The perils of Prague: Vacation diaries Day 3

August 24: This accidental selfie tells a lot of the story: I'm looking worried, my mom is looking at the ground, the scenery of Prague is laid out behind us.

There are also lots of pictures where we’re smiling and those are also true to how it's going - so far we've enjoyed many delicious meals, an art nouveau exhibit, a concert of the Royal Czech String Orchestra, the Prague Castle and the Charles Bridge. 

But that accidental selfie is the one that speaks most to how I’ve been feeling for the past three days.

Five years ago for her 85th birthday I took her to Chicago for a long weekend, and I’m painfully aware of how much frailer she is now. She runs out of breath very easily and doesn’t have very good balance, so when we go anywhere we have to walk together very slowly, with her leaning on my arm most of the time.

I know the reality is that she’s doing incredibly well. There aren’t many 90 year olds who could walk around Prague Castle all morning, and still be game to walk over a kilometre downhill to the 15th century Charles Bridge. But I also know she doesn’t recognize her limits. After the castle I suggested several times that we could go back to the hotel, but she kept insisting she was fine to walk some more, and then when we got to the Bridge and she finally admitted would like a taxi we were in the middle of a pedestrian zone, and there was nothing to do but keep going to the other side.

Also worrying is the way she keeps seeing things. In the plane on the way over she said

“Look at the farms down there,” as she looked out the window.

“What do you mean? I can’t see anything that looks like farms.” I replied. We were at 40,000 feet and all I could see beyond the expanse of the wing was thin clouds with the faint indication of green land far below. We were flying over Labrador at the time.

“There are four buildings,” she insisted, “and long straight lines that could only be farm fields.”

“We’re way too high up to see anything like that,” I said.

She kept looking out, and a few minutes later said “Oh, it’s the wing.”

I looked out again, and there were four large rivets on the wing that did look a bit like farm buildings might, but only if we were flying 500 feet up. We’d already discussed the fact that mostly all we could see out the window was the wing, but I guess she’d forgotten that.

There’ve been other perception problems – like tonight when she said a piece of lighting equipment at the concert was a sculpture of a bird, and the time she got lost in the hotel room while trying to make it back to her bed after turning out the light.

Tomorrow we take a bus to the ship where we’ll stay for the next ten days as we sail down the Danube. I can’t wait. It will be a relief to have her tucked away in a stateroom, looking out at the scenery as it passes by. I hope I’ll be able to finally relax then.