Blogging Challenge · family

The Perfect Job

Sally7 Comments

“Do you ever think about what it would be like if things were different?” my husband asked yesterday.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Like, what if the job in Hershey had worked out,” he said.

Ah, yes, the job in Hershey. In 2005, Bud had taken a job in Hershey, PA, that turned out to be not exactly what it looked like on the surface. In fact, we found out later that he had been one of a string of people who had walked through that revolving door and walked out again within a few months. The toxic work environment hadn’t been evident at interview time — but he saw canaries dying everywhere in that departmental coal mine after he started.

Five hours away, I was home with the children. Our oldest had started college, but our youngest was not yet two. I started having back spasms from the stress of trying to homeschool while keeping our house clean enough to show to prospective buyers.

Then I did what any person in that situation would do — I got a puppy.

“I try not to think about Hershey,” I told Bud. “That was a stressful time.”

“But if we were there, you wouldn’t be here,” he said wistfully. He and I both want to be together again.

After Hershey, my husband took a job in Binghamton, about an hour and a half from Cooperstown. Our Cooperstown house sold and we bought a house in Greene, an hour and fifteen minutes away from Cooperstown

The process of moving to Cooperstown to help my father happened in small steps. First, I started coming once a week with the girls to help him with my mother. Then twice a week. Then spending one overnight. Then for the summer because the kids had jobs in Cooperstown.

It was like boiling a frog, raising the temperature one degree at a time.

Caring for my parents became a larger and larger job, but I didn’t see a good alternative. I still don’t.

Before the fall when I actually moved here to stay with my father, my husband and I discussed the options.

“I think I’ll be able to work remotely when we get this new computer system in,” he said.

Sometimes I AM wishful about that — because it still hasn’t panned out.

During the first fall I lived here with the girls, my father had a fall in which he hit his head. It caused a subdural bleed. A month later my mother died. The doctor told my father he couldn’t drive anymore. My father had brain surgery. I was so glad I was here for all of it.

But the journey of aging only goes in one direction.

I love what I do, though. I love being able to help people I love. I know this is a privilege; not everyone has the support or the means to do it.

Every day, I am grateful that I can.

One small change would make it the perfect job — to have my husband here with me.

Blogging Challenge · dementia

Interruptions and Alterations

Sally2 Comments

I usually misquote Henri Nouwen’s and say, “My interruptions are my work,” when someone asks me my favorite quote. Here’s the real quote in context:

A few years ago I met an old professor at the University of Notre Dame, Looking back on his long life of teaching, he said with a funny wrinkle in his eyes: “I have always been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I slowly discovered that my interruptions were my work.”

That is the great conversion in our life: to recognize and believe that the many unexpected events are not just disturbing interruptions of our projects, but the way in which God molds our hearts and prepares us for his return.

~ from Out of Solitude by Henri J. Nouwen

But having recently reread Shakespeare’s Sonnet #116, I’ve been pondering this line:

… Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds

My father so faithfully loved my mother through her dementia.

From dating days

To when she could no longer brush her own hair.

Love did not alter when it alterations found.

My father set the bar high.

Blogging Challenge · family · Hutchmoot · Life

The People in My Life

Sally8 Comments

I hate talking about myself. Who cares that 1I love coffee and 2hate brussels sprouts?

If a person is defined by the company he or she keeps, let me tell you about some of the people who are dear to me. That may tell you more about me than my blathering.

All her life, my mother saved newspaper clippings. When I cleaned out her desk, I found that she had saved clippings about me — from 3when I volunteered at a Red Cross bloodmobile as a teen, from 4that time USA Today featured my family in a little story about the Baseball Hall of Fame, from the interview 5when I was coaching the high school swim team and I didn’t say all the things I said. My mother wasn’t good at overtly expressing love or letting me know that she was proud of me, but those clippings said a lot.

My father asked me to be 6his health care proxy many years ago. Until we sat in that awful meeting with the doctor discussing end-of-life care for my mother, I didn’t realize what a heavy burden that was. To make those decisions is not for the faint of heart. Of late, I have realized that one of the things I have disliked about myself — 7that I am an INTJ — is the very thing that equips me for that task.

Thankfully, too, 8I have three surviving siblings (Donabeth, Peter, and Jim) that will stand, sit, and walk beside me when the time comes. I’m not alone.

9My oldest brother, Stewart, had a fatal heart attack in 2014. 10I hadn’t returned his final phone call to me a week before. I’ll have no regrets like that from here on out — I’m going to love and care for my family with every ounce of my being.

11My husband is my biggest supporter. I couldn’t do what I’m doing (12caring for my father) without him. Our time together these days is limited, but that makes it all the more sweet when we can get away together, like 13our trip to France last year and 14 to Laity Lodge this April.

15We have eight children (Philip, Owen, Sam, Helen, Jacob, Karl, Mary, and Laurel), three daughters-in-law (Amanda, Emily, and Donna), and two grandchildren (Henry and Everett). Getting everyone together is rare and so very sweet.

Zaengle gathering 1985

My husband is from a large family — thirteen children (joeybuddyjackiebillydonnytommyjimmyeddieanniemaryjanniejeanniekenny), although two are now deceased. When they all get together, with spouses and children and grandchildren, whew – what a crowd! 16I love large families. 17The introvert side of me, though, needs lots of recharging after family gatherings.

I’ve met some of my favorite people at an event called 18Hutchmoot. Those friendships have extended beyond the conference. Alyssa and I have kept up a correspondence for years that involves the baring of hearts and sharing of lives. Helena sent me her book when I asked her about it. Melanie sent me an out-of-print book for pretty much the same reason. I sent David chapstick when I heard he hated it. Libby talked to my daughter Mary about being a librarian. Leah traveled the world with me. Kim came to my son’s wedding in British Columbia. A group of us went to Laity Lodge together and hold each other in prayer regularly (including AE, Jade, two Kristens, two Lauras, and more).

19I love meeting people from other cultures, and some of my favorite people are Muslim. I’m looking at you, Maftuna, as well as Hanka, Sabina, Šefika, Amina, and Ayla.

20I skipped out on my 40th high school reunion last summer. I couldn’t get past the thought of making small talk for hours. Thankfully, though, one of my friends, Dana, called that weekend and we went to breakfast together to catch up. Another friend, Brad, stopped by the house. Still others – Jack, Cheryl, Beth, Dan – keep up with me on Facebook. I see Mark almost every time I go to the grocery store. I ran into Hugh last week at a party. Who needs a reunion?

I wanted to introduce you to so many others — Anna Brown, who is a delight, that I met through blogging and then met in real life; Laura Brown, a fellow caregiver and a great teacher, whose superpower is encouragement; women from our church in Greene (Donna, Kay, Joy, and Tammy) who regularly check in to say they miss us and ask how we’re doing; Pastor Amy, who touched my life in ways I can’t express; friends like Jan and Mary whose families parallel my own — but this is already too long.

I think I blathered.

But I’ve listed more than 20 people and numbered 20 facts about me.

My challenge for June:

Blogging Challenge · dementia · family · Life

Vodka and Ho-hos

Sally8 Comments

Last week I attended a dementia care conference with Helen.

The conference was informative, but quite honestly, for me, the day was more about spending time with my daughter than about going to a conference. Helen is excited about pursuing something in nursing that supports caregivers and our aging population. Seeing her excited, passionate, and so engaged was worth the price of the conference.

At one point, one of the speakers mentioned going into the home of a person with dementia and looking in their refrigerator. The only things in it were vodka and Ho-Hos.

Helen leaned over to me and whispered, “That could be the title of a blog.”

“What?” I asked.

“You know, Vodka and Ho-Hos, like Hot Dogs and Marmalade,” she said.

I’ve gotten so used to Hot Dogs and Marmalade as my blog name that I don’t even think about it anymore. Probably new readers just think it’s a quirky name, or that I’m weird, or both. Both have some truth.

It’s more than a quirky name, though. It goes back to when my mother, in her dementia, was putting marmalade on everything. She would gaze lovingly at the jar of marmalade on the counter, placing her hand on it, like it was a long-lost friend. She put a layer of marmalade on casseroles, on leftover Chinese food, on ham sandwiches, and, yes, on hot dogs.

I tried to think what blog title I would choose now, as I care for my father. Here are two of my thoughts:

  • Jumbling the Jumble — His spelling has gotten more and more creative. When he does the Daily Jumble, he creates words that almost look like words which make them the hardest jumbles to unjumble. In the same way, his intellect makes his dementia much harder to recognize by people who don’t know him. He sounds so reasonable.
  • External Dialogue — His internal dialogue has become external. I’ll listen to him sitting on the sun porch. He’ll say, “I’m sitting here watching the birds. That one seems to like the food. I wonder what kind it is. It’s getting warm in here. Maybe I should change my shirt. Oh, look! Another bird.” It’s fascinating in some ways. I’ve asked him who he is talking to and he answers, “Myself!” as if that’s most natural thing in the world.

But I’ll stick with Hot Dogs and Marmalade — salty and sweet — like life.

(Also, I don’t like change.)

Trying to inspire myself to write more, I found this blogging challenge on Livelovesimple.com. I’ll give it a try for June.

30-day-blogging-challenge

Life

Change

Sally6 Comments

I don’t like change. I want things to stay the same forever and ever amen. For the most part, anyway.

Once, at our house in town, our neighbor came over and asked about cutting down some trees that were on our property. The previous owner had planted these little pines that grew into big pines whose branches brushed against our neighbor’s house. He had a legitimate reason to cut down the trees.

Of course, we gave him permission.

But when the day came and he was out there removing all the branches so the trunks looked like ugly blemished brown sticks in the ground, I started crying. It took everything within me not to run out and beg him to stop.

In fact, I may have done that. Pleading pregnancy. You know, “Please don’t cut any more trees down because I’m pregnant and emotional and I can’t take it”, or something along those lines.

My husband came home from work to help me calm down.

Pregnancy was simply my excuse. The real reason was that I hate change.

Tall trees have that effect on me.

We took a sad picture last year when we traded in our beloved Honda Odyssey. Good cars have that effect.

One time, after a wonderful vacation in Myrtle Beach, when it was time to leave, our oldest son spent the morning looking like he had lost his best friend. Good vacations have that effect.

WordPress is discontinuing their weekly photo challenges and their daily prompts.

I’ve leaned heavily them, looking for inspiration or ways to connect with other bloggers.

Frankly, I don’t want them to stop.

I feel a little like this:

Or this:

But I tell myself not to despair, this will pass, and no doubt more quickly than it should.  (Mr. Bennett in Pride & Prejudice)

For their final photo challenge, they asked for all-time favorites.

For some reason, all I could find were sad ones.

 

dementia · family · Life

Premature

Sally7 Comments

That little pat on the back that I was giving myself was premature. Way premature.

I had gone to the gym this morning to work out. I love working out. Love it, love it, love it. I wish I could get there every day.

For me, exercise is such a key part of my well-being. I feel more optimistic after I exercise. Big ideas come to me while I exercise. My body craves healthy food on the days I exercise. It’s an all-around win-win-win.

So this morning I exercised.

In the course of elevating my heart rate, oscillating ropes, swinging the kettlebell, and dripping with sweat, I started thinking about caregiving and how far I’ve come on this journey. I used to get so frustrated with my mother — but she had a bitter sharpness that my father doesn’t have. She would harp at me, insisting on something that wasn’t, or lash out at one of my children for something they didn’t do. She could be a challenge.

My father, on the other hand, laughs at the darnedest things. He’s happy and content. He works on his puzzles, reads his books, and listens to his music. People stop to visit him. He gets a bowl of vanilla ice cream every day. He watches the Red Sox play nearly every night. It’s a good life, I think.

So I was working out and thinking about all this. I was thinking, I’ve got a good handle on this caregiving thing. I think I’m doing all right.

I patted myself on the back and began mentally writing a blog post of encouragement for other caregivers. I wanted to tell them that they’ll have good days, maybe even a bunch of them in a row.

When I got to the house, Dad was coming out the door with the dandelion-stabbing tool (surely, there’s a better name for it) because he wanted to start getting after the dandelions. I asked him to stay on level ground and checked to make sure he was wearing his LifeLine in case he fell.

As I headed inside, almost as an after-thought, he said, “It was the strangest thing, but I found all this money today. I left it on the table for you.”

“Where did you find it?” I asked.

“Here and there,” he said, waving vaguely with hands to indicate that it was in a variety of places like the dandelions in the yard.

Puzzled, I went to investigate.

My wallet was sitting out on the kitchen table. I looked inside and it was mostly empty. My heart sank.

I found all that money he had been talking about, stuffed like a bookmark into a book. It was a twenty and three fives — $35 that had been in my wallet.

I looked in the garbage and found gift cards, receipts, coupons, a note from Mary, and other papers that only an hour before had been in my wallet.

I grabbed the crumpled papers and marched out to my father who was still standing on the deck holding the dandelion-stabber and looking at the dandelions.

“Did you find the money?” he asked innocently.

I exploded. “That was the money in my wallet,” I said. “And these –” I held out the papers I had pulled from the garbage — “these are mine.”

“They aren’t anything important,” he said.

“Not to you, but to me they are,” I said, far more loudly than I should.

And the argument went on far longer than it should have.

I knew in my head that he couldn’t understand, but I was frustrated.

Gone were back-pats. Gone were my words of encouragement. Gone was any goodwill left over from my workout.

I went in the house and fixed my green smoothie. From inside the house, I watched as he sat in the grass and stabbed at dandelions. I stabbed at writing words of encouragement and this is what came out.

Fellow caregivers, some days are like that.

But it’s still all so good.

The sun is shining.

The dandelions are smiling (unaware of their fate).

The smoothie was delicious.

And I have $35 safe in my wallet — upstairs now.

people

Small

Sally10 Comments

One day
I found myself
Staring at the clear blue water
Of the pool
And marveling at the fact
That I could not see
A single drop

All that liquid
In front of me
And my eyes could not distinguish
One single drop —
Just water
En masse

So I did some calculations
Using my phone
And my head (only a little) —

I thought,
This pool is 25 yards long.
There are 3 feet in every yard.
Therefore, the pool is 75 feet long.

I figured,
I don’t know the width of each lane
But I know from swimming rules that
Each lane must be at least 7 feet across.
We have 8 lanes
So this pool is approximately 56 feet wide.

And I further reasoned,
The depth of the pool varies.
In the shallow end, it’s 4 feet deep,
And in the deep end it’s 8 feet,
But I’ll use 4 feet —
Just to be conservative.

So, I multiplied 75 x 56 x 4
To arrive at the number that
Minimally expresses the volume,
The number of cubic feet in the pool.

That’s 36,000 cubic feet of water —
Although I know there’s really more
Because of the way the depth changes.

Then, I looked up
How many drops of water
Make up one cubic foot:
566,336.93

So a conservative guess
At the number of drops of water
In that one swimming pool
Is

36,000 x 566,336.93 =
20,388,129,480

Let’s just call it 20 billion drops

And I still can’t see a single one.

Out of curiosity,
I looked up the population
Of the world

According to
The most recent United Nations estimates
In May 2018
There are 7.6 billion people in the world

If people were drops of water
My pool would be little more than 1/3 full

The pool at 5:15 AM

It made me feel small
And large
All at the same time
And I’m not sure why

Life

Rabid Chickens

Sally5 Comments

My memory of the wall is tinged with blue-green. A very pale blue-green, mind you.

I honestly don’t know if it’s real, or hopelessly colored and skewed by more than half a century.

I scoured old photographs this morning looking for it. Surely this white-washed cinderblock wall, with a hint of aqua, so prominent in my memories of Kagnew Station would show up in some pictures.

Stewart, Peter, Donabeth, Sally — Kagnew Station Christmas

When I was 2 years old until I was just barely 5, my father was stationed at an army base in Ethiopia. My earliest memories are from there, but have been reduced largely to color.

Kagnew Station was blue-green.

Fort Devens was red-brown, like the color of bricks. Our address there was drilled into me, 84D Walnut Street.

84D Walnut St, Fort Devens Christmas

Similarly, the distance between the earth and the sun was drilled into my youngest brother after we moved to Cooperstown.Why he needed to know that distance was beyond me, but my parents and older siblings made sure he could recite it, asking him often, “How many miles to the sun?” My tow-headed little brother would answer, “93 million miles,” and we would cheer.

That’s a memory draped in the lush green of Cooperstown and farm land and maples in summer.

My youngest brother and me — Cooperstown summer

But the wall around Kagnew Station — I remember my mother warning me about it. “Don’t go beyond it,” she said, “because there are rabid chickens on the other side.”

In my head, now, I know that’s ridiculous. I’m sure she never said a word about rabid chickens.

For one thing, rabies only affects mammals. I learned that as an adult when a veterinarian friend gave a presentation on rabies to our homeschool group. When he made that statement – rabies only affects mammals — I blurted out, “But what about chickens?” He looked at me long and hard, waiting to see if I was serious. Unfortunately, I was. The seed had been planted decades before.

For another, I don’t think the wall around the base was very high. A chicken could have flown over it.

My working theory is this: my mother warned me to stay away from the wall. I had heard my father talking about the dangers of rabies.  At some point I saw a chicken fly over the wall. It all mashed together, like when bits and pieces of life swirl together into the implausible reality of a bizarre dream.

I probably inserted the chicken into my mother’s words. I’ve always liked chickens.

A rabid chicken sounds so dramatic, too. Picture an innocuous chicken. Add some drool and a deadly virus. Like Chanticleer meets Old Yeller. Maybe that was the scariest image 4-year-old me could conjure up.

The memory is covered in a pale blue-green haze.

In the meantime, I have an assignment to write about a place (#sorryLaura) and this is what came out.

Strange.

Almost scary.

Like a rabid chicken.

Faith

Communion Bread

Sally2 Comments

A few months ago, one of the ladies asked me if I could help with communion, setting it up three or four times a year. I would be replacing a woman  who had been showing signs of dementia.

I had my first turn this last week. One of the ladies showed me where the supplies were kept — the chalices and plates, the pretty linens, and a six-pack of bottles of grape juice.

It seemed pretty straight-forward.

Until I asked about the bread.

“You can get any bread,” the woman told me.

“Any bread?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “It doesn’t really matter.”

It mattered to me.

I angsted over communion bread all week. I couldn’t get just any old bread. This was the body of Christ, for crying out loud.

Our church offers communion by intinction. The pastor tears a chunk off the loaf of bread (yeast bread) and offers it to the communicant, who then dips it in the chalice.

I know that some churches use matzoh, or unleavened bread, because that’s what Jesus would have used during His last Passover supper. Others use leavened bread, a reminder of new life and a new covenant. Some churches use wafers and believe in transsubstantiation.

Some churches use individual cups. Others use chalices. Some churches use wine. Others use juice.

Some celebrate the Eucharist weekly, others monthly, and still others yearly.

However it’s done, all Christians unite in this mystery that goes beyond time and space and a morsel and a taste of juice.

The body of Christ broken for you.

The blood of Christ shed for you.

I struggled with what to bring for the communion bread. I prayed about it. I wrestled with in my heart. I looked at bread at the grocery store and at the local bakery. Then I prayed some more.

Finally, I decided to try to make the bread. I pictured myself kneading the dough and praying for the people in our congregation.

I got a recipe from another church, but it didn’t call for kneading. I messaged the woman who sent me the recipe — “Do I really not knead it? Just punch it down?”

She answered, “I think the mixing is enough. I never kneaded it. Yes, just punch it down. No worries.”

“This is an act of faith for me,” I told her, “in more ways than one.”

Before I removed the baked bread from the pan, I laid my hands on the loaf and prayed, “O Lord, please be honored with this bread. Bless the people who partake of it.”

I brought the bread to church in a brown paper bag. I didn’t want anyone to know that I had made it. Bud helped me set everything up on the altar.

The moment in the service came when Pastor Tom lifted the bread for all to see.

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you,” he said, as he broke the loaf in half.

As luckfateGodcoincidencechance would have it, Pastor Tom asked me to stand beside him for communion and hold the chalice.

I watched him tear off chunk after chunk of bread. I tried to focus on my words — “The blood of Christ shed for you” but the bread was so distracting. The pieces got larger and larger.

One woman laughed as she received a piece so large that she had to tear it in half to dip in the chalice.

I laughed, too. It was comical.

After the service, she came up front to talk with the pastor.

“You got your whole lunch there,” I said to her, nodding towards the communion trays.

Tom said, “I was trying to pull off small pieces but I couldn’t!”

She said, “You were very generous, pastor.”

Tom said, “No, God is very generous.”

We all agreed.

Isn’t that the crux of communion — a God so generous that He gave His son.

The woman said, “I didn’t mind. That bread was so good!”

The bread wasn’t perfect — but then, neither am I.

And God honored the bread.

Generously.