This is a draft written February 6, 2015, pulled from the draft folder because of the RDP prompt word: tame
From across the room, I heard the man bellow, “NO!”
I had no clue what this was in reference to — he was across the room, after all, and I was attending to my mother in the midst of her ritual folding and unfolding of her mealtime protector (aka – bib) while waiting for the food to arrive.
A woman at his table shouted out, “SNOW!” It was snowing out.
She laughed at her rhyme, a dry cackle-y laugh, not because she was a witch, although it did make me think of one, but because she was very old and shriveled, and even her laugh bore witness to that.
“He said, ‘NO,’ and I said, ‘SNOW,'” she said gleefully, and it reminded me of the little “jokes” that first- or second-graders make, when the littlest thing sends them into gales of laughter.
However, the jokesters were across the room, while my mother sat at the feeder’s table, a table set aside for residents who need assistance with eating. She dines with five other ladies with dementia.
To my mother’s left is a dear lady that reminds me of a sparrow. Her voice is quiet and sing-songy. Sometimes she makes sense and sometimes she doesn’t, but I always have to listen very closely when she speaks. (Professor Trelawny)
Next to Sparrow is a woman with a chiseled angular face. (Professor McGonigle) She never speaks. She sits erect and stern, like a statue of a school matron staring across her desk at a wayward student. However, I had met her many years before, when she was an OB nurse. She had come into my room after I had given birth to somebody because she wanted to tell me about my father.
“I remember your father’s first day at the hospital,” she said. “He came in toting a little black doctor’s bag. A little black bag!” She laughed when she told me the story, and her eyes twinkled with the delight of that memory. My father still has that black bag with its stethoscope, reflex hammer, otoscope, and other doctorly treasures.
To her left sits a white-haired lady whose dementia has a Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde effect on her. (Quirinius Quirrell) One minute she is sweet and the next she is spewing venom.
Next to Mrs. Hyde sits the newest diner at the feeder’s table. I’ll come back to her.
To Newby’s left is Mrs. Tiggywinkle, so designated because of her hedgehog hairdo. Teens pay a lot of money and use a lot of product to get hair like hers, sticking straight up all over her head. My father has to repeatedly request that my mother’s hair get combed. Some of us are just stuck with wayward hair that no amount of combing can tame, and I suspect that’s the case with Mrs. Tiggywinkle.
The draft ended and I never finished it. I don’t remember who the person I called Newby is, so I can’t come back to her now. I don’t even remember the point of this story.
My mother died 9 months later.
Reading drafts and posts from that time in my life are interesting to me. I’m glad that I chronicled the journey.
Advice to anyone going through a stressful time: Write down what you see and hear and feel. It’s a gift to your future self.
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 