Land o' Lethe

I woke up this morning at 5:30 a.m. to the smell of smoke.

When I went into the hall I could tell that it was not coming from Mom's room which meant she had not placed an article of clothing on top of the space heater--again. We had caught her doing that once before and warned her of the danger and, although she seemed to understand, we have been nervous about it ever since and check on it frequently. This time, again, all was well.

There was however, a light on in the kitchen.

The last couple of nights Mom has been going through her insomnia cycle again, and this evening, after turning in at 9:00, she was back in the kitchen at 9:30 for a "snack" (a handful of breakfast cereal), and again in the living room at 10:30 and midnight, both times to say "Good morning!" (At which point she couldn't remember ever having anything to eat earlier.) I thought she might have gotten up one more time and tried to fix herself another snack.

The kitchen was deserted but the light over the stove was on as was the stove itself. And on the stove was a smoking, blackened pan of carbonized chicken and dumplings, leftover from my brother's supper. Mom was off the hook as the stove light is too high for her to reach. Which meant my brother, who had come home around 2:00 a.m., had decided to reheat the leftovers as a midnight snack of his own and had then gone to bed. Since the burner was not set very high, it took several hours for the liquid to evaporate and the residue to burn.

When he finally arose this morning, my brother came out of his room sniffing the air. "Who burned what?" he asked as he rounded into the kitchen and spied the pan soaking in the sink. "Oh." He sighed. "I guess it runs in the family." Indeed. He is spending his afternoon scouring the pan.

It would also seem to be well past time to recharge the smoke detectors.