family

Old Habits Die Hard

March 15, 2017 Sally5 Comments

“Aw, phooey,” he said, as he handed me the shovel and turned to go back inside.

“Aw, hell,” he said, as he hung up his coat and turned toward his walker.

We are in the midst of a major snowstorm. The Weather Channel said something about 48″ around Cooperstown. I believe it.

Even the dog doesn’t like it — and our dog loves snow. Maggie can’t play in this. All she can do is flounder.

Last night and this morning Laurel and I shoveled for a while and barely got past one car. Then my brother, Peter, came down to borrow the car because he needed to go into town. His driveway is much longer than ours, and the plow guy hadn’t come yet.

So Peter walked over and together we shoveled.

And shoveled.

We finally had a path wide enough to back the car out. I ran into the house to get Peter some money so he could pick up a prescription for my father. Just inside the door stood my father, coat on, gloves on, ready to head outside.

“Where are you going, Dad?” I asked.

“Well, I’m going outside to help,” he said.

“I think we’re all set,” I told him.

“Do you know how much work it took to get all this stuff on?” he asked, and headed for the door.

I sighed, and ran to find my wallet. It wasn’t worth arguing about, and he might like to see all the snow.

When I came back out, Peter was talking to my father on the ramp leading to the house. Laurel and I had barely shoveled a path wide enough for the walker to fit. I gave Peter the money and he left.

“Okay, Dad,” I said, “let’s go back in.”

“I want to go get that shovel,” he said, pointing to the shovel I had shoved into the snowbank.

“I can get it,” I told him, but he pretended not to hear me and headed down the ramp.

When he reached the shovel, I was right behind him. “Let me take that back to the house for you,” I said, reaching for the shovel.

“I’d like to shovel,” he said.

I groaned. He started shoveling. Inside I was feeling frustrated.

“Dad,” I said, trying to sound calm and reasonable, “you may have reached the time in your life when you need to let others do things for you — like shoveling.”

He stopped and looked at me. “I’m not helpless,” he said.

I walked back to the house and stood there. Why can’t he just stop? I muttered in my heart.

I touched Tuga was in my pocket. Go help him, Tuga seemed to whisper.

I grabbed another shovel and went back down to where my father was shuffling snow. He leaned on his shovel when I got there. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, and handed his shovel to me.

“Aw, phooey,” he said, and I felt a little sad.

“Aw, hell,” he said when we got inside, and my heart broke a little more.

His instinct was to help, and I had just told him that he couldn’t.

The Record Board

March 13, 2017 Sally2 Comments

Whenever I go to a pool, my eyes are drawn to the record board.

It’s kind of funny, because I haven’t always been a fan of the record board. Helen still holds over 20 age-group records at the pool in Cooperstown — the earliest from when she was 8 years old, and the latest from when she was 13. Then we moved, and she started racking up high school records in Greene.

A couple of years ago, I caught one of the swimmers in my group staring at the record board in Cooperstown.

“Do you know Helen Zaengle?” she asked.

“I do,” I told her. “She’s my daughter, and she’s Laurel’s sister.”

“Wow,” Margaret said. “She has a lot of records. I’m going to break some of them.”

That was the moment my feelings about the record board changed.

Helen was very good at swimming from a young age. She loved winning races — although there was one time when she asked me why she couldn’t get a rainbow ribbon (the ribbon handed out for participation); all her ribbons were blue.

The record board wasn’t posted at the time, and, quite frankly, I think Helen and I were both unaware of all the records. When the record board went up, part of me felt a little embarrassed because I never sensed that Helen was swimming for the glory of the record board or all the accolades. She swam with the truest sense of the amateur — a love of the sport.

But I worked in the pool these last few years with all those records at my back, and I tried not to look at them. Don’t misunderstand — I am very proud of Helen, but not because she rules the record board. I just think she’s wonderful.

Margaret helped me to see that the records are goals for other swimmers, not to induce pride, but to produce hard work.

Michael Phelps said, “Goals should never be easy,” and Margaret took that to heart. She’s 10 years old now and continues to push herself harder than her peers. She still hasn’t made it to the record board, but I have no doubt that she will.

Last year, Laurel made it to the record board, by breaking a record that had been up there since before Helen was even born. 11-12 100 Breaststroke.

This year Laurel was studying the records to see if there were any she was close to.

“How about that one,” I said, pointing to 13-14 200 Breaststroke. “I think that one is do-able, maybe not this year, but next.”

The name next to the record: Helen Zaengle.

Helen called me right up. “I heard you told Laurel to break my record,” she said.

“Heck, yes, I did,” I replied.

“I think that would be great,” she said.

She holds her records with open hands, bidding other swimmers to take them, and I think that makes me even prouder than all the records combined.

elderly · Faith · family

What Will You Bleed?

March 11, 2017 Sally1 Comment

The patterns for our personalities are set early on.

My friend, Susan, used to talk about someone she knew who, in the delirium of a high fever, mumbled out Bible verse after Bible verse. When she had been poked, she bled the Bible.

“I want to be the kind of person who does that,” Susan said to me thirty-some years ago.

Years later, when Susan was poked, she bled praise. She suffered a stroke in her 40s and I have never heard her utter a bitter word about it. After seeing Susan last June, I asked another friend, Jennifer Trafton Peterson, to make this custom artwork for her. The words are ones I have heard Susan say many times.

The other day I was wearing a new-to-me shirt and my father noticed.

“That’s a nice shirt,” he said.

“I got it at the thrift store,” I told him.

He grinned, fist-bumped the air, and said, “Hurrah!”

My father has always liked a bargain. It’s the Scotsman in him, I think. My mother had to live with it and work against it.

She was also very frugal, but, at the same time, she wished she could do some of the things that the other doctors’ wives got to do. After he retired, he yielded to her and they went on a trip to Hawaii.

It was life-changing. He still talks about it.

“I’m so glad that I listened to Mom and we made that trip to Hawaii,” he often says.

“Everyone should go to Hawaii. When are you going?” he asks me, when he’s thinking about that trip.

But my father bleeds frugality. As dementia takes hold little by little, I see a deeper austerity emerging. He sometimes wears corduroy pants that are nearly threadbare. “There’s still some wear in these,” he says when I suggest he change.

“How much is that going to cost?” he asks, when I suggest a necessary home repair or appliance replacement, in a can-we-possibly-do-without-that sort of way.

The pattern, I think, was set early on.

My sister’s mother-in-law was a fairly passive woman. In her elderly dementia, she became more and more withdrawn into a unresisting submissiveness. When she was poked, that was what she bled — utter compliance.

My mother — I had to think about her for a while to come up with what she bled — I think she bled marmalade, both sweet and sour, involving food, and serving others. She wanted to help, but she got frustrated with the muddle in her mind.

And I can’t help thinking, What are the patterns being laid in my life? When I am poked, what will I bleed?

family

Behind the Camera

February 27, 2017 Sally3 Comments

“Here’s an old picture of us,” I said, passing Bud a family photo that I found in a pile of stuff. “We’ve got everyone but Philip there.”

“Where am I?” he asked.

“Behind the camera,” I replied.

It’s true. Bud took a lot of the family pictures when we were on vacation. If we didn’t snag a passer-by, he was out of the big group shot. He would appear in the just-a-Zaengle family picture that my brother or brother-in-law would take, but the everyone shot often didn’t include everyone.

Who is in the picture (and who isn’t) — just two of the clues about what year it was taken.

I’m in the center, behind Helen who is holding Laurel. Helen couldn’t possibly do that today because Laurel is now taller than Helen. Laurel’s age, though, tells me that it’s probably 2004.

Mary is wearing her Matt Kenseth Dewalt Tools hat. That tells me that we were in our NASCAR phase — everyone had a driver that they followed. Mary liked Matt Kenseth because she was fascinated with power tools; we had recently completed an addition on our house and she had seen an awful lot of yellow tools lying around.

Philip isn’t there. He must have been at college.

Karl’s cheeks are quite pink. He’s either sunburnt (unlikely, since no one else is), or had just been running around (likely, he’s a little boy). We, as a family, have this pink-cheek thing going on whenever we exercise.

My hair is short and I’m not wearing a jumper. That tells me a lot about me at the time.

But the man behind the camera, had his hair starting turning gray yet? I wish he was there beside me to complete the picture. Time to shuffle through more piles of photos to find out.

family · Life

La La Land

February 26, 2017 Sally4 Comments

Warning: this post may contain spoilers

On the way home from La La Land Mary asked me which song was my favorite. I didn’t have to think about it — “The Audition Song.”

“You’re a storyteller. Tell us a story,” the people behind the desk told Mia. She stood for a moment, collected her thoughts, and then told a story about her aunt jumping into the Seine River.

In her audition she sang,

Here’s to the ones who dream
Foolish as they may seem
Here’s to the hearts that break
Here’s to the mess we make

I should have been forewarned by the lyrics that broken hearts were ahead.

I left La La Land feeling dissatisfied with the story.

Later, largely due to discussion about the movie over at the Rabbit Room, I realized that my problem was that I had been Hallmark-ized. The only ending I could consider happy was the one where the right guy and the right girl end up together.

Had that been its ending, La La Land would have fallen into the same category as so many of the movies I choose to watch. A feel-good moment soon forgotten. Hallmark movies that are simply background noise because I don’t need to pay attention to know what is going to happen. La La Land would have been, in so many ways, the same-old-same-old — good music, nice story, satisfying ending.

Like my father’s nightly bowl of vanilla ice cream.

A sweet way to end the day.

But La La Land left me unsettled.

The truth is the stories I love most leave me unsettled.

Fiddler on the Roof, Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Big Sky, A River Runs Through It, A Tale of Two Cities.

None have syrupy happy endings.

They all leave me with something to ponder. They take a long time to absorb.

I fear that I have gotten used to a jiggly jello diet — stuff that slides down easily and digests easily. I don’t know how to handle more substantial foodstuff.

On the way home from La La Land, Mary and I also talked about upcoming movies and what we’d like to see next. The ripples from the pebbles of La La Land may need to subside before I’m ready for another.

family · photography

Before and After

February 24, 2017April 21, 2017 Sally4 Comments

Babies look like babies when they’re little.

It’s nice to see how they turn out.

Baby Philip

Adult Philip (with Amanda and Henry)

Baby Owen

Adult Owen (with Emily)

Baby Sam

Sam and Mom -- 1990 — Sam and Mom — 1990

Adult Sam (with Donna)

Baby Helen

Adult Helen

Baby Karl

Almost-adult Karl

Baby Mary

Teenage Mary

Baby Laurel

Laurel learning to sit alone — baby Laurel

Teenage Laurel

dementia · family

Remembering Birthdays

February 23, 2017 Sally9 Comments

Three years ago for my birthday I was in the wilds of the Texas hill country, without cell coverage and with minimal wifi. Laity Lodge is great that way because it allows guests to make real connections.

But it was my birthday and I don’t think anyone there knew.

Not that it mattered, of course.

I called my husband on a land-line and talked with him and the kids. It was enough.

He told me that my brother Stewart had called and wanted me to call him back.

When I got home, I put off that call.

My brother died from a heart attack 11 days after my birthday.

When did I last hear his voice? I don’t know.

In my mind I can still hear him, though. I remember what my name sounded like when he said it. I remember his laugh.

My mother forgot my name altogether. I used to remind her.

“I’m Sally,” I would say, and she would repeat back, “That’s right. You’re Sally.”

I used to use photographs to help her remember the names of family members, naming each person as we touched them in the picture. She eventually couldn’t do that either.

I don’t remember the last time she said my name.

And I have more trouble remembering her voice — maybe because it turned dry and creaky. She didn’t sound the way I wanted to remember her.

This year for my birthday, I heard from all my children — most with a phone call or FaceTime. Mary, Laurel, Bud and I went to see La La Land and then went out to dinner. It was very nice.

My morning started with a birthday card in my coffee maker (from Laurel) and birthday stickers on the newspaper (from my brother).

I was curious to see what my father would say about the birthday stickers. I knew he wouldn’t remember my birthday without some sort of reminder.

“Oh! I see we have stickers on the newspaper this morning,” he said as he sat down at the kitchen table.

He peered at them closely. “It says, ‘Happy Birthday,'” he read. “I don’t think it’s my birthday though.”

“No, Dad,” I answered, giving him his pills and his juice. “It’s my birthday.”

“Oh,” he said. “I guess that makes sense.”

And that was it.

No birthday wishes.

It wasn’t a slur against me. It doesn’t really matter.

But it did.

It does.

Because it means I’ve lost another little piece of him.

We lost my mother in dribs and drabs, an expression she used to use.

Now we’re losing my father the same way.

It’s almost certain that next year he won’t remember my birthday either. Dementia tends to only go in one direction.

I just hope he still remembers my name.

family

A Good Match

February 22, 2017 Sally18 Comments

Mom and Dad, through the years —

While dating

Newlyweds

Going to meet the Queen

Promotion
Aviary Photo_130755155501395352

1982

Last trip together

At home

At the nursing home

Going for a walk

Dinner time

The Last Good-bye

family

The Bathroom

February 21, 2017 Sally13 Comments

She was waiting for me when I came out of the bathroom this morning.

No, no — not one of my children, although, as you can imagine that has happened to me more times than I care to remember.

Every mother quickly learns that the bathroom is a refuge.

Every child learns just as quickly that if he (or she) waits long enough outside the door, Mom will eventually emerge.

And she can hear you if you talk to her through the door.

If a sibling is being mean and Mom is in the bathroom, a note under the door will sometimes expedite her emergence.

But she may not be terrible happy about it.

Bathroom = Sanctuary

I imagine, if Quasimodo hadn’t had Notre Dame to carry Esmeralda into as he rescued her from the gibbet, if he hadn’t had that great cathedral to escape to, he would have found a bathroom.

I no longer have to use the bathroom as a hideout from my children, though.

Yes, young moms, your children will one day learn to leave you alone in there.

Or they will be so busy with their lives that they won’t care one whit if you’re in the bathroom, the bedroom, or any other room in the house. As long as they are fed and the wi-fi is working, the natives will not be restless.

Now I have a cat that waits outside the bathroom for me.

Yes, a cat.

She follows me around the house. Down the hall. Into the kitchen. Into the living room. Up and down the stairs — not on quiet little cat feet, like the fog, but thumpity-thumpity, like an angry rabbit.

She loves the bedroom where she can hide under the bed and pounce on my feet as I walk around it, straightening the sheets and blankets. I think she especially loves that she can still surprise me

I draw the line at the bathroom.

Her litter box is just around the corner. She likes to supervise my cleaning of it, patting her paws on the scooper as I sift the litter and, um, the other stuff.

But, no, I don’t want her in my bathroom.

It’s that sanctuary thing.

So she sticks her paws under the door a few times to let me know she’s out there and then she waits.

Do cats outgrow this sort of behavior?

family

Messy

February 17, 2017 Sally7 Comments

Messy is often the best.

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is decorating cookies. Our Christmas cookies are a basic sugar cookie cut out with cookie cutters. It’s actually my grandmother’s recipe, and the only recipe for which I always sift the flour. The fun is both in choosing which cookies to cut out and then finally decorating them.

But it’s messy and time-consuming.

The best.

The best icing is sometimes the messiest. Drippy, juicy, gloopy drizzle.