Point Defiance: Person, Place or Hard Rock Band?

Answer? All of the above.

Sister A has taken to calling mom "Point Defiance" after a road trip down the Oregon coast we took in July. We met in Tacoma and had a day before hitting the road and Sister A asked what we would like to do. As she ran through a list of places to visit, she mentioned Point Defiance, a Tacoma park with trails, zoo and aquarium. Mom said she wanted to go there and when Sister A asked why, mom said "Because it has the word 'defiance' ." So predictable.

Off we went. The aquarium and zoo were closed for the Zoobilee, but we walked a bit and saw bald eagles up close. Added to the beautiful views of Puget Sound, it was the perfect day trip with our rebellious mother.

I invoke a sincere appeal to the powers-that-be that mom's tenacity and refusal to be one with the sheeple afford her strength and comfort in the days ahead.

She certainly sat patiently through a 12-hour stay at TKO, beginning with a 6am start time for the port surgery, then endured (what has become the norm) another delay in the chemo treatment room while the advice nurse looked for Dr. C's order, and M, Dr. C's assistant smiled while being unhelpful.

Y'know, if it were a f***-off smile I could almost understand it, but it's more of a "I know, isn't it awful" smile while not taking any responsibility and not offering to correct the error. When I said I thought that Dr. C had green-lighted mom's chemo Friday after the meeting, M smiled and said winningly, "So did I." Ta-da. Yup, that was it. Did not lift a finger to follow up.

Later, mom and I discussed how hard it is to tell the competent folk from incompetent ones in Hawai'i because most people share the same laid-back demeanor which can look incompetent at first....until you run into the M's of the world. We also witnessed a loud-ish exchange right in the treatment room which seemed to be about port surgery scheduling and not being given the right timing of the sequence of the chemo process. Wow, deja vu all over again.

Mom sailed through the storm with the beatific smile of a buddhist priest. In fact, as the last of her hair goes, she really does look like a monk.

The kind that speak softly and then whack the stuffing out of you with their staffs.