Father

April 7, 2016March 20, 2017 Sally10 Comments

My father drove twice a day every day to visit my mother in the nursing home.

Noon meal.

Evening meal.

He patiently encouraged her to eat. When she wouldn’t feed herself, he fed her. Through them, I watched that final scene of Driving Miss Daisy over and over and over.

Hoke: Looka here. You ain’ eat yo’ Thanksgiving pie. Lemme hep you wid this.

My father gently fed my mother.

He slowly pushed her wheelchair through the halls and for walks in the courtyard, sitting to rest himself as needed.

He held her hand when they sat together.

They were still two-become-one but in smaller ways that were really bigger than the ocean.

When she passed away, even though she had been disappearing in dribs and drabs over so many years, he was lost.

F is for my father, for whom I ache, who is benevolence, who does and does and does, and did and did and did.

His love and devotion for my mother sets the bar high for the rest of us,

A to Z Blogging Challenge

Egg

April 6, 2016March 20, 2017 Sally11 Comments

Laurel has been practicing cracking an egg with one hand — with these:

“Please can I try it with a real egg?” she begged the other night.

“No,” I replied. I was tired and the likelihood of having to clean up an egg mess was unappealing.

“But, look,” she said, holding a green egg in one hand, “I can do it,” and she neatly opened the empty egg.

“No,” I said again. “Do it in the morning when I have more energy.”

“But I’m not going to make a mess,” she insisted. “And I’ll clean it up if I do.”

“No,” I said one last time.

The truth is I had gotten sad the day before when I was making waffles for my father. I had used the recipe my mother used to use.

But it calls for separating the eggs.

Every time I do it, whether I’m using the separator, the shell, or my hand, I start thinking about my mom.

She taught me to cook — to level off the flour in the dry measuring cup, to get eye-level with the measuring cup when measuring liquids, and to crack the egg with a sharp rap using the back side of a knife. She taught me to pull the eggshell apart with my thumbs. She taught me to always put the egg into a separate dish before adding it to whatever I was cooking — we had our own chickens, and sometimes what came out of the egg was an unpleasant surprise. She taught me to get the last bit of white out of the shell with a quick swipe of my forefinger. She taught me to separate eggs, not allowing any yolk into the white because if I did the white couldn’t be beaten to stiff peaks no matter how hard I tried.

When her dementia robbed her of her cooking ability, she was so lost. No more cooking for a crowd. No more delicious soups where she put something akin to magic in the pot. No more casseroles.

Food was whittled down to marmalade. On everything.

But I can still eat marmalade.

There’s just something about eggs. They make me think of her.

An egg is both strong and fragile.

It is life.

And hope.

An egg is three-in-one, like God.

But the word “egg” only appears once in the Bible.

Somehow, for me, an egg inextricably connects mother to daughter.

It is a mystery — a pearly, porcelain, alabaster mystery.

Today, I’ll let Laurel try cracking that egg with one hand. Success or failure, we’ll laugh and then figure out what to do with the eggs she opens.

Maybe someday she’ll look at an egg and think of me.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · family

Do

April 5, 2016April 21, 2017 Sally14 Comments

The very best advice ever given to me was given by my mother-in-law.

When I had just one little boy, life was fun. Oh, I thought it was hard because he didn’t sleep very well, but, all in all, it was fun. I had plenty of hands and plenty of help.

When I went from one to two, life just got funner.

Going from two to three, though, meant that I ran out of hands, but that was okay. Backpacks and front carriers worked well.

From three to four presented a problem. I had no where else to put a child.

Myrtle Beach - 1993 — Myrtle Beach – 1993

Somewhere in that two-three-four child range, I realized I was really struggling to do this job. My mother-in-law raised thirteen children. Well, actually, fourteen, because a cousin came to live with them when her mother died. I asked my mother-in-law one day how she did it.

“You just do,” she said. That’s all there is to it.

D is for Do.

“Fred” asked me a riddle the other day, “How do you eat an elephant?”

I think he was hoping I would say, “With an elephant fork,” but I knew the answer — one bite at a time.

You just do.

You take one step forward. Then another. Then another.

That advice helped me through child-rearing, and later, in the midst of adult caregiving. Caring for someone with dementia is not unlike caring for small children.

When life is overwhelming, look around for something you can do — some small thing, a baby step you can take forward or even sideways, a tiny bite you can take of the elephant.

Do.

Family Reunion — My mother-in-law (center) surrounded by the fruits of her “do”-ing — 2011

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Faith · family

Community

April 4, 2016March 20, 2017 Sally5 Comments

John 5 begins with the story of Jesus at the Bethesda pool where lay “a multitude of invalids.” The belief was that after an angel troubled the waters, the first one in was healed. Jesus spoke with a man who had been there for thirty-eight years.

“Do you want to be healed?” Jesus asked him.

“Sir, I have no one,” the man replied. No one to put him into the pool when the water is stirred. A multitude of invalids, but each concerned for himself.

To have no one.

In contrast —

C is for Community.

My father and mother enjoyed traveling after my father retired, but as my mother’s dementia grew worse, traveling became more difficult. One night in New York City, my father awoke to hear the heavy hotel door click shut and realized that my mother was no longer in the room. He found her in the hallway. Another time she got away from him at the airport, and still another time she wandered off in Greece.

On that trip to Greece, their last big trip, the other ladies in the tour group saw the need and began watching out for my mother. What began as a group of strangers ended as a caring group.

My mother and father on their trip to Greece

Strangers at the start, friends by the end

“Without a sense of caring, there can be no sense of community.” Anthony J. D’Angelo

Community doesn’t have to be intimate to be functional. Even a small thing, like holding the door open for someone struggling with mobility, can be an act of community. It says, “I am willing to help you, even if it inconveniences me a little.”

Sometimes community is very intimate. I was horrified to see that my mother had had an incidence with incontinence while visiting an old friend of my father. “Oh! I’m so sorry!” I had said when my mother stood to go. “Let me get something to clean that!”

“No, no,” the woman had said. “Your job is to take care of your parents. I can clean this up.”

Community.

Looking out for one another.

Circling the wagons in Greece, in Florida, in Cooperstown.

We can be community to those we encounter. We just need to be willing.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · family

Benevolence

April 2, 2016March 20, 2017 Sally12 Comments

My father and I went to dinner at the Council Rock Brewery last night for their Friday night fish fry. If you should ever be so fortunate as to spend a Friday night in Cooperstown, by all means, go to Council Rock for dinner and a beer.

Chardonnay and beer — Chardonnay (for me) and beer (for my dad)

The what’s-on-tap list was long and my father hadn’t looked at it before the waiter came to take our order.

“I’d like a beer,” my father said.

“Would you like a dark ale or something lighter?” the waiter asked, his pen poised over his pad.

“Yes, that sounds great,” said my dad.

One of my father’s hearing aids isn’t working right now.

The waiter looked at me, unsure what to do next so I pushed the list over to my father and repeated the question.

“He wants to know which of these beers you want,” I shouted so he could hear me above the pub hubbub.

The waiter bent over the table and put his finger at the bottom of the beer list. “These ones are dark,” he said, “and they get lighter as you go up.”

My father furrowed his brow as he studied the list. He finally pointed to the second beer from the top. “I’ll try this one,” he said.

When it was served, my father said, “That’s the right color.” He took a sip and pronounced it good.

I was glad he was happy with what he had ordered.

When my mother was early in her Alzheimer’s, I remember going to restaurants with her. She wasn’t hard of hearing, but she did struggle to order. She studied the menu, chose something, announced her choice to us, but then would have forgotten it by the time the server was taking her order.

Sometimes she ordered what the person before her had ordered.

Sometimes my father or I ordered for her or prompted her with what she had intended to order.

Drinks were a different story. When ordering drinks, she usually declined — which was fine. But when the server brought out drinks for people and brought nothing to her, she grew indignant.

“Where’s mine?” she would demand.

The flustered server would apologize and ask again what she would like.

We would offer our drinks to her.

Anything to make her happy.

Because the maxim, “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy” is still true when Mama has dementia and is at a restaurant.

At the neurologist’s office one day, after a failed clock assessment, a sign of dementia, I asked the doctor, “What can I do? How can I help?”

He said, “Be patient. Be understanding. Be kind.”

We all need to live by those B’s, even without the presence of aging or hearing loss or fogged thinking.

So B is for beer.

And benevolence.

And the above-listed B’s.

Not just in restaurants, but everywhere — at home, in the store, at church, on the road, in political discourse.

Be patient.

Be understanding.

Be kind.

Be benevolent.

A to Z Blogging Challenge

Ache

April 1, 2016March 20, 2017 Sally8 Comments

My mother and father -- when they really were going to a dance. — My mother and father — when they really were going to a dance.

The day my mother got ready for the dance was a hard day in her dementia. She tried to dress in nicer clothes, but her fashion sense had gone awry and nothing really matched. Her lipstick looked garish. She perched on the arm of the wicker sofa, like a teenager would have, and kept glancing toward the driveway.

Occasionally, she would go out the sliding door and walk to the end of the driveway to peer down the road. Then she would come back to the house and wait.

It was a hot summer evening and I hoped she would grow tired of it or forget it or snap back to semi-normal.

“What are you doing, Mom?” I asked several times.

“I’m waiting to go to the dance,” she said, petulantly, with her chin at a teenager’s tilt. “They should be picking me up any time.”

“Who?” I asked.

“The others that are going.” These others never had names. These others never materialized.

Finally I offered to give her a ride. She gratefully accepted, not seeing the absurdity of her adult daughter giving her a ride to a high school dance. We drove into town and around the empty parking lot of the high school.

“See? There’s no one here, Mom,” I told her.

She just looked at the building with a blank expression.

So I drove around some more and finally ended up at my go-to for such situations — the local garden nursery. We got out of the car and walked around the greenhouse, admiring plants and forgetting dances.

My heart ached after that adventure.

A is for aging.

And Alzheimer’s.

And ache.

Not the ache that comes from working out. As an on-again/off-again fitness person, I know too well the ache of walking down the stairs the morning after doing squats and lunges for the first time in two years.

Not the ache the comes from putting off an appointment to the dentist.

Not the ache that comes from lack of sleep or forgetting your glasses or drinking too much wine the night before.

All these aches are temporary.

The ache of a caregiver is a heartache that has nothing to do with EKGs or echocardiograms.

It’s a soul ache because a loved one is vanishing, like a wisp of smoke that cannot be caught.

And when that loved one is finally gone, the ache remains, but it’s not getting stirred up anymore and aggravated by phantom dances.

It settles — like dust.

And we remember that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

Faith · prayer

Resurrection Branches

March 20, 2016February 20, 2017 Sally4 Comments

I was delighted to learn that the pussywillow is waved on Palm Sunday in many Eastern and Slavic churches.

“The Pussy Willow is also our Easter symbol,” said Father Czeslaw Krysa, rector of St. Casimir’s Church in Buffalo, in a 2013 article. He said that it is “one of the most prominent Easter symbols, because of the fact out of this dry, kind of twig all of a sudden bursts forth this beautiful flower of life, and it is the first bush that blooms.”

They call them “resurrection branches.”

Reading about them reminded me of a poem/prayer that I wrote back in January.

Oh Lord
I need a pick-me-up
For I am feeling down
Outside the snow is glittering, cold,
Inside my heart is brown
And dry and brittle, mostly dead,
Like last month’s Christmas tree
Weeping prickly needles
Which need be swept by me

I know You can’t restore the tree
To vibrant verdant green
— Well, yes, You could
And yes, You did
When Aaron’s rod was seen
Budding,
Blossoming,
Bearing fruit
— Can You do that with me?
Of course, You can —
but would You, Lord?
Miraculously use me?

For, Lord, You know I have this fear
I’m one of the eleven
Sticks that stayed quite dead and brown
Not bearing fruit for heaven

I fear I too am dead inside —
Like Lazarus, I stink —
Roll back the stone –
Call out my name –
Pull me from this brink

Of hopelessness
Of deadfulness —
I need to be made new
Please water me
Sunshine me
And let me grow in You.

Today the rocks and stones and pussywillows are crying out “Hosanna!”

swimming

Swimming Posters

February 18, 2016January 25, 2018 Sally4 Comments

I loved the idea of reenacting a piece of art for this week’s photo challenge: Life Imitates Art

But what to do?

I asked Laurel if she would sit on my lap and put her hand on my cheek, like a Mary Cassatt painting, but she said no. It probably would have looked kind of strange anyway. She may be my baby, but she’s taller than me now.

So — swimming. I decided to ask my swimmers to recreate some swimming posters.

This one — Michael Phelps doing streamline — I just wanted them to see. Streamline is such a foundational skill. We work on it from Day 1 of swim season — and still, about half look nothing like this, hand over hand, squeezing the head.

I stood on the balcony and took pictures of each swimmer leaving the wall in streamline. For you photo-geeks, all I have is a little Sony Cyber-shot that I bought on sale at Target for $59. I guess you get in clarity what you pay for.

Still, it was a great learning experience for the kids. I showed each one the picture I had taken of them and we talked about how they could make their streamlines even better.

For fun, at the end of practice, we tried to recreate another swim poster.

I pulled our little Kodak PlaySport out of retirement (it can take underwater photographs), charged it up, and prayed that it would work. Laurel was the photographer as each one of my swimmers did a cannonball off the diving board. This was the best shot.

Or this one.

So — thank you Daily Post for the photo challenge. I may not be much of a photographer, but this was fun.

family

Lovable

February 3, 2016February 25, 2022 Sally3 Comments

Several years ago I was walking Maggie in our little town and ran into a woman who was walking Maggie’s twin, a mostly black dog with some white markings.

“What kind of dog is yours?” the lady asked.

“They told us that she was a shepherd-boxer-akita mix at the shelter where we got her. Basically, she’s a mutt,” I said.

The woman smiled and said, “Mine, too!”

We stood and talked for a few minutes about how similar our unrelated dogs were. Unrelated, yet entirely related.

“Don’t you think,” she said, “that if we took all the dog genes in the world, put them in a big bag, shook them up and then pulled out a dog, it would look like this?”

I laughed and agreed.

Since that conversation I have noticed so many dogs that look like Maggie.

I suppose that would say that she’s a common dog.

But she isn’t.

Our neighbor who walks Maggie for us while we’re away — and sometimes, even when we’re aren’t — often comments on what a smart dog Maggie is. “I usually only have to tell her once and she minds right away,” she tells us.

Maggie is smart. And fun. And energetic.

She can sit, stay, shake, lie down, die, and come. She carries a fish on her walks, chases snowballs and squirrels, and howls at the noon whistle. When we come back from being away, she races around the house in a doggy-happy dance. What more does a dog need to do?

This past summer we got a kitten. She’s supposed to be a working cat, taking care of the mouse problem at my father’s house, but she’s still in training, slaying ladybugs and cluster flies in abundance.

She’s all black with a few white hairs like a little bow-tie.

Once we went on a field trip to a cat rescue organization and their shelter was full, mostly with black cats.

“They’re the hardest to adopt out,” the lady told us, “and seem to be the most common color.”

Our Piper was a freebie from a farm. When I took her to the vet, they asked for her breed.

“She’s just a cat,” I said.

I’m guessing that if you took all the cat genes in the world, put them in a bag, shook them up and pulled out a cat, it would be black.

But Piper likes to sit on my shoulder and lick my ears. She pounces on my feet from under the bed while I’m getting ready for bed. She snuggles on my lap in the morning, and rolls onto her back when my brother stops by so he can rub her belly. She is a special cat.

All this is to say that I think the least aspect of any creature is pedigree. Or color. Or any other externals.

What’s inside is unique and wonderful, waiting to be discovered and nurtured into maturity.

Lovable.

family

Presence

January 11, 2016September 4, 2017 Sally1 Comment

I did it again, grasped hand after hand, received hug after hug in a receiving line.

Few things are more draining for the introvert than the receiving line. We do it — I do it — for people I love.

Like my brother, Stewart.

Like my mother.

The receiving line for my mother’s memorial service stretched out and curved into another section of the building so I could never see how long it was or if the end was near. I stood near my father who insisted on standing even though a chair was placed right behind him.

The neurons in my brain don’t fire well in the facial recognition area. I struggle to remember people. Thankfully, many people began with their name — “I’m so-and-so. I knew your mother from such-and-such.”

Even people I knew fairly well helped me out by saying their name — and it was such a help. My mind was overbooked and understaffed; everything was hard.

How long had I been there? An hour? More? Over and over I repeated, “Thank you so much for coming.” “Thank you.” “Thank you.”

A woman took my hand in that two-handed clasp of sincerity.

“Jane Forbes Clark,” she said, and I looked up, immediately recognizing her.

One cannot grow up in Cooperstown without knowing the name and face of the woman who is now at the helm of so many organizations in our area. She sits on the stage at the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony with the Hall-of-Famers and welcomes everyone to our town. Her picture is often in the newspaper, accompanying stories about grants given by the Clark Foundation or expansion happening at Bassett Hospital or the Clark Sports Center or the Baseball Hall of Fame. And that is just a tiny, tiny tip of a very huge iceberg.

My eyes met hers, and I felt tears stinging mine. “I know who you are,” I said. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“I wouldn’t have missed this,” she said, and she moved on to speak with my father.

She had met my mother, I think, through my father’s work on the Board of Trustees for Bassett.

But she came to my mother’s memorial service.

It’s kind of crazy how much that meant to me.

My mother was a nurse who gave up her career to raise a family. She volunteered in many community organizations, and when my youngest brother was independent enough, she worked a few days a week for the Red Cross.

At the end of the day, though, my mom was a mom.

Like me.

It’s not a glorious job.

People don’t ooh and aah over your accomplishments. It certainly doesn’t pay well — in money, that is.

(Side note: When we were in North Carolina, mining for gems at Doc’s Rocks Gem Mine — my husband, all eight of my children, three spouses, and one grandchild — a woman who worked there told my father that I was rich. When he told me that, I laughed, and said, “Yeah, and maybe some day I’ll have money, too.” I am very wealthy, though.)

But Jane Clark saw fit to honor my mother by coming to her memorial service and waiting forever in line to offer condolences to my father. She was warm and gracious.

Last night, Jane Clark spoke at the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Grandstand Theater about her family’s legacy in Cooperstown.

I was part of the crowd that got in to hear her. My husband and I volunteered to sit on the floor so that others could have seats as they tried to squeeze as many people in as they could. Still, over 100 people were turned away.

She spoke for about 20 minutes, methodically explaining the history of the three main Clark organizations involved in Cooperstown: the Clark Foundation, the Scriven Foundation, and Leatherstocking Corporation. She rattled off some astounding facts and figures, most of which I don’t remember because once someone is talking about millions or billions my brain shuts off — that kind of money is incomprehensible to me.

Over 11,000 students, though. I remember that number because that’s how many students have been given college scholarships (totaling millions) by the Clark Foundation — and I was one of them.

In the Q & A that followed, a less-analytical, less-statistical Jane Clark emerged. She laughed and told stories. Here was the woman I had seen at my mother’s memorial service – warm and friendly.

Many people didn’t ask questions; they simply said thank you.

“Thank you for the scholarship. My family was poor. Without it I could not have gone to college.”

“Thank you for the emerald necklace of open space around Cooperstown.” ’tis true — we have the Clark family to thank for the adjectives of bucolic and pastoral used to describe Cooperstown.

“Thank you for the Clark Sports Center.” This woman went on to tell of how her son (or was it grandson?) wondered what children in other towns did without a Clark Sports Center.

She told stories of how the Baseball Hall of Fame came to be in Cooperstown and why Kingfisher Tower was built. Fascinating lore — even better hearing it from her lips.

When it was over, I approached her to give her my own thanks. Not for the scholarship, not for the green belt which borders my father’s land, not even for the Clark Sports Center where I work — I thanked her for coming to my mother’s memorial service.

“You’re very welcome,” she said. “Please give my best to your father.”

Some things are worth so much more than money.