Blue Heron Casino

Mother arrived on Thursday--April Fool's Day--and it seems like she hasn't stopped talking since. Maybe she's only making up for all the time we haven't seen each other, but it is a bit tiring constantly trying to focus on what she's saying. Sometimes I let my mind wander and I miss a question she asks, other times she wants me to translate what she's saying to Meg, or she wants me to translate something from English. I expected this, it has always been that way with her--although she's almost 72, my mom is a dynamo, always moving and always asking questions--but I am really exhausted by the nightfall.

We went for a short trip to Port Perry today, the weather was warm and mostly sunny and we enjoyed the short drive through the farmland and browsing the souvenirs shops of Port Perry. Before heading back, we stopped at the Blue Heron casino to take a peek inside and wet our mouth with a pint of beer. The casino is on the Indian reserve land (talking about the "feather" Indians, not the "dot" ones) and all the profit goes to the band which owns the land. Surprisingly, there were very few Indians working inside. The casino doesn't have any of the glamour of the bigger casinos, the atmosphere inside was almost solemn. There was an extremely obese young woman on a slot machine, playing without displaying any emotion. She moved like a robot, almost like she was there against her own will. I also noticed a woman hooked to the oxygen tank, who was pulling a little cart with her o2 bottle from one slot machine to another. There were quite a few very old people, some of them had their walkers parked next to the chairs, pressing the buttons with their gnarled fingers deformed by arthritis. It was a sad display of desperate characters who believed they could turn their lives around, or add a few years at the end of the road, with a big win. The thought of it soured my beer. By the time we left the casino, none of them had his fortune (nor life) turned around.

Meg sniffed loudly on the way back, but not from emotions--her allergies are back. She drugged herself with some anti-allergy pills and was knocked out on a sofa for most of the evening, leaving me to handle endless stream of questions from my mom.