Merry Christmas to all Friends and Loved Ones

and

Even Those I don't know who Visit this Blog!

Snow Pictures

As you can plainly see, we have a little bit of snow at our house and the weather people are promising more.  No matter how much it might rain later we will have a white Christmas up here at 500 feet.  This morning the squirrels were outside, running around in the snow, probably trying to find their old caches of sunflower seeds and when they couldn't dig down far enough to find them they decided to use intimidation instead.  They stood facing the house, staring at me as I looked out at them.  So I bundled up and bowed to their needs and went out and scattered some more birdseed, which is supposed to be for the birds but I am a realist and know that the squirrels will get the bulk of it.  They are sweet, though loud, little creatures, and I know they are just rodents with good PR, but I like them.

Christmas is coming and we are getting fat, let alone the goose.  Lots of cookies and goodies are on the kitchen counter and I love to bake at Christmas, so I will be making more.  My oldest daughter and her fabulous husband are here now and we are all tapping away on our laptops and humming Christmas songs and planning to bake today--french bread and more cookies.  More snow is coming, and so is another daughter and Christmas is only 2 days away.  This will be one for the weather record books, and for the personal record books, too.  How long has it been since I had so many of my children close at this time of year?  It's been almost two decades.  18 years.  We have all changed and not changed.  I am still Mom and my daughters are still little girls to me, even if they have children of their own and my eldest was offered a senior discount the other day, though she is still at least 10 years away from qualifying.  That daughter still has a sneeze just like mine and loves sweets, just like me, and is smart and funny.  Youngest daughter sounds exactly like me and is just as opinionated. We start out right where we left off, even if it was 2 1/2 years ago.  Oldest daughter and I went to Scotland in 2006 and we are enjoying remembering our favorite parts. We be taking many, many pictures to remember this event because it isn't likely to repeat itself soon.  I'll put them on another post, so you can see my girls with their Mom.

I'm trying to convince someone else to go outside and make a snowman with me to surprise my little grandson who will be here on Christmas Day, but so far there are no takers.  We are readers, writers, thinkers and not big action takers.  Fabulous Husband of Daughter was outside chopping and hauling wood this morning, being very useful and he has helped with dishes several times, so his action-taking is at a pretty high level, but I can't blame the rest of them--it's cold out there.  I hope all of you are managing to stay warm and cozy and have all your shopping done and plenty of food in the larder.  Enjoy the beauty of the snow--we don't get to see this much of it very often.  So far the lights have stayed on and we haven't had any adverse affects, so we can be pretty blithe about it.  Hope all is going well for you, too!

"Our contemporary, semi-secular Christmas is similarly a collection of everything yearned for: warmth, plenty, peace, family, conviviality. Like Narnia, the holiday is a fantasy, but there are times when a fantasy is exactly what you need."  Laura Miller NY Times

In her editorial Laura Miller says she reads The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe every year at this time because it means Christmas to her.  She makes a good claim that our present celebration was pretty much invented in Victorian times, by Charles Dickens, Clement Moore, Washington Irving and I would add, Thomas Nast, who gave us the jolly red-suited Father Christmas.  Everything before that, that put Jesus' birth in December, the Christmas Tree, gifts, etc., etc., was handed down over centuries with only second, third, fourth hand reasonings from German, Roman and other pagan civilizations.  Why not celebrate it the way we do--who is to say that the way it has evolved is incorrect or sacrilege?

My daughter-in-law watches It's a Wonderful Life at Christmas time.  She is an admitted Christmas Fiend--the season means as much to her as my books mean to me.  She guards it's sanctity, but her sanctity is not the same as someone else's.  Hers mean that there is a live tree, that each precious ornament, collected over her 33 years and lovingly wrapped and stored, makes it's way carefully to the tree.  It means that Christmas carols are playing all day every day.  It means that her children understand that Christmas is a time of quiet adoration of the tree.  It means that her birthday (in the middle of December) not be confused with The Holiday.  It means that only 3 pieces of tape are used to wrap rectangular presents, so that unwrapping is not torture.  It means gingerbread men made with her kids and beautiful decorated sugar cookies.  It mean reading Christmas storybooks at bedtime.  She is not religious.  Christmas for her has to do with love--of the season and of her family and of the beautiful sparkling trappings of lights in the window and on the trees.

Can't it be that way for any of us?  Isn't it okay to make Christmas into what is good for you?  For me Christmas is my little tree, the beautifully familiar music, giving gifts and baking.  It is an excuse to be sentimental, to eat a little more sugar than usual, to spend money on those I love, to remember Christmases past and to put a glow on them that might not have been there originally, but who cares? Why would anyone care what Christmas means to me and how I keep it?  Why would anyone care if my Christmas is sanctified with Jesus and the Wise Men and the Virgin Mary?  Why would anyone care of I remember The True Meaning?  Everyone's Meaning is True.  If you celebrate Christmas by putting up thousands of lights on your house and making them blink in time to the Trans Siberian Orchestra that's okay with me.  If you chose to celebrate with a dinner of deep-fried turkey, that's okay with me. If you choose to celebrate by buying goats for families in Africa, more power to you. If you don't send cards and don't bake and ignore the whole thing, that's your choice.

I like the red and the green and the sparkle and the smell.  I like the hustle and the bustle and the Merry Christmas greetings from everyone, stranger or not.  Today I am loving the snow and wishing my husband's work would let him go home so that we could enjoy some hot chocolate together before nightfall.  We will build a fire and the flames will dance off the reflective ornaments on my little tree.  The fake candles on the mantle will flicker and if the lights don't go out we can watch Miracle of 34th Street again.  We can think about those we love and eat a cookie and put brandy in our tea.  And Christmas tonight can mean being cozy under a warm blanket with the one I love and the fact or fantasy that for this brief moment, all is well.

From The Land of The Great Yellow Cheese

Ali with Spot the Dog, Mr. Duck and Thirsty Baby Bear

Greetings from Wisconsin, where the men drink beer and cheese, the women make egg casserole and the children area all good-looking.

Would you believe (in the words of Maxwell Smart) that I started this blog when I actually was in Wisconsin and that I've been back since December 9 in the evening?  Would you believe that when there are two granddaughters to play with that there is NO TIME to make blog posts?  That's a fact.  How their Mama finds time to not only make short posts but also upload 1000s of photos to FLICKR I just don't fathom.  She is Wonder Mother for sure.

I had a wonderful time in the Land of the Great Yellow Cheese, though we didn't actually eat much cheese except as a topping for my son's fabulous chicken enchiladas.  Mostly I spent it playing Mr. Duck and Spot the Dog with my granddaughter Alison.  You haven't heard of that game, you say?  That's because it is an original created by Alison and her Grandma Christine.  It involved a stuffed duck, about 5 inches tall and a very small resin Dalmatian, only 2 inches tall at the most.  The game started with Spot asking Mr. Duck if he could possibly help with the large bones that Spot was trying to move to his doghouse.  The bones (plastic croissants from the kitchen set) were awfully large for the diminutive Spot and so Mr. Duck agreed to help out.  Mr. Duck's back story, as imagined by Grandma C., was that his real name or adopted name, was Arnold Duckinator, after his idol of a similar name.  Mr. Duck (or Duckinator) visited the gym regularly to keep his muscles in tone, therefore making it easy to help Spot whenever necessary.  Mr. Duck also had some kind of Arkansas accent and referred to Spot often as Little Buddy.  This game morphed eventually into a more medical theme, as Ali decided Mr. Duck did construction work for a job and was not very handy with his hammer and nail.  It turned out that whenever Spot helped Mr. Duck by holding his nail (a plastic celery from the kitchen set) the hammer would slip and poor Spot would get a wound on one of his paws.  This necessitated cleaning the wound, ointment, bandaging and medicine.  Poor Spot never learned that each time he held the nail he was in danger, so this "treatment" went on and on, day after day, with the washcloths, ointment, bandaids and medicine becoming more and more elaborate.  There were washcloth, bandaid, ointment and medicine cupboards and patterns for cloths and bandaids (the white with black spots bandaids becoming the clear favorite) and flavors of ointment and medicine that ranged from mixed berry to cinnamon.  Ali never got tired of this game and greeted me each morning and after afternoon naps with, "Can we play?"  Of course, I obliged, and I miss our game now and wonder what Mr. Duck and Spot the Dog are up to since Grandma C is not there to participate.  I preferred this game to the one called Farm School that involved Big Stomping Bear and his cub, Thirsty Baby Bear.  This game was shorter and had Baby Bear losing his hat every time and the search for it and Big Stomping Bear being hungry and demanding food.  It also required that the players be on the floor, not a problem for a 3 1/2 year old but a little challenging for Grandma.  The Duck and Spot game was a couch game--much more comfortable.

There were other things that we did.  My son and I visited Stillwater, Minnesota, just across the river, and a German ornament store that has become a favorite with me.  We discovered a cool coffee shop with used mugs and comfy chairs with blankets for chilly bones.  We did our annual visit to The Real Santa in Mall of American and Ali and I played in the snow in 23 degree weather.  It's amazing how relative temperature is.  23 degrees here in Washington is COLD, but in Wisconsin it's moderate for a December day.  I'd look at the temp and declare, "It's 23 degrees!  Warm!" and we'd prepare to go outside.  I got to be there for Zuzu's first birthday, even though it was a tiny celebration.  The real "kid party" would come after I went home.  Mom make a cake and cut it in half, so that the cake that would be destroyed would be Zuzu's and the rest of it would not have hand prints in it.  All except Mom got colds while I was there.  Daddy was trying to recover from a sinus infection and Zuzu was on cold #3.  Grandma and Ali came down with colds on the same day, one day before I left for home.

The 7 full days I was with my granddaughters went by in a blur.  I so wish they lived closer so that airline tickets and packing suitcases was not involved in a visit, but when you raise your kids to be independent how can you get mad at them for being so?

I am home now, looking at their pictures on Flickr and putting my own there, remembering the softness of young skin, the smell of clean hair, the look in Ali's eyes when her Mom told her Grandma was going home the next day.  She gazed at me for a long time, unblinking, her eyes locked on mine.  I wonder what she was thinking.  I was thinking that I love her beyond words to describe and that I will miss her every day until I see her again.  And I'll miss Mr. Duck and Spot, too.

Ho-Hum-Ho-Ho

Ali as close to Santa as she would get last year

I haven't felt much like writing lately.  Maybe it's the dark and the damp weather.  Maybe it's because Thanksgiving is just around the corner and it means Christmas is closer than I'd like to think.  Maybe it's just the other side of the political campaign and I'm tired.  Maybe it's because the physical therapy appointments for my Mom go on and on.  Maybe it's merely a down time--can't be up, up, up every single day, can I?

Thanksgiving is only 9 days away.  Our turkey-day dinner is the regular fare--with only my Mom and brother and my husband and me.  I invited my 88 year-old Aunt Billie to come but her son is driving all the way from Oregon to pick her up and take her down to be with her family.  Neither one of my brothers ever contributed any wives or children to the world so our family has gotten very small.  We'll eat turkey, stuffing, salad, homemade cranberry sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes cooked in some fashion, Costco pumpkin pie (I can't make a pumpkin pie as well as they do) and a new pie I'll bake this year, Apple/Cranberry with a crumb topping.  The dinner will take all day to make and will be eaten in 15 minutes or less. Then we'll watch a movie (maybe Nemo) or play Quiddler.  I can't decide whether I like it quiet like this or whether I'd like a bunch of sisters-in-law and nieces and nephews around.  I don't get to decide.  This is what we have, so there you go.

Four days after Thanksgiving I'm on a plane to Wisconsin for the annual visit with my son's family. Every year we get in the car and journey to the Mall of America, across the river to Minneapolis, to have pictures taken with The Real Santa Claus.  This year there will be two little girls sitting with Santa.  Alison hasn't sat on Santa's lap yet, preferring to have him hide behind her, or lay on the floor in front of her.  We are interested to see what happens this year, with her little sister, who will be a year old on December 4.  Will Ali finally, at age 3 1/2, let Santa near her?  Will she be brave for her little sister?  What will Little Sister think of a rosy-cheeked, white-bearded, suspender-wearing stranger?  Zuzu loves all her grandpas and her boy cousin, Jessie, so she may think Santa is okay.  We'll see.  Regardless, we will have the pictures taken and laugh over them later.  

When I come home from Granddaughter and Santa adventures I will have much to look forward to.  My daughter, Erin, and her husband are coming from Norfolk on December 21 for the first time since they moved back East many years ago when husband, Kent, was still in the Navy.  And my second daughter will be coming from San Diego with Granddaughter Alecia and Grandson Alex on Christmas Day, to stay in the area for almost two weeks.  This will be a test of how much I like lots of people around at the holidays.  It will be so unusual that I will hardly know how to act.  I expect lots of baking and coffee drinking and talking and looking at old photo albums. These two sisters haven't seen each other in a very long time, so I hope their time together is happy.  They will have an opportunity to get to know each other again.  An opportunity like this may not come around for a long time.  Since I lived in the same vicinity as my brothers all their lives, it is hard for me to imagine losing touch with my siblings, though even living in the same county it was possible to let things slide.  Relationships between siblings is complex.  Jealousies, hurtful words, slights (imagined or otherwise), misunderstandings, disagreements, different views of life--all can keep you from enjoying one another.  And aren't we all supposed to love our brothers and sisters?  Doesn't it say that in some book somewhere?  As has been said over and over--you can't pick your family.

So that's what's coming up.  In the meantime, I'll cook, bake, decorate and take pictures and look forward to quiet and noisy holidays and then the New Year coming.  It'll be here fast.  I hope this rather dark mood lifts soon.  I think it will the minute I smell the turkey roasting.

Brown Shoes Nails It

Go over to Brown Shoe's blog:  http://middledaughter.blogspot.com to get another perspective on Barack Obama's election.  The writer of the Brown Shoes blog is one of the very best writers I know.  I wish she posted more often, but when she does, it is special and worth waiting for.  By the way, she is NOT my middle daughter, though I wouldn't mind at all if she was.  I think she may be too old to be my middle daughter, but she is an artist, a wonderful cook and as I said, a wonderful writer.  She is funny and sensitive at a dinner party (which is mostly when I see her) and a good and generous friend.  She'd make a great middle daughter.

Unbelievably Incredibly Real

I am having trouble believing that it wasn't all a dream. Did I really see the political map turning blue? Did I really see people dancing in Times Square, on Capital Hill, in Chicago?  Did I really see Jesse Jackson crying?  Did I really see and hear Jon Stewart call it for Obama and then take at least a minute to compose himself before he could speak again?  

I really did.  All those months, hoping and talking about why I wanted Obama to be President, giving away my Obama buttons and dreaming that this day might come.  The reality of it was more than I had dreamed.  Joy came out of me in the form of tears.  I cried when Jon Stewart proclaimed Barack Obama the next President of the United States.  I cried again when I saw the faces of the jubilant people in Times Square.  I cried more when Barack and his family took the stage in Chicago.  I cried again this morning when Bookworm called and yelled into the phone, WE DID IT!!!!  

This morning I wanted to keep celebrating, so I watched morning TV to see the images again.  This morning the pundits were wearing big grins, trying to hide them, of course, because they are supposed to be unbiased, but you could see how happy most of them were.  We are happy.  We are hopeful.  We are buoyed up by the undeniable fact that America got it right this time.  We are a sick country that finally chose health, after years of suffering.  We know we did the thing that will be best for us.  And we also chose to transcend race and to make Martin Luther King's dream come true. To be alive and present at this time in history is an honor. 

Dancing for Obama

I love what can be done with Photo Shop, don't you?

For a real assessment of the election, or a poetic view, or a personal view, or a world view, go over to Bookworm's blog.  Here is the address:  http://clearcreekgirl.blogpsot.com

As for me, I am glad it is almost over.  It's been two years and it's been wearing and lately it's been ugly.  I'm done and I've voted and I've given away almost all of my 45 buttons in only a week and it's looking good.  Bookwork wants us to celebrate now and in the way she puts it, yes, let's celebrate now, but I'm still afraid that those who tipped those polls to the Obama side and who have made even the Sunday morning pundits speak as if it is already a done deal, I'm afraid they will think they don't need to vote.  I heard someone on the radio this morning say, "Obama doesn't need my vote to win".  Yikes!  If too many people say that to themselves......

So VOTE, VOTE, VOTE.  And get your sticker and wear it proudly and make sure all your friends and relatives have voted, no matter which side they are on, after all, voting is the only way we have any say at all, no matter how small our voice might be.  Get rid of all the ones you think aren't doing the right thing for you and put in the ones you hope will do what you need.  I wish "they" would send one of those little I've Voted stickers out with our absentee ballots.  I'll just keep wearing my buttons, all of them, between now and Tuesday and let everyone know where I stand, just in case it matters to anyone.  I have given my buttons to grocery store clerks, physical therapists, nurses, certification experts, receptionists, a college student, a person who leases senior apartments.  All were thrilled to get a button.  I am hoping that means something.

I don't envy Obama if he does win this election.  My husband says, "Everyone will be watching and waiting for him to change things".  I expect it was that way with John Kennedy, too.  We had so much hope then--we loved his family, we loved how he seemed, elegant, smart, a savior.  It's the same now.  As Bookworm says, it's time.  The whole country, the whole world, knows it's time.  I didn't get to vote for Kennedy--I was only 16 when he ran for President.  I didn't get to vote for Bobby Kennedy.  I got to vote for many others, but it wasn't like now.  I didn't feel the magic. I didn't feel the urgency.  So this vote means everything. It means hope, it means my grandchildren's future, it means the future of our air and our climate, it means the future of young men in Iraq, it means the image of our country to the world. 

I'm sorry to any of the people who read this blog that don't feel the same way I do.  My husband doesn't either, so I don't live in an isolated world of only left-leaning people.  If the other guy wins, then I hope he can do all those things I want--fix the climate, give us more efficient cars, make our medical system work better, make other countries like us again,  bring those young men home.  I will be pulling for him if he wins.  It is time for everything to change and I think the other guy knows that, too, and Lord help us, he better not die while he's in office, if he gets in office!  Or we'll get mavericky!

  

How's Your Mom?

Mom in physical therapy with Kiley.

Many people, including those not in Blogville, have been asking about how my Mom is doing. She is doing amazingly well, thank you. I wish she knew all the people who are concerned about her, because it would make her feel better about the whole process of getting over her two broken bones, but she doesn’t appear to need to know how many are rooting for her. She has an ability to heal from her wounds that younger ones would envy. Recently her doctor said she was way “ahead of the game” as far as knitting and getting movement back.

We have been going to physical therapy sessions at the Silverdale Harrison for several weeks now and we have been assigned another one of those lovely angel girls to help Mom get her range of motion and strength back in her arm and her leg. This new angel is named Kiley. She is small and lithe, smart, interesting and gentle. When she spied my Obama button she knew she could talk to me about politics and we’ve been at it ever since. Each time we come in the second question, after asking after Mom’s progress, is “what did you think of the latest McCain statement, or the Palin pronouncement or the last debate?” We’ve been having fun dissecting the political scene while she massages Mom’s bicep muscle. Recently she was gone for awhile traveling to the Midwest for the Chicago marathon. While she was gone another tall, agile young woman took her place. Laura, too, took note of my Obama button and struck up a conversation about it. I think the therapists like to talk politics if they can and they really aren’t supposed to bring the subject up, but when they see a blatant sign, they jump on it. Laura liked calling my Mom Lou and watching her foot-o-meter, as I dubbed her pain reaction that showed up in her tensed feet. Mom doesn’t feel much pain, but occasionally when her arm is moved to a place it hasn’t been for 9 weeks, her feet flinch. She tries to be brave but her feet give it away every time.

We have been going to physical therapy sessions at the Silverdale Harrison for several weeks now and we have been assigned another one of those lovely angel girls to help Mom get her range of motion and strength back in her arm and her leg. This new angel is named Kiley. She is small and lithe, smart, interesting and gentle. When she spied my Obama button she knew she could talk to me about politics and we’ve been at it ever since. Each time we come in the second question, after asking after Mom’s progress, is “what did you think of the latest McCain statement, or the Palin pronouncement or the last debate?” We’ve been having fun dissecting the political scene while she massages Mom’s bicep muscle. Recently she was gone for awhile traveling to the Midwest for the Chicago marathon. While she was gone another tall, agile young woman took her place. Laura, too, took note of my Obama button and struck up a conversation about it. I think the therapists like to talk politics if they can and they really aren’t supposed to bring the subject up, but when they see a blatant sign, they jump on it. Laura liked calling my Mom Lou and watching her foot-o-meter, as I dubbed her pain reaction that showed up in her tensed feet. Mom doesn’t feel much pain, but occasionally when her arm is moved to a place it hasn’t been for 9 weeks, her feet flinch. She tries to be brave but her feet give it away every time.

Monday of this week Mom got to take off her leg brace, the huge black foam, plastic and Velcro monstrosity that has been keeping her leg straight since she cracked her kneecap on the evening of August 20th. The dang thing was made for someone much taller than her 5 feet. The bottom several inches of this thigh to ankle brace were cut off with scissors in the emergency room, but it has never fit properly and as Mom’s leg got thinner underneath it, it kept sliding down until it was resting on the top of her foot. I’d unstrap it, move it back up, restrap it and within minutes it would have slid down again. Both physician’s assistant and physical therapists noticed that after several weeks it was no longer keeping her leg stick-straight, but they let it slide and considered the fact she could bend her knee slightly inside of it to be a form of therapy. The day the brace came off was a day of celebration. I had authorized the removal of the arm immobilizer the previous week, it having been in place for 7 weeks, a week longer than the PA had ordered. We couldn’t reach him for his approval, so I made a command decision. I got a phone call from his office that afternoon verifying that it was okay, but I would have done it anyway. It was time to get that arm moving.

This Wednesday Mom went to choir practice, the first time since that night when she fell in her driveway on the way to get in Aunt Billie’s car to go to choir and this Sunday she will go back to her church. She is beginning to feel like a “human being” again.

This healing process, from that first stormy and scary night in the emergency room, through the six days in the nursing home that seemed interminable, through the immobile days at home while I tried to make it all work and now during the physical therapy part of the recovery, has been good for my Mom and me. I would not have predicted how it has affected our relationship.

Mom and I have not been close in the way some mothers and daughters are. I was never one to phone daily like some daughters I have known or to visit more than once a week. My weekly visits didn’t start until it was clear I had to take on the financial responsibilities for my Mom a year after my Dad died and I found the checking account and credit situation in shambles. Before that it was holidays and birthdays. In our family it was me, as first child, who became Mom’s rescuer, even as a kid. The story I tell to illustrate this is that one day I came home from school in the 7th grade, to find my Mom cradling my little brother in her arms, waiting for me to help her clean up a wound he had sustained on his leg. She didn’t want to handle it. But as a 7th grader, I took it on. Certain situations scared her and I was the one, if Dad wasn’t available, who stepped in and took over. It is odd because Mom has survived many physical hardships very well, as she has this one. A pot of boiling water spilled on her leg when she was three years old, leaving a big scar. She spent nearly a year in bed with Rheumatic Fever when she was 17. She fell in the well next to our house in Tracyton and clung to the pipe, hanging chest-deep in water for two hours until she was discovered by the local minister and the volunteers from the fire department fished her out. She had a stillborn baby. She lost her sister to cancer. She lost her husband in 2001 and her son in 2003 and in 2004 she broke her ankle in several places and healed well enough to take a trip to Scotland with me and my daughter after only 12 weeks of recovery.

She is a trooper and a survivor, but she has never been the advice-giving, warm, cookie-baking, house-cleaning, soothing mother that I had expected. What she has been is plucky, colorful, artistic, musical, lover of movie stars, reader of mysteries and celebrity biographies, appreciator of beauty and nature. She has never been a hugger or someone who expressed tenderness or told me she loved me. She pats rather than strokes. She has barely cried over the deaths of my Dad or my brother. I could tell she liked me and thought I was smart and sensible, but I also knew she didn’t understand what I was anymore than I understood who she was and why she operated the way she did.

But because we have been together so much in these last months, and because I have wanted so much to make her recovery as pleasant as it could be, we have come to know each other at a much deeper level. During my weekly visits I used to ask, “So how are things going Mom?” and she would answer, “Well, they’re about the same”. Now, of course, we have many more things to talk about. “How is your arm feeling? Do you have anything you need to have me do? Have you called your friend, Jay, yet? Can I get you a drink of water, a cookie, a piece of fruit? Can I help you with those buttons?” During our journeys to doctor’s appointments and physical therapy sessions the conversations have turned to the beauty of the Fall days, art, marriages, divorces, friendships, husbands, raising children, age, illness. As I listen to my mother expressing her views and and telling her stories, I find that I am more like her than I had thought. I see that my philosophy of life is very close to hers, that my opinions have, of course, been influenced by her, that my love of nature and life comes directly from her. I am a bit overly interested in celebrities, I love color, I am fascinated by faces, I am intrigued with discussing people’s motives, just as she is. Her artistic nature is in my love of photography and beauty. We disagree on religion, but neither of us really believes there is a Heaven or Hell. I am much more serious about politics, but she is interested, not apathetic. She is as fascinated in finding out how other people think as I am. She loves to watch people as I do. She writes, reads, works crossword puzzles, loves movies and TV and so do I.

We differ in how much emotion we display, I cry weekly, she rarely cries and never seems to get angry; in how serious we are, I read literary novels and non-fiction books about philosophy or politics and she reads celebrity biographies, I value friends more than she does, but we are both cheerful gregarious types, like to look nice, can chat with strangers, are friendly to those we are working with. Mom didn’t ever work outside her home. She tried but was intimidated by cash registers, making change and invoices. I worked from the time my kids went to school. The Mom I most idealized was Nancy Kvinsland’s Mom, who worked, kept a perfectly clean house, made fabulous meals, had a wicked sense of humor (and had her daughter ironing sheets and her older brother’s boxer shorts, incidentally). I’m not so sure I really would have enjoyed being her daughter, but I thought she was the cat’s pajamas when I was a teenager. Do we ever get the mother’s we think we want? I doubt it. I’ve asked many daughters about their mothers and almost without exception they wish their Moms had been different.

I still wish my Mom had been more demonstrative—it is hard for me to say "I Love You" to those I love—nobody said that in my house and hugs were not common. I wish she had been different with my brothers in some way that would have given them ambition, so that they could have gone out and had jobs and families, to provide cousins for my kids and so that we could have had lots of relatives and big family get-togethers. But that’s not how it was or is. Mom has given me half of what I am and I thank her for that because I like who I am. I can learn to say the love words and I can learn hugging and I have learned to accept what my brothers became. And now, at this late date, I have come to know my Mother in a way I never thought would be possible. And she has said more than once in the last 2 months, "Love ya, Chris". I can’t say that I would ever have wished such injuries to happen, but because of them we have become closer and that is a very good thing—a silver lining entirely unforeseen.

Mornings

Intended to: In September, 2007, after I retired from 9 to 5 work, I planned to get up early, put the coffee on, walk to the newspaper box 1/4 mile up the road, get the paper, come back, have coffee, read the paper.

Reality then: After a few days of cold morning walks to get the paper with no caffeine yet to fortify me, I gave up the notion of getting the paper before having coffee. I read the paper from the day before or sometimes went to get it. I did the crossword puzzles every day, except Saturday (too hard!). I often didn't actively exercise.

Reality now: After almost a year of the Kitsap Sun and its crosswords every morning I became dissatisfied with the Sun and now subscribe to the USA Today. I only do the Kitsap Sun Sunday crossword now, during the week, and get behind on my USA Todays because there is so much content I want to read every page of it, except for the Sports section. I am still drinking 2 to 2 1/2 cups of coffee while I read, still enjoying the KZOK radio in the background (The Bob Rivers Show), but now I start some days exercising with the guys of the Pentagon channel (Fit for Duty), Lt. Jason and others who lead me in Pilates or aerobics or kick boxing. I like them because they are no-nonsense types who tell you to get down on the deck now and give them 5 push-ups.

Interesting how things change. Who would have guessed a year ago that I'd be spending two days a week taking my Mom to physical therapy? I knew I'd be spending more time with her, but not this kind of time. And I thought I'd be visiting my old friends at work--I've been back exactly twice. Life is full. Time flies. There are not enough hours in the day. All those cliches apply.

Beautiful Fall

Here are some photos I've been taking this Fall.

I think it's a particularly spectacular year for Fall foliage.

Yellow Jacket Day

Trude "Junior" Gillman Now and Then

You know those days in the Fall when it’s warm enough to think about eating out on your deck or at the picnic table at work? And if you do, you are invariably bothered during your meal by a yellow-jacket looking for protein because he’s about to hibernate and he needs the calories. And the light is slanting low and golden as a glass of good bourbon and you’re reminiscing about Octobers in the past when you were picking out pumpkins for your kids to carve. And you can feel Winter right around the corner but there is time, just a little bit more time, before the cold comes. Yesterday was a day like that in Keyport, at the Whiskey Creek Cafe. I wish you could all have been there.

I was too early. I left my house way too soon, anxious to get to our CK Alumni lunch, the third I had attended since that wonderful 45th class reunion last summer. As I came down off the freeway, heading toward Keyport, I decided, in order not to look too anxious, I’d take a left turn at Scandia and see if there were any pumpkins in the fields, maybe take some pictures. There was a nice field at Scandia Farms and I drove in and almost drove into a passel of kids about the age of my next to youngest granddaughter, Alison, who were being toured around the farm, looking at the sheep and goats and, probably, the pumpkins. They were in no hurry to move out of my way so that I could park, so I watched the wonder and curiosity on their faces as they looked at the animals that were eating the grain laid down for them inches from their feet. Kids, just starting out in life, no more than four years old, with all of it still ahead of them. 12 years further on they would be in high school and 45 years after that they would be attending reunion lunches like I was going to do after I had parked and taken some Fall pictures of old stumps, that pumpkin field and a Halloween scarecrow against a tree.

After 15 minutes of snapping pictures I felt it was now the appropriate time to make my way into Keyport. To my surprise there were ten or more high school chums already milling around outside the cafe. I wasn’t the only one who was ready to start the delicious process of getting back in touch with old classmates. The first person I spied as I made my way to the group at the door was Joan Aaro. Immediately I was sped back to one of the most memorable vacations of my teenage years. It would be called a “stay-cation” now, because we went no further than Holly. Our family of 5 rented a cabin at Holly, right on the beach of Dabob Bay (?) for a week. This seemed the height of luxury to a 13 year old, about to start junior high school in the Fall. I had no idea what I was going to do that whole week, past bringing 4 or 5 books with me and intending to get a tan. I soon realized that there was a good-looking blond boy, my age or slightly older, staying with his family in a cabin just North toward the pier. My little brother, Stanley, was 2 years old and had started walking and he was my responsibility for part of each day. I brazenly used him to meet this boy, sending him up the beach as if he was running away from me, and then running to fetch him right when he got to where this blond boy was sitting. The blond boy was Bud Smart who lived in Seattle. He was glamorous in that “privileged and more sophisticated than me” sort of way and we had a short summer romance that week. But more important than Bud Smart was who I met because of Bud. Bud was Colin McGinnis’s cousin. Colin was another blond boy who in September would become one of my classmates in junior high. Because of that meeting in the summer at Holly, Colin and I began to “see” each other when school started that Fall and Bud had become a distant memory. And Joan, who I also met that summer, and who lived next door to Colin in Holly, became the person who passed notes to Colin for me. When you were in junior high in the 50s you did not date. You walked or stood in the halls together and you wrote notes to each other. That was about the extent of it. So Joan was our go-between. After Colin was no longer my boyfriend, Joan remained my friend. I enjoyed her down-to-earth sense of humor and it was great to see her, fundamentally unchanged, at the lunch in Keyport. In conversation yesterday, I found out that Joan bowls with my Aunt Billie, in her 90s and still slinging a bowling ball, at All Star Lanes. It is a very small world.

The rooms at the front of Whiskey Creek Cafe are dark with wood paneling, but the room we were in yesterday was called the Sunshine Room and it was bright with that rare Autumn sunlight we were lucky to be getting. The sunny room filled up fast with folks I’d seen at the first and second lunches, Linda Greaves, Vicki A.Holt, Linc David, Ralph Erickson, Dean Johnson, Joyia Mentor, Lavonna Rubens, Junior Gillman, Terry Scatena, Jim Peterson. One of the first newcomers who spotted me was my old friend from Madrigals and, after high school, The New World Chorale, Fred Graeff. Will anyone ever forget Fred’s classic car from the forties that he drove to cruise Graham’s Drive-in? Or his deep bass voice in choir? Or his crooked smile? It was terrific to see him and his pretty wife, Penny. I had sung next to Fred for so many years--it didn’t seem like it was that long ago since we had been learning and performing songs with Jack Unger and the other singers we grew so close to in those years. Fred and Penny told me about recent trips they had been taking to England, where Fred actually drove a car on the English side of the road. I had no idea he was that brave! We agreed that Jack (Mr. Unger!) had spoiled us for choral music and though we had both been in small groups since the chorale broke up in the late seventies, we had never found any group as satisfying.

Even though the majority of the people at the lunch had been at previous lunches, there were still some new/old faces. Several times I was asked and I asked, too, who that person was across the room or at the end of that table. One of those mystery faces belonged to Bob Lauck, now with a thick mane of silver hair, who told me he’d worked for many years with my Dad at Keyport, in Planning and Estimating. He remarked that he was surprised I’d “turned out so well” with a Dad like that. Apparently he’d had some experience with my Dad’s temper both at work and on the golf course. I assured him that Dad mellowed out a bit after he retired from work. I’d speculate that we’ve all mellowed out a little since we’ve retired.

Another face that wasn’t immediately recognizable belonged to Terrie Baughman, who is a tall, attractive woman who has left her gangliness behind and has that height and elegance all of us short women admire. She told me she’d been reading my blog and wasn’t the first to ask how my Mom was doing. One woman I have to look up in the old Echo is Dewene Buffet. I remember her name but I never could find the classmate face in the face I saw yesterday. She has silver hair like most of the rest of us, a bright, sunny face and a cheerful manner and she left before I got a picture of her or got to talk to her. I hope she comes to the next lunch so I can find out who she is now. Right behind Terrie came Sharon Briggs, who looked just the same to me. I can’t wait until the next lunch to find out what it’s like to get up at 12:15 a.m. to go to work in the bakery at Fred Meyer.

A pesky, hungry yellow-jacket intruded on our golden day, buzzing around Sharon Briggs’ head as if he knew that she was allergic to bees. Joan Aaro had been telling me about the salsa she cans in large quantities every summer but beat feet when she saw that bee. She, too, is allergic. But the bee let us enjoy ourselves for several hours before he intruded and after all, bees have to eat, too.

This lunch was different than the first for me in the sense that I didn’t have to figure out who all those not quite strangers were. It wasn’t a puzzle that needed solving. It was a joy to see those I’d seen at the previous lunches and a surprise to see the new faces. These lunches are rapidly becoming one of my favorite things to do.

At the end of the Presidential Debate on Tuesday night Tom Brokaw prefaced the last question with, “This is a bit of a Zen question from an email we received”. He continued with the question: “What don’t you know, and how are you going to learn it?” Neither one of the candidates answered that question very well, but I’ll take a stab. What I don’t know is how Lavonna Rubens has stayed married to the same man for 45 years. I don’t know how Ralph Erickson keeps up with all the email he’s been getting from all of us. I don’t know if John Sleasman is as happy as his perpetual grin indicates. I don’t know when Linc David started riding a Harley. There is so much I don’t know about these people and I want to know all about them. How am I going to learn? I’m going to go to every lunch I can and I’m going to ask! I hope you’ll be there.

Debate Last Night

I'm an Obama supporter and watched the first debate between Obama and McCain last night.  This morning I looked for a newspaper article that said what I was thinking and this one filled the bill.  Click the title of this blog post, Debate Last Night, and it will take you to the article from the New York Times.  I was proud of my guy, but my husband, who is a McCain Republican didn't like him at all.  I think this article is not too biased.  I have to be careful in my household to be open-minded and try to see the other guy's point of view.  It keeps my on my toes!

Much more mellow color now--perhaps purple

Alison and Zuzu in Grandma Whitney's Cool Porch Swing

The Blues are gone.  They have been replaced by the beautiful visages of my grandchildren, who are in Kitsap County this week, visiting with their Mama.  Mama's parents live in Kingston on a terrific piece of property that is just right for grandkids.  I spent the whole day there on Friday and will spend more time there, in addition to a Penney's photoshoot tomorrow and an all day visit at our house on Friday.  We have a nice piece of property, too, but it doesn't include a swing and toys with wheels and a little kid picnic table.  However, we have thousands of river rocks and lots of sidewalk and a great big concrete driveway that will appeal to the 3 year old, Alison.  She can fill buckets with rocks and ride her wheeled vehicle around and around the house and she can pull weeds with me if she feels like it.  We'll have a great time.  I think we might make chocolate chip cookies, too.  I'd like to make and eat some and I bet Alison will, too.  Zuzu, on the other hand, being only nine months old will probably crawl around on the wooden floors and dust them for me.  Mama is not so sure she will take an afternoon nap, but she is such a happy little one that it won't matter much as long as the source of her milk supply is at hand.

I believe the last post was written shortly before last Friday and I was not feeling so good about life that day.  But Friday changed all that.  It is incredible to me that 6 hours spent with two grandchildren can be so relaxing, enervating, better than a massage, better than 3 glasses of wine, better than a week's vacation.  I'd like to know how that works, because I could make a fortune bottling whatever it is that those kids have that can make somebody who is blue turn color so completely!  I was so changed by that day that I slept straight through the night for two nights in a row, unheard of lately with my old mind worrying the situation with my Mom and brother.

What did we do in those 6 hours?  We built a town with a Mama Elephant and a Baby Elephant and Eeyore and a ball that was actually a tower from which the Baby Elephant could see his/her Mama.  Alison decided that a piece of cloth needed to be placed on the ball so that Baby didn't fall off.  We discussed the Pretty Rock Soup that Ali made for me many, many times when I was visiting her in Wisconsin in December.  She explained to me that the Pretty Rocks have to be upstairs now because they are too little and if Zuzu got them she would might put them in her mouth, which would not be good.  We had lunch--pb and js all around and banana bread with pineapple in it make by Grandma Whitney and some blueberries that Ali helped her other Grandma pick.  We sat on the early morning sunlight on the front porch while Ali helped her Grandpa Whitney wash his truck and move his motorhome and some other Grandpa duties.  Mama and I took pictures of Ali and Zuzu in the way cool single person porch swing--single adult person but not too small for two granddaughters.  We helped Zuzu stay away from the magazines she likes to chew on and watched her crawl and destroy Ali's town.  We toured the yard and looked at all the pretty late summer flowers blooming.  We listened to Ali try to take a nap while both grandmas and Mama and Zuzu were still in the living room (impossible!).

That's what we did.  Now how in the world can that change an outlook?  I don't know, but it did, and it's lasted--Paxil doesn't even work that well!  I haven't seen the kids since Friday but I've talked to Mama and all is well.  Ali finally took a nap that day, after I left.  They've been to Poulsbo and had the smiley face cookies and some donuts at Sluy's or the other bakery, threw some rocks in the bay and today another grandpa is coming to visit.  Tomorrow are the pictures,  and Friday I get to see them again,  a refill of the amazing grandchild elixir!

  

The Blues

I had a brother who liked to say, when he was feeling down, that he was "blue". I guess I still have that brother, but most of his ashes are in the Elwah River and the rest of them are in the soil around a hydrangia bush that I brought home from his memorial service 6 years ago. He was probably an undiagnosed bi-polar person, what we used to call manic-depressive, and like an Irish poet, he loved his highs and lows. During high times he was charming, funny, wonderful to be around, his smile was radiant, and during his lows, his blue times, he cried and bellowed and carried on something awful--anyone in his radius was affected. He and I both loved the blues music, too, and today it's really all I want to listen to.

I am blue today. Though I am done crying and bellowing today, yesterday I reminded myself of my brother. Unlike my brother, I had something tangible to cry and bellow about. Maybe he did, too, but you never could tell for sure. What's making me blue is that our Angel Alyssa is no longer working for us. Yesterday around noon she came to my mother's house for her 4 hours shift. She began her duties, she was making pot roast for dinner and planning to give Mom a bath. She came into the living room where my brother presides over the couch and the coffee table, strewn with Rolling Stone magazines, cash, prescription medications for his various mental and physical ailments, glasses, coffee mugs, matches, catnip for his cat, and dust 2 years thick, and found him lighting up his pot pipe. I suppose he thought (???) she was such a dear young lady that she would be "cool' with it. He supposed wrong. She is an employee of a reputable agency with rules and regulations and as a respected employee with ethics she called her boss and reported that an illegal substance was being smoked in her presence.

That is when the shit hit the fan. Betty, from Abiding Care, called me first and reported that there was "trouble" and reported what the trouble was. She asked me to call my brother and tell him to put his pot away, which I did immediately. 30 minutes later she called to say that Alyssa wanted to complete her 4 hours, but that after that "service would be terminated". She apologized and I apologized to her for my brother's incredible stupidity. She replied that it was "because of his illness". I was already in tears. After I hung up the phone I screamed and shook for a half hour. I screamed all the things i wanted to scream at my brother. I didn't dare go to my mother's house--I was truly afraid that if I saw Stanley I would fling myself on him with a sharp instrument and end up in jail. He deserved it. Betty called him--I asked her to-- and told him Alyssa wouldn't be coming anymore. He called me shortly after and I hung up on him after he said, "Hello, Chris" in a serious tone, about to tell me what he had wrought. I already knew what he had done.

The rest of the day, which had started with blueberry muffin baking and enjoying the incredible Fall sunshine, I spent trying to figure out what to do. What my heart wanted to do was to never set foot in my mother's house again--to never speak to my brother ever again--to turn my back on the entire mess. My heart won over my brain all the rest of the day. I wanted to hand it all over to Stanley--let him take care of everything from now on. Let him do the grocery shopping, let him take Mom to the doctor, let him give Mom baths, do the laundry, comb her hair, clean her nails, adjust her braces. All day. But then toward evening my brain began to take over and I knew it would never work. I knew I couldn't leave my mother at his mercy--because he has no mercy. It is all about him. If I let him shop for the groceries with Mom's money he would abuse the situation. If I left it to him to give her a bath, do her laundry, comb her hair, clean her nails, fix her braces, none of it would happen. I would visit one day and she would smell bad and he would have used up all her money and would be asking for more.

My brain and I had a long talk, with the help of my husband, and I finally decided that I would continue to buy the groceries and to take Mom to the doctor and to do the things that are in service to her that I know my brother won't do. But I won't clean anymore, or get my brother what he wants to eat. The house will go back to the way it was before Alyssa and I cleaned it, the way both my Mom and my brother are used to having it, coffee grounds and fruit peels and stale bread all over the kitchen counter, fruit flies everywhere (though I bought some bug spray today), cat hair on all the upholstery, clothes strewn all over the house. I won't put my agenda anywhere near theirs--there is no percentage in that. There is nothing for it but to ignore what I can't stand, close my eyes, and go on. An old Irish prayer fits well: If God sends you down a stony path, may he give you strong shoes.

So today I am blue, like my brother, Dan, used to be sometimes. And I wish he was here, though I would have had to deal with his anger, too, and mine is big enough.

Angels

I would tend to believe more in extra-terrestrials than in supernatural beings, but this week I met an Angel. She came in the form of a 22-year-old young lady named Alyssa, working for Abiding Care, a home healthcare agency. She is tall, blond, competant, smart and going to college to become a medical technician. She will be coming to my Mom's house twice a week until we feel we don't need her services anymore, which may be NEVER, if we have our druthers!

After Alyssa's first day, when she took everything off the kitchen counter and cleaned like that old White Tornado of fifties TV commercials, and then cleaned the toaster until it was like new, and made coffee, and waited on my Mom, and had an intelligent conversation with me about religion, and then made dinner for both Mom and Stanley, (the best burgers I've ever had, exclaimed my brother), I am not sure we ever want to give her up. She is a combination of personal maid, housekeeper, cook, companion, all rolled into one $20 per hour package of energy and good will. She has the ability to be objective about the not so clean house, my scraggly-haired, pill-taking, pot smoking brother--all of it. She is allowing me to step back and not worry so much about my Mom and the care she might not be getting from my brother. Two days a week I can breath easier. Two days a week I can know that for 4 hours at least, everything is being taken care of. She is going to make pot roast next week, she was cleaning out the refrigerator when I left her yesterday( a tremendous task), she had cleaned the bathroom, she had made coffee again and she planned on making dinner and bathing Mom before she left at 4:00.

Mom, Stanley and I have bonded with this marvelous girl--my brother may be falling in love with her for all I know. If I had to compare her looks to a current personality it would be to Scarlet Johansen. She isn't as classically beautiful, but she has those strong Scandinavian features, and a body and character equally strong, as though she has endured many hardships in her short life. Perhaps she has seen a lot in her time with Abiding Care. Perhaps she was born this way, or raised this way, but whatever has made her the lovely young person that she is, it's something my little family is reaping the benefits of. She has made all of us stronger and more confident. She is giving relief to both my brother and me, and she is doing much-needed cleaning that I was trying to do, but didn't have the energy for. Cleaning the frig was on my list of to-do things and cleaning the bathroom, too, but I hadn't gotten there yet. Now I don't have to do them and I can concentrate on the doctor's appointments and later the physical therapy appointments and getting the prescriptions filled and the other little things that Alyssa can't do.

Because of Alyssa I feel much, much better this week. I can see light instead of being mired in anger, sadness and dread. I can regroup and make lists and enjoy my husband and my garden and clean my own house and bake muffins. Friday I will be able to go out to lunch with friends because Alyssa will be with my Mom. This week I have taken two days just for myself, not doing anything in service to my Mom. Yesterday when I left her, Mom was reading one of her favorite types of books--a biography of Joan Crawford--it's the first time I've seen her reading since her fall. We are figuring out how to care for her, she is feeling less pain and the physician's assistant who she has been seeing says she is healing well and in two weeks should be able to start physical therapy. With the help of our angel, we should all be okay.

Stanley

Mom and Brother, Stanley

I have purposely not mentioned my youngest brother much in this blog. He is a thorn in my side, a pebble in my shoe, most of the time, and so I leave him out of the discussion, perhaps in that way to make his looming presence fade a little. But he is a fact in my life and my mother's life and because of his proximity to my mother, very much a fact of life right now.

This blog is not worth anything to me if I can't be honest in it, as if it was my personal journal. It won't be as brutally honest as my hand-written journal, as I suspect there are people who are reading it and they don't really want to know ALL my warts, read all the curses. Since my brother is paramount in my mind at this moment, I am going to lay it out here.

Stanely was born when I was twelve. Because of family circumstances at the time, my Dad's new business, Mom away from home helping Dad with it, I became like a second mother to my little brother. When he was three years old and I was 15 my Mom would go help Dad out as soon as I got home from school, and I was Stanley's "Mom". He was an odd duck, even then. He became "little bird", "little airplane", "little car"--he had a vivid imagination which we all indulged because he was the baby. At 15 my maternal instincts were in full gear and I was even making dinners for the family, always the little helper. After a few years my Dad's business failed and I became a normal teenager with dates and highschool to think about, but Stanley still seemed like more of a son to me than a brother--my first experience with a child.

I got married early and started my own family and Stanley tried to succeed in grade school and didn't do well there, and then tried to succeed in junior high and didn't succeed there and dropped out at 16. He took up drugs, probably as a way to deal with being "different", which he certainly was. He was an artist and a musician and that personality that caused him to be little car and little airplaine made him take up numerous other personas along the way. It was difficult to tell who he really was. at one point in his life he affected being a black man with white skin. He adapted the black swagger, speech, mode of dress. Because he didn't know what else to do with himself and something was expected of him, he joined the Army. He was still in his AfroAmerican personality and the real black men in the Army didn't take kindly to that. He found out the hard way that if you are not black, you do not try to BE black. He was discharged for fighting. He came home, lived with my parents for awhile, tried to live on his own, took more drugs, came back home, tried to live on his own again, painted amazing pictures, came back home.

I guess Stanley came back home again for good when he was in his early 30s. He is now 52. He continued to paint until my Dad died in 2001, exhibiting at Metropolis and Amy Burnett's gallery a few times over the years, but he lacked the ambition and drive to go any further. He sank into mental illness of a type that is managed by taking anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, and anti-anxiety medications. He also smokes pot. He lives upstairs in my mother's house, makes motor-cycle models, doesn't paint anymore, lives mostly at night, sleeps during the day, watches television, goes out to a movie occasasionally with his one friend, Pat, who is also an artist but, unlike Stanley, a working man with a family. He gets a small income from Social Security Disability Insurance, which he spends mostly on pot and take-out pizza. Up until recently I have seen him about once a week, if he happens to be downstairs when I have been visiting my Mother. We talk about television shows and movies he likes. He is intelligent and an entertaining conversationalist for a short period of time, but the television obsession can be too much after awhile. Once a week visits are enough.

When Mom fell and broke her arm and her kneecap I knew I was going to have to ask my brother to step up to the plate and take on some responsibility. He had done it before, when Mom broke her ankle two years ago. I had asked him then to sleep on Mom's schedule rather than his own, to sleep downstairs, rather than in his rooms upstairs and to help Mom get from her room to the bathroom in a wheelchair. He also had to make her meals. He did a decent job of it. It was stressful for him, I knew that, but he did it.

So I expected him to be able to do it again this time. I might be wrong about that. I brought Mom home Tuesday evening, after an afternoon fraught with tension while my brother waited at home for the wheelchair to be delivered and I waited at the nursing home to get confirmation that the wheelchair was there, ready to transport her into the house. Stanley nearly folded under this small pressure, calling me three times to report that the chair had not yet arrived, in a fury because he thought he saw a van going back and forth on the street and maybe that van was the wheelchair van and why weren't they stopping?! When the chair arrived and I got Mom home finally, Stanley was in a frenzy, hair flying in all directions, trying to tell me about a program he'd seen on television while my husband and I tried to get Mom in her bed and take care of other details that had to be done right then. He would not shut up or calm down. I did my best to ignore him. Before I left, I made a list of chores I needed him to do--empty the dryer, take the dishes out of the dishwasher, give Mom her pain pill at 9:00. Then I went home hoping that he could take care of these small things and his Mom. I figured it was his duty, after all the years she had been taking care of him.

Wednesday, after getting groceries for Mom, I arrived at noon to learn that she hadn't had any pain medication the night before, that Stanley had given her Tylenol PM instead, which is what she has taken at night for several years in order to sleep. He had not fed her yet, she was still in bed. Okay, I thought, this is the first morning, he's tired and tense, he hasn't gotten his act together. I spoke to him firmly but gently about the importance of food and the pain pills and about getting Mom in an upright position. I went back into the second-mother mode and he seemed to respond. He helped me cut back the wisteria that was hanging over the sidewalk, though keeping up a constant monolog about his television shows. That night I called him to make sure food and medications were being administered when they should be.

Thursday was better. I arrived in the morning to get Mom ready for her doctor's appointment. She had eaten her toast, had her pill and her daily medications and was ready to get up and have me help dress her. Stanley was calm and seemed on top of things. He helped get Mom down the steps and into the car. It was a pretty good day, all in all. Good news from the doctor, Stanley got a break, Mom got to get out into the fresh air. I left that day feeling pretty good about things.

Friday I started slowly, watching my recording of the Democratic Convention, cleaning the bathroom, answering email. I got to Mom's at 12:30, with a new pain medication prescription, a new bag of licorice and hope in my heart because today was the first day of Abiding Care. We were to meet the aid that would be helping Mom twice a week. As I came in the front door, Stanley rose up from the couch in a start--he had been asleep. When I remarked that he'd better get going as he had his own doctor's appointment in a couple of hours he started to whimper about what a "bad night" he'd had, his stomach upset, in the bathroom many times. I ignored him but tensed up because I didn't want to hear complaining from him when we had an 86 year old mother with two broken bones, who was bedridden. I checked on Mom--she was in pain, she hadn't had lunch, she hadn't had her daily meds, she was in disarray and looked so helpless and in need that I nearly broke down crying. I got Mom's lunch ready and got her out of bed, put a shirt on her (she was STILL wearing the slacks she'd had on the day before when I'd left her) and made some coffee. I wheeled her out into the livingroom to eat.

Again, I began to tell my brother how important it was to feed Mom and get her pain medication to her on a regular basis, not to mention getting her out of bed and in an upright position. This time the lecture was met with hostility--"I'm going to tell you one more time and I'm not going to tell you again, I had a bad night!" Well, second-mother, big sister, whatever I am to him, sane person to crazy person, I don't know what relationship I have to him anymore, whatever it is I came back swinging. He got the angry speech I've been wanting to give him for years: "You had a bad night. Poor you! How would you like to have a broken arm and a broken leg and be helpless in your bed and in fierce pain? Your mother has taken care of you for 52 years. It's time for you to take care of her now! She can't walk, she can hardly feed herself, she can't go outside without help, she can't drive a car, she can't get out of bed, she can't even get to the bathroom and you are complaining because you had a bad night?!" He came back with, "Well maybe I should just leave!" I said, "Go ahead. Go out into the big world and see how far you get". He knows he could never leave, that he couldn't make it in the world.

In a sense this is very sad. I would love to have a brother who has a wife, a family, a job, a life. But I don't and that's a fact of life and has been for decades. There is nothing I can do about the way he is. I told Bookworm that I can't be angry with him all the time, I just have to work with what I have. Trouble is, I'm not sure it's workable.

The Abiding Care aid started yesterday and she is like that white tornado in the commercials from long ago. She helped Mom and when Mom napped she tackled the kitchen and cleaned it until it shined. She put laundry in the washer and I'd bet she remembered to put it in the dryer and emptied the dryer before she left. She was making dinner when I left at 4:00. She is 22, she is tall and strong, she's smart and interesting, she will be wonderful for Mom and when she is there 4 hours a day, two days a week I will have confidence that Mom is well cared for. But what about the other 5 days a week? I know Mom wants to be in her own home, but would she be better off with me? I know she would get better care from me, more consistant, more constant. Part of me wants to bring her to my home and part of me wants Stanley to take his turn, to be a man for once, to take responsibility. I may be asking more than he is capable of. I am going to give it a little more time. If he can get into a routine, like he did two years ago during the broken ankle time, then it might be okay. Maybe he will want to impress Alyssa, the aid. Mostly I want to have some relief myself and live my life for at least part of every day.

Six weeks more in the leg brace, 4 weeks more in the arm brace. It sounds like such a small space of time. It's only been one week and two days since Mom fell. It seems like so long ago. As some comedian said in some movie years ago, "There's been so much stuff under the thing".

Challenges!

In the previous post I seem to have left out a few important things.  Perhaps I was trying to be nice, as seems to be my instinct most of the time.  I think I get that from my plucky Mom--she wouldn't dream of complaining about her treatment at Bremerton Health and Rehab.  But yesterday as she watched me fly off a wheelchair that I  tried to sit on next to her bed, I think she might have changed her mind.  There was not, and has never been, a chair next to my Mom's bed.  There is a chair next to the other bed in the room, but it's Frances's chair, so I've never pulled it over to the other side of the room to use.  Yesterday, the wheelchair was there, there was a pillow on the seat, and I sat on it.  The brakes were not on and there were my Mom's books underneath the pillow, so it shot out from under me and I went down hard on the floor.  I am as happy as I can be that there was a nursing aid in the room to see me hit the deck, because she can testify to it when an investigation is done based on the complaint paperwork that I completed, with tears streaming down my face. 

 I had a few other complaints, too.  Mom had one pair of underwear on her body when she came into the nursing home and I brought another pair the next day.  Now, both are missing.  I had filled out another form that stated I would take her laundry home with me, having heard stories from friends about clothing and other belongings going missing during nursing home stays.  And then there was the issue of my Mom's broken arm immobilizer, which was not attached as it should have been, leaving her poor, broken arm hanging down at her side.  When I asked to have it put on properly, the nurse (who I've liked very much) was unable to do it and felt a part of the brace was missing.  She ran off to look for the missing piece.  A half hour later a PT fellow came in, looked at her brace and put it on correctly.  There was no missing piece.  The nurse did not know how to attach this type of brace.  All of these things went into my complaint.

I feel as though I have been angry for 5 days now and it's not fun to feel that way.  Just below the anger is sorrow and just below that is fear.  I'm not sure those emotions go in that order, but all are there.  The sorrow is for seeing my Mom in this predicament, where she is absolutely helpless, except for her voice, and as I said before, she would not dare to complain.  The anger is because I don't know how to make myself heard except by yelling--it seems the only way to get anyone's attention.  The medical system rules are unknown to me--I am having to learn as I go and the learning curve is very steep.  I feel helpless, too, but at least I can walk and find the person that needs to be talked to, I can drive my car to get the prescription or to "get in the face" of the nurse who isn't responding.  But it makes me angry that I have to do these things and glad that I have the balls to do them.  A more passive person would have a very hard time.  

The fear is of the future.  In the years since my father died in 2001 I have learned that my habit of projecting my fears into the future, in other words, trying to figure out what is going to happen so that maybe I can control things, does not work.  After my Dad died I was extremely concerned and fearful of what my brothers would do to each other (they hated each other), what would happen when Mom would die someday, what kind of horrible battles would occur over Mom's healthcare and ultimate death?  I was so tied up in knots over these potential hazards and crises that I ended up in therapy and on anti-depressants.  The therapy helped and the Paxil helped and during the 7 years on the Paxil I was able to see my behavior and learn in a calmer way.  And my other brother dies in 2002, something I could never have predicted, even in my wilder attempts at prognostication.  So I'm trying not to play this out too far into the future, but the fact is my Mom has fallen twice in two years and both times she has broken bones.  Two years ago she fell on her porch and broke her ankle in 4 places.  And this time it's her arm and her kneecap.  I can't help but wonder what will happen next.

I have cried in my husband's arms many times in the past 5 days, I have cried on the phone with my best friend, I have cried at the nursing home, and I have sent SOS emails to my friends.  I think that's a better way than trying to stay adult and mature.  Adult and mature works well when you are in offices, but I, at least, have to let down that facade when I am at home, and give in to all the fears and sorrows of this new challenge.

Let me say one final thing about the word "challenge".  I have noticed in the past few years that the word has been lovingly adopted by the "caring" professions, including the education system and the managerial professions.  No, it's not a problem, dear, it's a challenge.  We don't have a crisis, we have a challenge.  Well let me tell you, I can think of a bunch of other words that start with C that more appropriately describe problems:  crap, crisis, corruption, catastrophe, calamity, cheerless, cheesy,chilling, choleric,circuitous, clamor, crash, cloddish, clumsy, coercion, combat, curse, cry --I have no time to keep listing C words, but I imagine you have some of your own.  It's time for me to go pick up a pain killer prescription and go participate in my Mom's doctor's appointment.  Wish me hope.

In An Instant

It's incredible how the course of life can be changed in a blink of the eye, a flutter of the eyelash. My best friend has described life as a river. I think that's very apt, because, since Wednesday night I have been trying to navigate the white water of the medical system.

My 86-year-old Mom fell in her driveway on Wednesday evening, on her way to get in the car with her 89-year-old sister-in-law. They were going to choir practice. Now Mom is in a nursing home. She broke her left arm and cracked her right kneecap and lacerated her forehead above her left eye. She was in the emergency room at the hospital for seven hours while they SLOWLY decided that she would not be admitted to the hospital and therefore we had to get her out of there. Our options were ugly: take her home and try to maneuver her into her bed without the use of a wheelchair or several strong men OR admit her to a nursing home. The ER doctor and social worker were pushing heavily for the nursing home. I was trying to convince them, and myself, that taking her home would be the better idea. I was in a state of confusion and anger already because, as part of the decision process, I was told by the social worker that Medicare would not cover Mom's nursing home costs if she had not been in the hospital for at least 3 days. I was not only trying to make the decision about what to do based on my mother's welfare but on her financial health, as well. She is like many 86-year-old widows who have always been housewives: she has a pension from her husband's civil service retirement and a tiny amount of social security each month, a savings account that I have built up in the years since I took over her finances and a small account at a brokerage.

This post makes it sound as if I was rational and only trying to pick the best of two rotten alternatives. The reality is that the minute I was put in the position of having to make this awful decision my innards turned to water and I reverted to the little girl in me and all I wanted to do was go home and hide under the covers of my own bed, in my own warm house, next to my husband and cry. But I was in the garishly lit emergency room, in cubicle #6, with my Mom on an unforgiving sheeted platform euphamistically called a bed, with 6 stitches in her head, a 2 foot brace on her leg and an "immobilizer" on her broken arm. (I could have used a superhero called The Immobilizer at that point. He could have swooped in, immobilized everyone in sight with his immobilizing super-stare and swooped us both away to a safe place with all the wheelchairs and bedside commodes we needed.) Alas The Immobilizer did not appear, so Me/Little Daughter was left to make the big decision.

I hemmed and stalled and finally asked the social worker if I could speak to the "person" at Bremerton Health and Rehab on the phone. Bremerton H and R was the ONLY nursing home that would admit a person, no matter how in need, at 2:00 a.m. They had two empty beds and they were ready to take our money. The horrifying equation was 2 weeks at $4500, paid in advance, out of either Mom's pocket or mine. In my 30 minutes on the phone with Kristy from BHR, I told her I couldn't get my hands on that money until the next day and she finally understood that I wanted Mom to be home within a few days to a week and agreed to a lesser amount up front. I think she was willing to have me pay for only 3 days, but I ultimately decided to pay for a week. It is nearly a week later and Mom is still at the facility, so it was a decent decision, though it kills me to take that much money out of her savings. One of the truly stupid and unforgettable things the social worker at the hospital said when trying to convince me that the best route would be a nursing home, was, "You'll be using up that money soon anyway". That may be, but Mom should be able to use that money on a nice trip to see her granddaughter in San Diego, instead.

The nursing home has turned out to be okay for Mom. She is getting a degree of care, not fabulous care, but on-call care, three meals a day, people around to talk with her. My Mother happens to be an extremely upbeat person who takes each day as it comes and "tries to make the best of things", as she says. She likes it when the young aids and others come in to see how she is. She reports that they are all very nice and helpful. She has a couple of books, a big NY Times crossword puzzle book, some magazines and the newspaper every day. She likes the food, but then she also likes Denny's and Shari's and Dominoes Pizza and most middle of the road food--she's a housewife of the fifties, so a dish of frozen strawberries, or lime jello or a sloppy joe on a Langendorf bun is alright with her. I've felt so much anxiety over having to put her in there, but she has been cheerful most of the time and thinks it's for the best on a short-term basis. I can rest at night because of her good attitude.

My bigger problems have centered more around getting a response from her doctor. Both my Mom and brother have used this doctor for several years now. My Dad saw her for years before he died. She was my doctor before I had to change to Group Health after retirement. You would think there would be some level of caring or concern shown because she has been so involved with the family, but that has not been the case. It is as if Mom is a stranger to her. I have been promised that phone calls will be returned and they haven't--I've tried to speak with her nurse and haven't been able to get to her. I wanted Mom to be seen at the nursing home but was told the doctor "doesn't go there". On advice from friends I went to the clinic where she has an office and demanded to speak with her nurse. Her nurse came out, tersely told me the doctor had written the prescription for the wheelchair and other medical appliances we'd need at home and that if we wanted an appointment I should make it with the appointment desk and then she swished out, all dispatch and dispassion. Should I expect more or is this the way it is in the medical profession now? When we see the doctor tomorrow I am going to throw away any caution I have about ruffling anyone's feathers and let the doctor know just how many of MY feathers have been ruffled. It seems to be the only way to get results and I have been told this same thing by many friends recently who have had sick relatives in the past few years.

My son remarked that if we lived in Canada or Cuba or England none of this would have happened, that Mom's care would have been paid for. If you've seen the documentary, Sicko, you would agree. My experience in the past 5 days has taught me that ER doctors, nursing homes and family doctors are not in the business of taking care of people in need--they are in the business of paperwork that protects their asses. I have signed so many forms that claim to be protecting my Mom's "rights", but which actually protect the hospital and the nursing home. The medical system in this country is terribly, terribly broken and I don't see either one of our presidential candidates promising anything other than "insurance for everyone". Well, Mom has insurance and it's not doing her any good at all. The insurance doesn't mean her doctor will answer the phone or provide a prescription, it doesn't mean that her nursing home care will be covered or that she will even get GOOD care while there, it doesn't insure her safety or sanity or my sanity, either.

Tomorrow, one way or the other, Mom will go home. I am hoping that her doctor will write the order for her to "release her to home" immediately. If she hesitates to do it, I will bust Mom out of there without the blessing of anything but my good instincts. And you can bet that I will have to complete a form that covers the asses of everyone involved, except for my Mom.