Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...

While I was away on my business trip, what was going on at home?

The developments about which I was eagerest to learn were all about Boyfriend 5. But after all that thought and preparation, this was a pure anticlimax. The day he was supposed to arrive, he IM'ed Wife to tell her something terrible had happened (his father was attacked by political enemies and lay broken in the hospital) ... and while of course he was willing to come anyway, because he had said that he would, nonetheless he felt torn in two because he couldn't stop thinking about his poor suffering father by whose side he felt he ought to stay. I must admit he showed (as he does too often) a true mastery at plucking Wife's heartstrings like a banjo; and of course she said no, no, you have to stay there. We'll find another time.

I'm really not very surprised. While I had to plan as if he were going to show up, my cynical side never really expected him to. I had been half thinking all along that he would announce a crisis at the last minute, and -- sure enough! -- he did exactly that. At some level, I have to wonder what Wife thought of his story. I mean, if he were travelling by conventional means and were coming all the way from the Old Country, he would already have been en route by the time this calamity transpired, which means he probably would have gone ahead and shown up anyway. On the other hand if the family can really teleport -- and he claims that his father is a far more powerful magician than he is, so presumably he can teleport better -- then how could enemies ever attack him in the first place? Why couldn't he just vanish and reappear somewhere else? But of course I no longer expect Wife to dissect these stories analytically.

Oh, I almost forgot -- in other news, Boyfriend 5 says he is a vampire. Wife does not appear to have laughed in his virtual face. (Hey, don't look at me. I don't write this stuff; I just report it.)

Far more important in the long run, I think, is the state of Wife's health.

Wife has been really tired for the last several months -- most of the year, in fact. She isn't eating, or not much. She sleeps a lot. When she gets tired, she simply shuts down. She has been going to bed between 7:00 and 8:00 in the evening. So it was no surprise to me when she e-mailed me that the boys were not getting driven to any of their evening commitments -- she had tried to arrange help, had not succeeded, and couldn't do it herself. OK, well none of that will make the sky fall in.

But Tuesday she had a regularly-scheduled parent-teacher conference with Son 2's teacher. In the past, her conferences with this woman have always been very ... well, let's call them "engaged." By this I mean that Wife is usually fighting with the teacher, demanding special assignments for our boys (each of them in turn) so that they are more challenged than they will ever be with normal homework. Wife used to teach, after all, and she has strong opinions and high ambitions for our children. But the teacher actually telephoned me in a far city, the next evening, to say she was worried about Wife -- apparently because they didn't fight during this week's conference. The way she put it was that Wife was usually ... "advocating" for the kids very strenuously; and this time she was calm, almost bored. "Yeah, well Son 2 doesn't seem to want to challenge himself much. Oh, is that what you are going to assign him? That's nice, ... whatever ...." The change was dramatic enough that she wondered if there were a problem with Wife's medications, or indeed if it was safe for Wife to drive.

The answer to that last questions appear to be "Maybe not." When I got home on Thursday, Wife was lying apparently asleep on her bed (although she responded a little to my coming in); Son 2 was sitting next to her reading. Son 1 was still at school.

I asked Son 2 about the week. Oh, it was fine. Here's the mail; there's the stack of bills that Mom saved for you.

Were you and Son 1 a big help for Mom? Yes, Dad -- well, basically she would go to bed as soon as she got home from picking Son 1 up at school. Then we would get dinner for ourselves and do our homework and stuff.

Mom really fell asleep that early? Yeah -- actually one afternoon it was pretty scary because we had to keep talking to her the whole way back from getting Son 1 at school, so she wouldn't fall asleep while she was driving. But we got home fine, so it was OK. I'm glad you're back, Daddy.

Stories like this are a little scary. And it doesn't help when I talk to Wife, as I did this morning, and she says she finds she can no longer care enough to fix herself food, or to fight with our son's teacher, or to do any of a hundred things she used to do.

I cannot help but be reminded of a story that Bertrand Russell used to tell:

"My grandmother was a woman of caustic and biting wit. When she was eighty-three, she became kind and gentle. I had never found her so reasonable. She noticed the change in herself, and, reading the handwriting on the wall, she said to me, "Bertie, I'll soon be dead." And she soon was."