK to use colon after Or
and to use quotation marks? Or would you rather let this passage be indirect
discourse?
Page: 3
[LTE12]AU: OK to transfer sentence
before Gradually to end of paragraph? It seems to fit better here. Also,
are the word choice changes in the transferred sentence OK—for greater
precision and variety?
Page: 3
[LTE13]AU: word choice changes OK
for stronger accuracy? Deletions OK for conciseness?
Page: 3
[LTE14]AU: transition In fact
seems needed here. OK?
Page: 3
[LTE15]AU: transition OK here,
given the context of the sentence?
Page: 4
[LTE16]AU: already OK here?
Page: 4
[LTE17]AU: No new paragraph seems
needed here: run into previous paragraph. OK?
Page: 4
[LTE18]AU: a more accurate word.
OK?
Page: 4
[LTE19]AU: I placed salads
later, since your book is largely informal in tone. OK?
Page: 4
[LTE20]AU: according to Webster’s
10th, two words without quotation marks or italics: Wiener schnitzel.
Page: 4
[LTE21]AU: word choice changed for
greater precision? OK?
Page: 4
[LTE22]AU: not needed since it does
not add essential information. OK?
Page: 4
[LTE23]AU: OK to use more specific the
ingredients?