FOR a FORTUNE COOKIE and FIFTY CENTS

Carrie Thorenson was eighty-eight years young as was still in fairly good health and independent for the most part though her mind was slipping a little some days; more than a little according to her children.  Her children had more or less forced her to sell the family homestead a couple of years after their father had passed away and her son had gotten power of attorney over her financial affairs.   They’d sold the home and five acres of land for a pretty sum to some folks from Hampton who wanted a summer home and a place to stay during the ski season and her children had moved Carrie to the Holly Hill Elderly Care facility.  

The children had taken what pieces of furniture and family heirlooms they wanted to keep and Carrie didn’t have a clue what happened to the rest.  She supposed they sold it all and kept the money.  She’d given up asking.  She could never get a straight answer anyhow.  Carrie never saw her home or her money again.  Her son did give her twenty-five dollars a week spending money for personal care items and the like and she had her Social Security but living at Holly Hill ate up most of that.    

She now lived in a supervised elderly housing facility where meals were provided and there was a nurse on duty at all times to be sure medicines were taken properly and all the residents were kept safe and well.  They also had housekeepers to do most of the major housework and a laundress to do their laundry for them but Carrie

insisted on washing her own personal dainties.  She washed them by hand and carefully hung them over towels on a rack to dry by the radiator in her tiny quarters, actually two rooms and a bath that she shared with her roommate, Mildred Norbotten.

Her first roommate had been Agnes Bowles but she’d been deaf and half blind and had a cantankerous disposition.  She just couldn’t be nice to anyone so one day Carrie decided to try and sweeten old Agnes up and handed her the box of cherry chocolates some ladies church group had given Carrie for Christmas.  Carrie didn’t like cherry chocolates.  She never had.