Who Cares What Nansi Thinks?

Mike cashed Mom's stimulus check for her and I picked her up after work on Saturday. As we were wheeling toward the exit, I said, "OK, Mom. Close your eyes and think of the one thing you'd like to eat. No matter what or where, what would you want to eat?" It didn't take her long to say "Good Mexican food."

Easy. I took her to a local chain of restaurants called El Rodeo. I've frequented El Rodeo for about 30 years now, since it was a little hole in the wall owned by a Mexican family. (Remember Bonita?) Now their restaurants are large and elegant. When Mom went in, she said it was like being in Mexico City. There is a lot of exposed brick and stucco. The colors are bright and the decor is just outstanding. Our favorite part was that each chair is different. All are hand carved, some have toucans, some sunflowers, some flamingos, some parrots or sombreros. All a work of art unto themselves.

I told the waiter about having Mom close her eyes and dream of the best food she could get. "When she said 'Good Mexican food', I knew right where to bring her." Well, that's all I needed to say. Mom was queen for a day.

Our waiter catered to her every wish. (and when she figured out he would, she came up with LOTS of wishes!) Unfortunately, Mom's been on such a bland diet that the food seemed hot to her. It wasn't, but she struggled to eat. She was able to eat all the refritos with sausage and cheese and some of her chicken.

We knew we wanted dessert, but Mom was struggling between flan and a pastry filled with cream cheese. She settled on flan and enjoyed every single bite. As we were leaving, Luis, our waiter, brought her an order of refritos with sausage to go and the other dessert that she turned down. He didn't even charge us!

While we were pouring over the menu, Luis lingered nearby to answer any questions Mom might have about the menu. Mom shared with Luis how years ago, she and our pastor's family used to got Matamores every year to see a doctor of arthritis there. Then she told of how our pastor's son started a church in Mexico City and that she and Dad went down every year to work in his church.

At that moment, Mom remembered the day. It would have been her 63rd wedding anniversary with Dad. Apparently they'd spent a lot of their anniversaries in Mexico at Kim's church. Mom was tearful and related to Luis that they had planned on retiring there, "But he left me all alone."

Luis was attentive and seemed genuinely interested in Mom's stories. (We went early and were the only people in the restaurant for a while.) It did Mom good to have a fresh set of ears to hear what she says over and over again.

I got to see Mom through Luis' eyes. What an interesting lady. How funny and witty she is. I saw how she weaves a story and draws you in. I saw how she misses my dad.

Time does not heal all wounds. Sometimes, as time passes, the wound becomes more painful. It wasn't until Mom went into the nursing home that she began to miss my dad so acutely. In the years right after his death, she was a little mad at him for being so unprepared for his own death.

I've often said, "the largest surprise in my dad's life was his death." He was absolutely certain that he would never see death. He thought that he and Enoch would share that commonality. Dad was lead pipe sure that Jesus would come again before he died. I think he deliberately avoided medical help when he knew he was having a heart attack because he was sure whatever was going on would abate and he would live on--or Jesus was coming today.

I always thought Dad was the only one that wanted to retire in Mexico. It looks like Mom is very disappointed that it didn't work out that way.

My day with Mom on Saturday was bitter sweet. We had big plans to go shopping and spending her money. In the end, she made a list of things for me to order for her on the internet. She was exhausted after lunch. It was all I could do to get her back in the car and out again at the nursing home.

Remember me sharing how the Arocept was working so well? It skipped a beat on Saturday. Mom wanted a few dollars, so I gave her two fives and five ones. Any more than that and she loses it. I wasn't back home more than an hour or two when the nursing home called. Mom was in a panic. She was sure I'd given her two twenties and she had lost them. I had paid for our lunch with two twenties. :-( Mom often puts unrelated fragments together to form "the truth".

So for today, I'm missing my parents. Both of them.

How's that for a grabber???

My mom has been bugging and bugging about her stimulus check. I told her that since she had not filed a tax return in umptie leven years, she wouldn't qualify for one. All the old ladies around her were waving their $300 checks and Mom was sure she was entitled to one too.

I refused to help her. For two reasons, one--I'm tired and I don't want to do the research and two (they say the last reason is the real reason) the very last thing my mother needs is a bunch of cash.

To prove that my mother isn't nearly as helpless as she'd like you to believe, she got herself around and did what needed to be done to get that stimulus check. It finally came last week.

The nursing home is terrified that I'm going to sue them so they called me at work. God knows how many people were in the room, I was on speaker phone. "Your Mom's stimulus check came, what do you want us to do with it?" Great. I had them send it to me, which they did by registered mail.

So tomorrow, I take Mom to cash her check, and Lord Help Me, I take her shopping. I hate to go shopping with Mom. She wants every thing. She wants bags and bags and bags of everything.

I'm going to try to steer her into buying some things for herself that she can use. But if I'm not careful, she'll be bringing home trinkets and baubles and junk.

Funny. We go to a restaurant that sells these nifty "arrangements" of candy. It's become a holiday tradition. I get one for Mom at Christmas and Easter (about as often as I hit the church doors!) They're so cute. Whoever makes them is very clever. From afar they look like flower arrangements but they're actually candies put on sticks and stuck into some festive thing like a basket or a wreath.

At St. Patrick's Day this year, Mom took a liking to one of those arrangements in a big plastic mug. It was all green cellophane, lollipops, and white chocolate pops iced with green trim. (yuck-if it's white, it's candy-- NOT chocolate, but that's a battle to be fought another day.)

Last week, well after the fourth of July, I noticed that the St. Paddy's day "arrangement" was still in her room. The good stuff had been picked off and eaten. What was left were suckers, and dried out white candy (not chocolate, remember???), bare, candy-less sticks, and tufts of green cellophane. It looked like the prize in an alley cat fight. Raggedy!

I said to Mom, "You're done with this, aren't you?" I managed to talk her into getting rid of the ant magnet. I had hoped to save the green plastic mug for her to put pens and pencils in, but the green floral spongy stuff was hot glued into the cup. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get it to be just a cup. So I ended up tossing the whole thing.

She asks me about it every time I'm in. "Somebody stole my green arrangement!"

Mom loves her "stuff".

Oh! And she's got a new roommate. The two of them seem to really like each other. I hope it continues to work. Frances is her name. Her sons are spoiling Mom rotten. They never come in empty handed!

Mom has started taking Arocept. When I found out, I was a little sad. That's an Alzheimer's treatment and I'm not ready to think of Mom having Alzheimer's. I must say though, it's doing wonders. Before Arocept, a visit with mom would be sentences that were always interrupted with, "darnit! what's the word? I don't even have a mind anymore!" Or it would be an hour of the same exact conversation we'd had yesterday. I don't hardly hear her complain about her memory anymore. Mom can grab the word she's looking for with very little effort.

She's also starting to recall things a little more clearly. She hasn't been glomming things all together like she'd been doing. For instance, Mom stopped driving long before my son was born eleven years ago, but she'd say she drove right up to the time she entered the nursing home. The Arocept is allowing her to keep her thoughts more organized.

Today, things are nice with Mom. I think she'll have fun tomorrow. And hey! I don't work there any more, Let THEM figure out what to do with her bags and bags of shtuff!

My mother says things to me like, "WHEN you get diabetes, WHEN you get diverticulitis, WHEN you have a hip replacement, WHEN you end up old and broke...." She assumes that I will experience everything she has experienced. She feels my destiny is inevitable.

Is it?

Every condition my mother suffers is a result of lifestyle. Even her financial situation is a result of the lifestyle choices she and my father made throughout their lives.

I heard something interesting the other day. I was listening to Oprah Winfrey interview Eckhart Tolle on her XM radio show. They were discussing the evolution of life - from birth to death - and how our society is repulsed by old age. Mr. Tolle spoke of how we tend to closet away our old people and we don't appreciate their contribution to life. I can't say that I agree with him completely, but on the foundational concept, I concur.

Mr. Tolle advised that as we approach our end of natural life, we should stop concentrating on DOING and be content with BEING. Wow. He put into one sentence a concept I've been trying to impress upon my mother. It's not that I want her to be a lump and do nothing, but I'd like for her to be content when she's doing nothing.

The apostle Paul said, "I've learned that whatsoever state I'm in, therewith to be content." (Even Alabama???) Easy words, hard accomplishment. Mom keeps asking me why she can't relax. It's difficult to say. I watch her settle in, seemingly at peace, only to see her stir everything up again.

One Sunday I sat in the dining room with Mom and her friend, Geri. The two of them are known as "royalty" in the kitchen. They survey their dinner and don't feel it's a good day unless they've sent something back as "inedible" or my mother's favorite word, "gelatinous".

On this day, the meal was lovely. There was roast beef with gravy, a baked potato with sour cream and butter, Geri got her brussel sprouts and Mom got her steamed broccoli, both had tossed salads with cucumbers, boiled egg, tomatoes (sans salmonella), cheese and greens. For dessert there was baked apples and vanilla ice cream. Steam came off the plate when the cover was lifted.

Mom nervously surveyed every dish, touching, smelling. Then she stuck her chin out and said, "You wouldn't believe the slop they tried to make us eat yesterday!" Forgive me folks, but I just howled. There truly IS no pleasing Mom.

Why? I don't know. Maybe it's a habit. My son almost always says "What?" After I say something to him. I used to always repeat what I had just said, until I realized he wasn't really saying "what?" to me, but to himself. I find that if I don't repeat, he still responds. He just needs to process, and his habit is to say "what?"

Maybe Mom has developed a habit of discontentment. And she says I'll feel just like she does some day.

Will I? I already look like my mother did at 48. Will I act like she does when I'm 81?

I can't accept her premise. There is a litany of things that she did at my age that I don't do now. Mom and I have similar tastes and personalities, but our views on life are vastly different. I won't be so ridiculous as to say I envy my mother. On some level though, I wish I had time to sit and reflect, to read, to write, to engage with people my own age, without having a house to clean, a job to do, etc.

My fondest wish is that Mom can find peace. I think she already blew her chance at happiness. That Sunday meal was a microcosm of her life. She had it good--husband, children, home, church, and she spent that wanting more.

I watch my mother as if she were a harbinger of my own future if I'm not careful. I know how the roses smell. In my youth I watched Mom trample right through the roses in pursuit of the greener grass. I learned that the roses are here and can be counted on, and while taking in their scent and savoring it, the grass beneath my feet grows more lush and green. I realize I am in greener grass, and I love it.

I don't feel good today. If you know me well, you'll know that when I don't feel good, I wear very flashy clothes. I figure I'll let my clothes do all the work while I curl up in a ball and feel like sha-poopie behind the glamor and glitz.

Today I wore (*gasp*) ORANGE! That was the forbidden color when I was a kid. I was never allowed to wear orange or red; or their pastel versions, peach or pink. Mom declared that red heads should never wear these colors, but most especially they should NEVER wear orange.

I remember when my big sister left home, the first thing she did was get an orange outfit. Although, it may have been the second thing she did. She probably got her ears pierced first because my mother always declared that pierced ears were for "gypsies and whores." Whatever Mom... I remember when my big sister came in wearing the orange dress. It had a scalloped hemline with white trim-it reminded me of a dream cicle. I thought it was the most wonderful thing I'd ever seen and I envied her for having the guts to wear it. Mom looked at the dress through thin slits, it seemed to really make her mad.

It's only been in the past couple of years that I've gotten orange clothing. As usual, I bought the orange shoes first. The first time I wore Orange to work at the nursing home, I told my boss, Barb, how my mother felt about orange and said, "She'll probably ground me for life when she sees this outfit!" Well a couple of hours later I noticed that mom kept wheeling past the business office but wouldn't come in. Finally, thinking she was lost, I yelled, "MOM??? Are you looking for me?" She stuck her nose up in the air and declared, "Well that IS you, I didn't think it was, I NEVER thought I'd see you in ORANGE!" Barb spit an entire mouthful of tea on the windows. It was hilarious!

Later I related to Barb just how verboten Orange was in my life. It may SHOCK you to know that I was a cheerleader when I was a young girl. (They call me relentlessly perky!) From eighth to tenth grade my school colors were orange and white. My mother actually made me wear a brown wig on picture days. Thank goodness she didn't make me cheer in the wig! It wasn't until I was telling Barb about the wig (and seeing the look of shock on her face) that it dawned on me that it just wasn't normal to expect a child to wear a wig if their cheerleading outfit was a bad color.

Mom and I had a big laugh about that today when I went to see her. She loves to stop people and say, "Look at Nansi wearing Orange. I never let her wear that color when she was growing up!" Mom says she didn't know what she was thinking. "Orange is a wonderful color for you! I wonder what else I got wrong?!" Got a life time? :o)