My mother is moving back to town.

I am her house shopping assistant.

Her husband wants to be urban.

My mother hates urban, and has demanded a hippie free dwelling.

No hippies, no homeless, which pretty much eliminates most of Portland.

My husband told her,

In Portland you will either live with actual homeless people, or hipsters that look homeless.  

She would like to move back to the suburban house I grew up in, but her husband won't go for it.  He says he can stay in California for that.

It has been a bit stressful.

I was sent to look at a "townhome" yesterday.

I laughed out loud and offended the real estate lady. 

The real estate lady thought that I wasn't fancy enough for the townhome, I could tell.

I cannot imagine my mother in this place in a million years.

I told the real estate lady, 

My mother will not get marmoleum & cork.  She will think it looks dirty and old fashioned. 

I suspect there are a lot more viewings in my immediate future. 

On Friday evening I went out to coffee with an old friend.  His father had passed away and he was in town for the funeral.  

He is the second  friend of mine to lose his father in four weeks.  

It was  the second dessert and coffee I had, had out in a month. 

I told him about the house hunting, and the hippies, and the moving thing.  About my grandfather's frailty and my mother's recent illness and hospitalization.

He told me about his mother's decline and his father's decline and death.  

It was a very strange conversation, but I was happy to have it, to offer my hand and what little comfort I had in me.  There is something deeply humanizing about a common experience, I suppose.