Flying Island

FEET by Maureen O'Hern I watched my feet -- left, right, left, right -- move mechanically over miles of hospital terrazzo, a sameness that I trod back and forth, not daring to look up for fear I would see how far it stretched and how it merged into the sameness of the walls. The carpet in the hospital waiting room was green and black, evoking bright slime on fetid water, and hypnotic in a threatening, slithery sort of way. Sometimes that was the foil to my feet. Left, right, left, right. Back and forth. I hated that carpet. Where dementia led, we followed, Dad and I. Step by numb step. Sometimes I watched my feet go down the stairs at home. Our house was an old   two-flat, and the stairs were hardwood, overlaid with a tile path bordered on both sides by ancient glassy varnish, ever evocative of the apprenticeship I served as a girl, cleaning those varnished corners with the point of an old paring knife carefully, carefully, so as not to scratch the wood. It was...