I awoke around 6:30am and checked my phone for a couple of different reasons. Firstly, my 94 year-old mom who lives with us now, may have called during the night, and I might have missed the call (yes, from the other room because walking through an unfamiliar house at night can be perilous to anyone, let alone a 94 year-old, so she is instructed to call if she can, and I will come to her.) By the way, “unfamiliar” is an accurate term, even though she has lived here 7 months today. She still cannot figure out where we keep the coffee mugs or bowls, or how to start the microwave. Almost everything in her life is unfamiliar, at this point.
Secondly, my husband is traveling. No “Good morning” message as yet.
Thirdly, I checked social media, but I’m taking a break from Facebook since Feb 8, so mainly I’m looking at Instagram and email. I find both unfulfilling and impersonal compared to Facebook interaction. I have unfollowed people (Influencers) whom I just started following a couple of weeks ago. I don’t find myself envying the lifestyles of the rich, young, famous and beautiful as much as I find them boring at this point. My initial interest has worn off. They’re all looking alike and posting alike and trying so hard alike. I did enjoy Courtney Cox’s account a bit, though, because she’s humorous and vulnerable enough to show herself learning to play piano. Now that’s interesting. I still cringe, though, when I see famous women bringing their teenaged daughters onto their accounts. My instinct was always to shield and protect my daughters; theirs seems (I know I’m judging) to promote. On the other hand, I get it–they’re proud mamas. It’s just that the audience is so vast and out of control for famous people, much different from a soccer mom in the midwest. I would be very reluctant to set my daughter up for comparison, harsh judgment, unkind words. I would also be reluctant to set them up for a lifetime of seeking attention and affirmation by growing a number of followers. Wow, I sound old. I am old! But I am also wise, I think, in this.
My favorite app continues to be Pinterest, where most of my boards are private, and where I like to collect ideas and daydream a little. I never dream of traveling the world (although we visited Montenegro recently) or of giant homes, etc., but I do enjoy pinning the lists I make from each holiday, foods that went over well and ones that didn’t, presents I gave people, recipes and decorations I used, ones I’d like to try next year, etc. My favorite boards to revisit are of past Independence Days here at my house. Now that’s a dream–summer fun.
I got myself a cup of coffee with real, full, whipping cream and read a few more chapters in Diane Keaton’s memoir, “Then Again,” using the library app “Libby” on my phone. Keaton’s is yet another life I cannot relate to but find interesting, temporarily. I’ll be glad to get back to my reading project, which is, I’m reading a best-seller from each decade since the year I was born, and then returning to find best sellers from pivotal years in my life. I want to revisit what the cultural buzz was like in those years and what shaped our thinking for years to come. Even though I’m primarily reading fictional best sellers, I think novels influence us as well as nonfiction. So far, I have most enjoyed “Dolores Claiborne” by Stephen King. I’m currently reading “The Strange Pilgrimage of Harold Fry,” for the year 2012. I started King’s “11/22/63” but just couldn’t get invested in it. Usually I finish whatever I start, but not this time. I could see it was going to be a long haul, so I switched. The initial book for this project was 1962’s “Ship of Fools,” by Katherine Anne Porter, which I immediately realized I’d seen on TCM featuring Vivienne Leigh in her last role.
I also read about the Enneagram personality profiles, which I’ve been looking at for months. I think I’m a type 5.
I’ve begun my training for the Indy Mini in earnest. Yesterday I ran 5 on the treadmill. I listen to 70s and 80s music while I run. This reminds me that I have a couple of sets of tickets this summer to see older acts, like Steve Winwood and Steely Dan. Also, we have Doobie Brothers tickets, and there’s another that I can’t remember. I look forward to summer concerts and running about more than anything besides seeing my grandchildren, of which there are now 4.
Today, though, I will not be doing anything fun except listening to podcasts and audio books while I wash the baseboards in a 24′ x 27′ room, preparing for carpet installation soon. I’ve had enough of hardwood floors that are cold, mess with acoustics, cause a ruckus when you drop something, spotlight your dust bunnies under furniture, and yes, remain hard, especially on aging runner’s feet. I miss the luxury of wall to wall padding and carpeting. All kinds of 80s trends are recurring, most of which I will eschew, but give me carpeting in my family room, at least!
I hear my mom waking. I’ll return to this later.
12:00
I made an old-fashioned, church carry-in type casserole for my mom for lunch, homemade chicken noodle soup for myself and her for later and a big old salad for lunch and dinner. Mom has wandered in several times while I was cooking, asking what I’m making and giving me advice. She has no idea she’s repeating herself and forcing me to stop my audiobook and repeat myself. Anyway, lunch and dinner (or dinner and supper, as she would say) have taken me a couple of hours this morning.
I’m also washing bedding today.
How specific are we to be with boring details? ha ha
I look forward to tomorrow when I will help with the food pantry at Southside Middle School. I’ll run, then get out of the house for a good cause.
I still haven’t tackled the baseboards yet. My mom has informed me they’re not called “baseboards” but “trim.” Ok then.
As long as I’m home during the day, this is my day:
Her meds
Her food
Her laundry
Her questions
Her objections
Her misplaced items
Her appointments
Her remote control issues
Her confusion
Her repetitive laugh that is apropos to nothing and just fills the air
Her forgotten table manners
Her opinions
Occasionally, we play checkers or watch videos of my grandchildren. She’s not interested in reading, old movies, music or going anywhere, except she is interested in two wildly disparate forms of entertainment: the Jimmy Swaggart show and “Two and a Half Men.” Riddle me that. I think the off-color jokes go right over her head on “Two and a Half Men,” but it’s just bizarre to me that she lets it play every afternoon.
The first question I often get when I tell people we have moved her in here is, “Do you have any help?” or “Do you get regular breaks?” The answer to both is, “No.” I have two brothers remaining. One is almost estranged from the family; the other has no clue about how all-consuming this is. We met the other day so that I could gently explain how I need his practical and emotional support. To his credit, he seems to be 100% willing to help me. But she has been here 7 months today, and not once has either brother offered help. They are quick to say, “I couldn’t do it,” and “You’re doing such a great job,” but they do not help. So I have taken this living situation on not to be seen as a martyr or great daughter (I don’t feel like one) but because I promised my dad many times I’d take good care of her and because a nursing home would be awful for her. And awful for me. Because every day that she would be miserable there, she wouldn’t be calling the two brothers to complain; she would be calling me. And the guilt would be awful.
I love my mom dearly, but we have a typical mother/daughter relationship replete with mutual buttons to push and a long history of mild to moderate opposition. It took moving to Ohio to cut the umbilical cord when I was young, and now I feel thrust right back into 1977. So there is some resentment on my part there.
She often resents the fact that she is no longer in her home with the independence she once knew. I completely understand that. I do.
I often get the feeling that maybe there’s something to reincarnation because I’d swear my mom was once an English princess, but maybe a naughty princess who got sent back to do penance in the blue collar Midwest 20th Century. I feel like her whole adult life she has been asking herself, “Where are my people?” as in “Where are my courtiers?” because she’s just flummoxed when things don’t go her way. I’m joking about reincarnation. But the feeling of being smothered plus the feeling that nothing is ever quite good enough is wearing me out.
So this is where my faith comes in. I believe in grace, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, for both Mom and me as we navigate this. I believe there are reasons we cannot see. I believe for everything there is a purpose and a season, and that this season, too, shall pass. I believe that even more conflicting emotions will then arise. But I will survive. I hold on to Colossians 1:17: “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” He is holding me together. Faith is the undercurrent that buoys me and keeps forward momentum going. I’m not sinking.
5:22
The baseboards, er, “trim” is washed.
It has been a long day that started before sunrise, and I’m just finishing my Diane Keaton memoir. I had no idea when I began reading it that it would end up being a chronicle of her mother’s death from dementia. I probably would not have started it because I’m living with dementia and actually need escape from the reality and often absurdity of it. But I did think it was interesting that in the last chapter, her mother, a nonreligious person, quotes Ecclesiastes 3 in her journal, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, a time to dance. A time to get and a time to lose.” I found this so touching, but also strikingly similar to what I posted above this paragraph about this living situation being a season which will eventually pass.
And so this is a day in this season of my life, one so far removed from those lives portrayed by the Influencers on Instagram that I might as well be on another planet. No one is watching. I’m not doing it all perfectly. I look terrible today. But I have learned. I have learned how to wake up and love all over again because love is more than a feeling. I’m grateful to have the means to do all that I did today, from the means to buy groceries to the means to plan for new carpeting. I’m grateful to have my mom who still remembers me while everything else is slipping away from her. I’m grateful I’m being held together by something greater than a filter and a following on social media. This is my life, and while there have been and I hope will be more fun and stimulating days and years ahead, it’s these days in the trenches and in the fog that help me appreciate days of sunlight, music and laughter even more. I resonate with Camus’ observation: “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”