A Beacon to Me

Mom Friday, August 05, 2011

Dear Suzy and Jonathan,

                I had thought of not going to see Mom today because I had to get a new pair of glasses, but I wound up taking 30 minutes to choose instead of three weeks like last time, so I was able to do both.  (I also got a $55.00 parking ticket –my gift to San Francisco.)

                Mom was seated in the dining room with Ella Mae, Bob, and Dorothy (three very quiet residents) when I arrived, and she said, “Well, I’m not doing very well today, but that’s only physically.  What I mean is—“and I felt sure I knew what she meant:  BMs.  But I was wrong!  “I’m fine mentally.”

                That was nice to hear.  I pulled up a chair, and she said, “No, I’ve just finished eating.”  But I could see that they hadn’t even gotten their soup yet.  Everything was being set up on the counter.  But she insisted that she’d already eaten, so I wondered whether she was doing a reverse of that experiment you told me about, Jonathan, where they tested Alzheimer’s victims by calling them back to the table right after they’d eaten to prove their theory that people eat almost all that’s in front of them whether they’re hungry.   She, in contrast, was eating nothing that was almost in front of her because she remembered eating what she hadn’t. 

                She was wearing a dark rose nail polish, and when I complimented her on the pretty color and asked who’d painted them for her, I could see that she was wondering too.

                Then they brought the clam chowder, and she ate it, and when she saw the plates of sandwiches and fruit yet to come, she said, “could I trade my great big sandwich for a piece of cake or cookies?”  They brought her the sandwich plate.  Then she said to me, “I’m worried…”  but I could see that she wasn’t quite sure what it was she was worried about.  “Oh!  I know what I wanted to ask you!  Please go look on my bed!”  But she didn’t seem to remember what it was that she wanted me to find or look for.  I got up and went to look, though.  I took a picture of her bed and took it back to show her, and then she said, “Oh, those …those…those things I wear.”

 “Pads?  Panty pads?” 

“Yes!  Please go out and buy me three big boxes.”

I told her I’d look first, and I found a whole cupboard full.

Then she joined me, so I’m sure she hadn’t had her great big sandwich or cake or cookies.

                As we got settled down, she said, “You know who lives there, right?”  And I offered, “Kristine?”

                “Right!”

                She settled down on her bed and asked for my help in getting her sweatpants pulled up, and after I helped her, she asked, “But what am I supposed to do when you’re not here to help me?”

                I told her it might be easier to stand up, and there were always a lot of people she could call.  But then she got up to go to the bathroom, and we decided she didn’t need to have on two pairs of sweat pants.  She took off one pair

                Mom said she was worried about wetting or even pooping on the bed, so she’d put an orange towel down on top of it.

                “What would you do if you wet the towel?”  she asked me.

                “I think I’d just take it to one of the aides and tell them it was wet.”

                That seemed reasonable to Mom, who started to relax a little bit, though she did make one more statement showing concern that they “might yell at me for lying down before doing my ablutions.”

                But I told it I thought it would be fine.

                “Sit down and make me happy,” she told me.

                I sat down and told her we could read more of the Unlikely Friends book.

                “I’d like that,” she said. 

                I read about the bobcat kitten and the fawn, who’d been rescued after a big fire, and    Mom made some comment about how the fire department must have gotten a big kick out of them.  We read about a bobtailed dog and a bobtailed cat rescued after Hurricane Katrina among 250,000 other animals! 

            From time to time, Mom responded with a comment and maybe “I like reading about this,” and from time to time would ask which animals we were reading about again.  At one point she laughed and said, “The grammar is so stilted that it sounds like a gross insult.”

            When I showed her the picture of the Cheetah and the Anatolian Shepherd, she made the comment that one looked ready to spring, and the other looked “hang dog.”  We marveled over the hamster who snuggled into the coil of the snake, and when we read about the lion, the tiger, and the bear who had become friends in Georgia (!) even though they would naturally be separated by continents, I wondered aloud which continent each was found in.

            “I think maybe Europe,” Mom said, and I thought, “Oh, God, I hope she doesn’t regress to where I was in seventh grade, when I thought Europe was a city in Canada.

            I said, “Well, bears, I know, we have in California, so that would be North America.  So are tigers in India (Asia) or in Africa?  Do you remember Little Black Sambo?” 

Mom said she did.  And then I remembered that he wasn’t originally a little black (African) boy at all.  He was Indian.

            “I guess tigers are found in India, and lions are found in Africa,” I said.  (I had The Lion King to go by.) “But isn’t it nice that they got together in Georgia.”

                Mom said, “That writer must have really enjoyed writing that book.  Doing all the interviews.  Don’t you wish you’d written this book?”  (I interpreted this as meaning that I’d have had the pleasure and become the rich and famous person Jennifer S. Holland has, but maybe she meant that I could have kept the English from being so stilted that it sounded like a gross insult.  I’m not sure.)

            Then Mom said, “You know, I’m getting to feel that you’re kind of a beacon to me.”

            I said, “Well, thanks, Mom.  I feel that you’re often a beacon to me, too.”

            “I feel that we’re getting closer.  Maybe because I see you more often.”

            I told her, “I’ve always felt close to you,.” 

            Rocsana came in to give Mom her medicine, and Mom said, “You always find me.”

            “Yes, because I know that you’re either in here or at the piano.”

            She went to the bathroom again and mentioned “What’s her name” and “her majesty.”      Mom felt that there was something she couldn’t do because she wasn’t in her room.

            I said, “Yes, this is your room.”

            “Where are we?”

            “This is your room in Pleasant Hill.”

            Mom said, “We’re not in Pleasant Hill!”  I said that we were, but I said it gently because if she’d figured out that she was at work in Oakland as opposed to home on Poshard, I didn’t want to confuse her.                 

              Then she said, “I need to comb my hair,” but she couldn’t find a comb, so I combed it for her and left my comb with her.  She thought she needed more color and then it seemed to come back to her who had painted her nails.  “One of the aides gave me a manicure, but she did it in about five minutes.  Maybe ten.”

            We applied some lipstick, and then she went out into the dining area, and the aides promised to take her to play BINGO (which Kathy says Mom can really get into) at 1:30.  I showed Adele and Mom the pictures I’d printed out for them, and Adele said she wanted to keep the one of her and her son.  (Adele hasn’t gotten back that “bounce” that she had back in March, April, and May, but she doesn’t seem as depressed as she seemed a month ago, either.)

Mom called after me, “Bye!”

                And I said bye again and told her I loved her.

            “I love you too,” she said, and I thought how much nicer that was than “Scram!”

                Love,

                Tina/Mom