On Being Different

We have this interesting old goose on our lake- Pang-Pang - who by all accounts has lived here forever. I know for certain he's lived here for 10 years because that's how long I've lived here.

As for where he came from, I have no idea. I picture his former owners skulking up to the lake in the middle of the night and dropping him off. I know he didn't fly here - he can't fly more than to flap his wings as he skims the lake surface.

He has no others of his kind here. In the past few years I've seen him keeping company with the mutant, injured, and rejected Canadian geese. When I first met him, he had a harem of white mutant Pekin Ducks, but they've since died.

Pang-Pang always seems the saddest in the spring. All the other geese and ducks do whatever geese and ducks do to find mates and poor Pang just honks his mournful melody without so much as a soft honk back from a prospective mate.

It reminds me of my mother. Lately she's been crying in the morning because she has no friends. What she says is, "I just want to be like everybody else," or "nobody wants to talk to us." I don't know what to say or do to help her. Her old friends stopped calling long ago. She can't carry on a conversation because she can't find words to fill the spaces in a sentence. We've signed her up for twice weekly all-day care at the Alzheimer's Day Center so she can have friends "like her." But that doesn't seem to fill the void.

The best I can do is watch sadly from the side as my mother and Pang-Pang seek someone like them so they don't have to be alone.