Kind

April 13, 2016March 20, 2017 Sally5 Comments

The ABC’s of how I’m feeling:

A is for ANGRY

B is for BITTER

C is for CRANKY

Clearly I’m doing this A-to-Z Challenge all wrong.

I feel angry.

And not kind.

I hung up on Time-Warner yesterday. Told them we were switching to Direct TV.

I’m not happy with them.

I posted a rant yesterday and almost immediately the person I ranted about contacted me. I was in the midst of a conversation with a different friend.

“I should have said something to her before I posted it,” I told my friend about my other friend — are you following this? Too many unnamed friends, I know.

But I knew the right way to handle the situation — and I didn’t do it. I posted a stupid blog post. (It has since been edited.)

This is how not to do things, kids. Talk to people who upset you. Don’t rant on your blog. Do as I say, not as I do.

I believe in handling things the right way and in kindness. Sometimes belief isn’t enough. We have to actually do it.

I’m working to memorize Isaiah 58, a chapter where God is dealing with a people who are oblivious to their sin.

“Look at me fasting,” they say to God. “Look at my sackcloth and ashes. Look how humble I am. Why aren’t you noticing any of this?”

And God says to them, “I really want you to be nice to each other. Don’t be grumpy. Don’t strike out at people. I want you to fast from your meanness. Put that aside instead of food. Undo someone’s yoke. Feed a hungry person. Invite a homeless person into your home. Sheesh!”

He didn’t really say the “sheesh” part. I added that.

But you get the point.

Can I just say here, in the depths of this post where few people will probably read, that life is hard right now? My father is struggling — and he doesn’t even know he’s struggling.

“You’re not thinking clearly,” my brother and I told him, ganging up on him to persuade him to have a medical test which may put us on a path to improvement.

“That’s what they keep telling me,” he said, in a tone that showed that he clearly didn’t believe a word of it.

It reminded me of a post that I had long since taken down. The post, from April 2011, had been called “Four Questions.”

It ends with kindness — which works for “K”.

****

Four Questions

Question #1

I asked my mother this question one day when we were in the car, “Mom, do you know what Alzheimer’s is?”

She knew the answer. “It’s a condition where people can’t think sensibly,” she responded.

Yes, it is. It’s not a condition where someone doesn’t think sensibly. They can’t. And yet, sometimes, they can. Like being able to answer that question with a pretty concise response shows some sensible thinking.

Question #2

Yesterday my mother handed me a sheet of address labels that had come in the mail to her.

“These are for you,” she said.

“I can’t use these, Mom,” I told her. “They have your name and address on them.” I tried handing them back to her, but she pushed them over to me again.

“That way you won’t forget me,” she replied.

I felt a little ache in my heart at those words. “Mom, I won’t forget you,” I reassured. “Will you forget me?” I asked it, even though I already knew the answer.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I’ll never forget you.”

But moments later, she forgot that she had even given me the address labels and took them back to her pile of things. She removed one and stuck at the bottom of a note she had written herself about dinner with a friend. It was a dinner with a friend that had taken place months or years ago. She had forgotten. But she stuck the address label on the bottom of the note.

“This will help me remember,” she said. Oh, if only it were that easy.

Question #3

Alzheimer’s is a condition where people can’t think sensibly. The varying pieces of information that are constantly coming at us are no longer being filtered correctly in the mind of someone with Alzheimer’s. It’s impossible to make sense of it all.

When my parents were going through some of the clutter that had accumulated at their house, my father picked up a kitschy dog made out of golf balls. “We could probably get rid of this,” he said.

“Are you going to get rid of me?” she asked. With the filters missing, that was what she heard.

“You’re too valuable,” he told her. “We’re not going to get rid of you.” She still has value. She needed to hear that.

Question #4

In difficult situations, so many people show little kindnesses. With my mother’s Alzheimer’s, people have been so kind. Total strangers, long-time friends and family members have all pitched in to keep my mother safe and to make life easier for my father. I know my father appreciates it, but I often wonder if my mother is even aware.

Yesterday, she answered the unasked question I have had for a long time. Are you aware of all the things people do for you?

She was looking for my brother. “He’s up at his house, Mom, right next door,” I told her.

“That’s right,” she said. “He has been so nice. Every night he brings dinner right down to us so I don’t have to fix anything.”

Yes, he does. And his wife does. And I’m so glad you recognize that. Even if you don’t always recognize me. I know it’s because you can’t think sensibly.

A to Z Blogging Challenge

Juggling

April 12, 2016March 20, 2017 Sally9 Comments

“Can you still juggle?” I asked Helen the other day.

She picked up three somethings — I don’t remember what they were — pom-poms or apples or Easter eggs — and juggled them quite handily.

I’ve seen her do it before. We have a video of it. As she focuses on juggling golf balls, she keeps her eyes on them and her mouth is wide open.

Like a ukulele player who presses his lips together or sticks his tongue out to the side while playing.

We aren’t all professional.

When jugglers juggle they have to focus, and something else may fall by the wayside in order to keep the balls in the air.

I guess I’m back at imperfection.

This is supposed to be about my mother.

And juggling.

***

My mother was most at home in the kitchen. She cooked for our family, for her church family, for special occasions, and for the every day. Huge spreads. Humble soups. Everything always delicious. (Except the beef heart. And the lamb burgers.)

Her juggling took place in the kitchen. She had an amazing talent for getting all the food on the table piping hot for us to enjoy. Her timing was perfect.

I, on the other hand, serve lukewarm green beans with hot meatloaf and cold potatoes. I forget to heat the plates the way that my mother did. I can’t get people to the table on time. I have not yet figured out the art of juggling many food dishes in the kitchen.

When my mother began struggling in the kitchen, we should have seen it for it was, a sign of dementia. She couldn’t keep all the balls in the air anymore. She called me for help more and more.

And I was resentful.

Critical.

Unsympathetic and unaware that she was moving into a strange vortex that left her confused in the kitchen.

“You make such good scalloped potatoes,” she called one day to tell me. “Could you make some for Dad and me? We have company coming tonight.”

I bristled inside. I was home with seven or eight children, tired, frustrated — and honestly, the last thing I wanted to do was make scalloped potatoes for my mother so she could go golfing and still have a nice dinner to serve her guests.

But I did it.

In retrospect, I think she was worried about her cooking — and how sad that is for me to realize today!

But she had dropped one of the balls she was juggling and asked me to help pick it up.

If only I had known. If only I had understood better in those early days.

People — be patient and kind. Don’t mock the open mouth of someone keeping the balls in the air.

We’re all juggling something.

And we all drop balls.

We all need help, not criticism.

A to Z Blogging Challenge

Imperfection

April 11, 2016March 20, 2017 Sally11 Comments

I hit “Publish” and rushed out the door.

We had such a busy Saturday, but I was feeling the tyranny of the urgent regarding the A to Z Challenge.

“Just a minute! Just a minute,” I called to my family as they were heading out the door at 7:30 AM.

I wanted to edit some more. I wanted to delete and reword and create something that wouldn’t make me cringe when I pictured other people reading it.

But I hit “Publish” and ran.

And worried.

And cringed.

…

We had a great day — family breakfast at a diner with 10 Zaengles present.

Slow Art Day at the Stone Quarry Hill Art Park (followed by Slow Food prepared by local college students).

The Stacks (Slow Art Day) — “Stacks” (Slow Art Day)

Artist David Harper talking about "Stacks" (Slow Art Day) — Artist David Harper talking about “Stacks” (Slow Art Day)

"The Trees Shall Be My Books" -- working title for the piece — “The Trees Shall Be My Books” — working title for “Stacks” (Slow Art Day)

That particular installation, “Stacks,” has always been my favorite piece at the Art Park, and now even more so.

We spent the afternoon into the evening babysitting our grandson — who is the cutest baby ever.

By the time we left their house, it was 12 hours from the time we had left our house in the morning. Since I didn’t have my computer with me, I couldn’t obsess over the post. By the time we got home, I was exhausted and went to bed.

Yesterday — Sunday — I was determined not to spend the day worrying over my blog. And I didn’t. Mostly.

This morning, I went to the orthodontist with Laurel, and did no blogging.

By afternoon the letter “I” was looming, lurking, taunting.

I’ve seen the meme — There is no “I” in team — or something like that, and I kept thinking there is no “I” in art either.

Jennifer Trafton Peterson has talked about art as a gift that we offer. Each time I have heard her say those words, she uses the same hand gesture — cupped hands that move from her heart outward, like an offering of something precious.

But I used to bake cookies for extra income, and more than once, in the chaos of my kitchen, forgot to add the baking soda. Molasses crinkles don’t crinkle without the baking soda. They come out of the oven as hard little balls that are nearly inedible. Those cookies were so imperfect that they ended up in the compost heap. That’s all they were fit for.

The other day I brought my father to a concert at the nursing home where my mother had lived. The flutes were out of tune with each other, and the band struggled with tempo, but they played the old familiar songs and the people sang along with “God Bless America” and “O Susanna” not caring one lick about the tuning.

Their music was their offering, from the hearts of the musicians to the gathered — and appreciative — audience.

I recognize through them that art doesn’t have to be perfect to be appreciated.

But sometimes art is like cookies without the baking soda. It really belongs on the compost heap.

My heart poem has gone the way of inedible cookies.

Sorry.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · poetry

Heart

April 9, 2016March 20, 2017 Sally8 Comments

In a hurry this morning — but don’t want to fall behind in my A to Z postings.

A ditty has been running through my head since accompanying my father for his echocardiogram.

The screen looked similar to ones I knew from pregnancy ultrasounds, but no baby..

I had written a more thoughtful piece about a visit to the cardiologist several months ago.

Then I turned the ditty in my head into a bad poem that I posted for a couple of days. Subscribers would have seen it. (And, really, I’m so sorry!)

It was so cheesy that I took it down.

I’d much rather you read “The Cardiologist.”

A to Z Blogging Challenge · family

Generations

April 8, 2016March 20, 2017 Sally8 Comments

G is for generations.

I wanted so badly to have Philip meet my grandfather, my father’s father. He was a great guy.

Bud and I had made a trip home that fall when I was pregnant, but that was the last time I would see my grandfather. On the next trip, when Philip was 6 weeks old, we attended my grandfather’s memorial service.

Nana, my father’s mother, was still alive, but she was quite ensnared in the web of Alzheimer’s. Still, there’s something about holding a baby that reaches beyond those cobwebs, and touches something deep inside.

Babies are magical beings with superpowers. A sleeping baby brings calm to a turmoiled spirit. A smile from a baby can soften the hardest heart, and a giggle can melt a glacier.

I’ll never forget when Philip brought his little boy, Henry, to meet my mother. My mother rarely smiled toward the end. Not real smiles that reached her eyes, anyway. She still occasionally laughed, but that usually bled into tears, and it was for strange things, like a recitation of Paul Revere’s Ride.

But Henry — Philip gently placed Henry in my mother’s arms and still held his hands there to support Henry lest she forget. He was so tiny at the time.

My mother gazed down at this tiny creature who snuggled against her bosom. Instinctively she patted his back, and then looked up at us with one of the best smiles in a long, long time.

My father has that picture out. He looks at it periodically.

“Look how happy Mom is there,” he’ll say.

Yes, she is.

Henry will never remember that day anymore than Philip would have remembered meeting my grandfather if things had worked out.

But I’ll remember my mother’s smile that day.

A smile is a good thing to remember.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · family

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.