Your Previous Occupation, Ma’am?

Sometimes when I visit my husband’s mother at her Memory Care facility, she’s in one of the common rooms instead of her bedroom.  I kind of like it when that happens because she has become more and more incapable of conversation and it’s easier for me to stay longer when there’s more interaction.  Many of the residents are more than willing to provide that, even if the talk isn’t very meaningful to me.  Yesterday when I was there, several people were seated around a table in the dining room. One of the women was very chatty and even a little bit bossy.  Though her sentences mostly lacked coherence and meaning, the words she chose tended to be big, impressive ones. After a while I searched out one of the staff members — I just had to know what line of work this woman had been involved in, earlier in her life.  “Teacher?” I guessed.  “Lawyer?”  The answer delighted me.  I was informed that the woman had been a professional clown.