Clairvoyant or not, I still need new sunglasses.

We are home, for three weeks. Although we munched Connecticut-grown Macoun apples while zipping south on the New Jersey turnpike, we haven't needed much else in the way of food today. It was that breakfast near Manasquan, coastal NJ, in a local dive called Mariners' Cove. They offered 200+ omelettes, described on a tabloid-sized menu, and while the spoons per se were not greasy, the food decidedly was. Still, it was clearly popular with the locals, and a steady crew moved in and out while we ate. Nevermind that they were all men, every one of whom looked like he must have bellowed "STELLAAAA!" out his side door before giving up and hitting The Cove. Stella, apparently, was not forthcoming with the breakfast this morning.

So, yes...in three weeks it's back up by Amtrak, for Family Weekend, with my mom in tow. It's a busy Fall. Yesterday, tooling from Connecticut to Jersey, I experienced one of those moments of clairvoyance that I don't quite believe in. Despite the fact that they seem to always end up true. I don't believe in clairvoyance, (or, leastwise, I am stubbornly determined not to,) but my record--skepticism or not--is hard to argue with. If everything turns out fine (at least according to current norms,) and the status is quo after this Fall, then I'll laugh at clairvoyance and tell it I knew it was full of beans. But here's what it says: It's that the busyness of this Fall is my instinctive (almost primordial) reaction to realizing that Jeff's and my time to do this stuff together is drawing to a rapid close. He is going functionally blind, and I sense the pitch of the decline to be growing more acute.

Functionally blind a la Benson's syndrome, of course, bears only surface resemblance to eyes that don't work. A blind person can compensate by means of sharp senses and a clever mind. A victim of Posterior Cortical Atrophy cannot. His cognition is petering out across the board, and when he cannot identify a butter knife as a butter knife there is little he can do to work around that.

I knew about the incident in which he could not, momentarily, identify his brother. I've since learned it happened two weeks earlier as well, with his sister. When he cannot peg me on sight, I don't think all will be lost. He's okay with being told, and accepts what you tell him with comfort and trust. But not knowing family, running into doors, almost eating butter wrappers, and falling over curbs are merely opening volleys in a condition that's poised to worsen exponentially, and--as it does--all bets are off vis-a-vis just what we can expect to do, outside of the safest and most carefully arranged of environments.

How I will manage, and what services I may seek to employ--not yet known. Clairvoyance doesn't like to fill in the details that way. (And trust me...I still don't trust it.)