Tag: Life

Life

Just A Trip to Walmart

Sally1 Comment

This post was originally written August 5, 2017 and has languished in my draft folder since then.

The father bellowing at the little boy in the Walmart parking lot was a bad start.

“JOHNNY,” he roared, “GIT YER A$$ OVER HERE.”

The open tailgate made me think that the father had been putting his purchases into the car. The boy skulking back from the cart corral looked to be about 8 or 9 years old. He was scowling. I would scowl, too, if someone spoke to me like that.

Walmart. I felt a snobbish “ugh” rising inside me.

Inside, the store was a disorderly mess.

“You can always tell when the students start coming back,” commented a woman looking at the same merchandise as me. “They trash the place.”

“It is a mess in here,” I agreed.

“I shop here every week,” she said. “Today is the worst I’ve seen it.”

I gathered my items and found the shortest line to check out.

The shortest line was not short.  When the elderly couple ahead of me finally got up to the register and the cashier was nearly finished scanning, their package of chicken needed a price-check.

“I’m sorry,” the man said, turning to me. I could barely see his eyes under the brim of Carhartt cap.

“No worries,” I said. “I’m not in a hurry.”

“Me and my wife got a carful of groceries already,” he said, nodding toward a hunched-over woman with blue-gray hair. “Frozen stuff prolly meltin’ in the car… but she forgot a few things so we come back in.”

A few things meant a cartful.

“I hope you aren’t far from home,” I said.

“Blenheim,” he said.

I knew that was about an hour away. In the middle of nowhere. Near Breakabeen.

“I’m sorry,” I told him.

The Walmart supervisor came to check on the chicken. She called on the radio to the meat department. “Anyone there gimme a price on some chicken?” she asked. I couldn’t hear the response because of her earpiece, but I didn’t need to — she announced it. “I gotta walk this over to the chicken department to get a price,” and off she walked.

I turned to the man behind me. “I’m sorry,” I said, even though I knew I had nothing to be sorry for.

“No problem,” he said. “I just moved here from Long Island. You should see the lines in their stores.”

So we waited.

“You could move over to a different line,” said the Carhartt man.

I looked at the line next to ours. It was moving faster, but I’m not one to jump ship. A burly man helped unload an elderly woman’s cart on the belt, but when he left with his bag, I realized they weren’t together. It was just a nice move.

The chicken department was on the far side of the store. I kept watching that direction to see if I saw the supervisor heading back.

The blue-haired wife mouthed “I’m sorry” to me. I smiled at her.

I made eye contact again with the man behind me. “I was in Europe this summer,” I told him. “Time doesn’t seem to matter as much there.”

“I know,” he said. “We could learn a lesson or two from them.”

The chicken was still MIA.

In the line next to me, a man holding a plant — his only purchase — was let ahead of a customer with a full cart. “Thank you SO much,” he said, enthusiastically. The woman who had let him pass just smiled.

I smiled, too.

There were nice people all around me.

In Walmart.

Finally chicken lady returned.

I told Long Island man, “Here she comes!”

“Hooray!” he said.

I felt like we should clap or something.

By the time I got to the parking lot, I had nearly forgot the unpleasant father-son interaction because I had seen and talked to so many nice people in the store that day.

 I could guess why I never posted this — too wordy. It’s a problem I have.

But the message to look for the nice people? Yes, I needed that today.

Be not conformed to the impatience and nastiness of the world, but be transformed by the goodness that’s right in front of you if you look for it. (a bastardization of Romans 12:2, but nonetheless true.)

Alzheimer · Alzheimer's · dementia · elderly · family · Leaning In · Life · Writing

The Feeder’s Table

Sally2 Comments

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.

Life

Temptation

Sally3 Comments

This post was in the draft folder and dated: 2016/05/06 at 1:14 pm. It came up when I searched my Draft Folder for the word “timing” — RDP’s prompt today.

I got a phone call yesterday that has been rattling around inside.

In a good way.

Kind of also in a bad way.

“Hi, Sally,” the voice said, “Do you have a minute to talk?”

“Sure,” I said. I was just washing dishes. They could wait.

It was the AD (Athletic Director) at Greene. I knew him. I had worked for him before, and, at one point, lived two doors away.

“We’re looking for a varsity swim coach for both the boys and girls next year. Our contract requires that we do an internal search to fill coaching positions which we’ve done, but your name keeps coming up. We would love it if you would come back to coach,” he said.

He went on to do some salesmanship, telling me how they’ve updated the timing system, put in a new heating system, refurbished the diving boards. “We’d really like you to come back. You did a great job before, and we’d love to have you as part of our swim program again.”

Oh my goodness.

The dangling carrot was so appealing.

I love coaching. Oh, not every minute of it, as my children could tell you. But the overall reward of being involved with young people, especially of the teenage variety, is incredible.

Several years ago I wrote a post during a time when I thought I was done coaching called “MomSwimCoach.”  It’s now up at Laura Brown’s Makes You Mom site [no longer active], and is about a one of the greatest gifts I ever received — a quilt with squares made by one team of swimmers.

But this temptation — to have the whole swim program and run with it — so so tempting.

I knew the answer.

“Thank you so much for thinking of me,” I told the AD, “but my mother died in November and I’ve been taking care of my father since. I couldn’t commit to you the time needed.”

We finished our conversation with pleasantries, but, as I said, it rattled around.

I went for a walk, mulling it over.

Temptation comes when something

And there ends the draft.

If my draft had shoulders, I would grab hold of them and shake them. “When something WHAT?” I would demand.

It’s funny that the prompt word — timing — was triggered by my reference to timing systems for swim meets, but the bigger broader story has to do with the timing of an opportunity. I’m in the same boat today. I have an opportunity, and it’s a great opportunity — but I have to weigh it all out. The timing is questionable. I should write the details in a blog post and save it in the draft folder for 8 – 10 years.

For the record, I have zero regret about not pursuing the swim coach job. In fact, I had totally forgotten about it until this showed up after searching my draft folder. I made the right choice back then. Now for a repeat performance.

Life · swimming

Swimming Lessons

Sally4 Comments

This is a post that I started in 2018 and never finished. It’s a draft folder find when I searched “lane way” because LANEWAY is the RDP prompt word today.

M– drove me crazy.

He was always late to practice — through no fault of his own. He lived in the next town over, so his mother had a longer drive to the pool. Plus he was only eight years old with the short attention span so many boys that age have.

He usually walked out of the boys’ locker room twirling his goggles on one finger, carrying his cap in the other hand, and looking at the ceiling, or the other lanes, or out the window, while we were finishing up the warm-up in the lanes right in front of him.

“Whaddawedoin’?” he asked while pulling on his cap. Then he jumped right in the pool without waiting for an answer.

“I’m going first,” he said to one of the girls in his lane and planted his scrawny little body in front of hers.

“You need to warm up,” I said to him.

“Nah — I’m good,” he said.

“You need to warm up,” I said again, and thus began the first argument of practice.

M– argued with me about everything.

“Every time you push off the wall, I want you to get your arms up into a streamline position,” I told my group at every practice, demonstrating with my arms extended over my head, squeezing my head, my hands overlapping to form a tight point. Then I stood at the end and watched as each swimmer pushed over the wall.

Here endeth the draft.

I remember M– well. Unfortunately, I don’t remember where I was going with this story.

M– was bratty kid, but a talented swimmer. He went on to set records on the age group team and the high school — none of which had to do with my coaching. I actually tried to get him moved down to the beginner group until he could behave himself better, but I was overruled.

At the final meet that year, he swam fast, won races, set records, blah-blah-blah. He came to me and took me by the hand. “I want my picture with you,” he said. I dutifully smiled next to a scrawny kid on a starting block, but I still resented his disruptive ways.

The next year, he moved to the next group, and I stopped coaching to take care of my father.

Then there was a pandemic.

I didn’t lose sight of him. This is a small town, and the swimming community is even smaller.

I watched coaches pander to him and fuss over him. Team rules didn’t really apply to him. He was fast. Yes, he was fast.

Here’s where I get on my soapbox. There are things that are far more important than athletics. Being nice ranks pretty high for me. As does being thoughtful and listening. Respect, moral character, leadership — I could go on.

Hypothetically, if M– became an Olympic swimmer and got disqualified from an event at the Olympics, I would hope that he would take his lumps. If the disqualification call was a bad call, all the better. Those build even more character. The worse thing that could happen to him would be for the President of the United States to call the President of the Olympic International Committee to plead with them to reconsider — and then have the call reversed.

But that’s just me. There are things I value more than gold medals, World Cups, or bragging rights.

family · Grief · poetry

Ode to a Plastic Box

Sally4 Comments

My brother’s ashes
(I only really looked at them once
So my memory may not be accurate)
Were in a plastic bag
In a plastic box.

The bag was held shut
With a twist-tie.
I like to think it was green,
The color of life.

The rectangular box —
Neither orange
Nor brown
More the color of a dead autumn leaf —
Snapped shut
Like a pocket watch
Safely holding time inside.

It stood upright on the mantle
For at least year.

I whispered to it sometimes,
I miss you, Stewart. 
But he didn’t answer.
He smiled placidly at me
From the photograph
Beside the box.

We placed it in the Columbarium —
It seems like only yesterday —
But it was rainy
And spring
Not frosty
And fall

Tomorrow
The man will bring a new plastic box
Because my mother wouldn’t have wanted an urn
Jim joked about Cool-Whip containers
My mother would have liked that reuse
But I suppose it’s undignified
So she’ll have the box
That comes free
With cremation

She always appreciated a bargain.

This piece was originally written 11/18/2015 — two weeks after my mother died. I guess I never posted it because I found it in my draft folder while I was searching the word “miss” — Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt.

Yes, miss is there — “I miss you, Stewart.”

I had looked at Linda’s prompt last night thinking maybe it would simmer during the night, like my mother’s soups used to on the woodstove. She made the best soup. She really did.

In the wee hours of the morning, the only miss I was thinking on was how I was missing sleep. I suppose I could have written a post on that.

Instead, I decided to give myself a hand by searching drafts. I have over 300 of them! This one hit home because I just had a conversation with a good friend (and this is the Stream of Consciousness part of the post.) It went something like this:

Friend: I suppose I should check on (insert person’s name). Her husband’s dying. He’s probably gone.

Me: You should definitely do that. Especially if you want to go the funeral.

[Note: he had served in Vietnam with the man who was dying.]

Friend: I don’t go to funerals.

Me: Even for someone you’ve known so long?

Friend: I don’t go to funerals. I only go to Celebrations.

I confess. I was judgy after that conversation, but reading this piece about the plastic boxes, I was reminded that grief is so individual.

We, as Americans, don’t have just one way to deal with death. Some have elaborate affairs and big funerals. Some celebrate the life. Some cremate. Some bury.

It seems to be a mix of honoring the person who died, and those left behind saying good-bye. I feel like my family did both with funerals.

And it’s Father’s Day on Sunday.

I miss my father.

Faith · family · Life

Growing Pains

Sally1 Comment

The RDP prompt for today is kindness. I searched my draft folder and found this incomplete post that had been written in October 2011.

When I read it this morning, I remembered some of the difficult circumstances of that time. It was years before my brother died, years before I was helping care for my mother, years and years before my father died.

Just because I wasn’t dealing with death, it doesn’t mean life was easy. I had my hands full in other ways. My children at that point ranged in age from 7 to 26. I was homeschooling two, had one in public school, some in college, some working, one married.

Without further ado, here is the unnamed post which I will call “Growing Pains.” If it feels incomplete, maybe it is.

One of the most profound things I heard Andrew Peterson say was not at Hutchmoot, but at a concert in Cortland.  He was talking about his books, the Wingfeather Saga. (Note: he was still in the process of writing the series. The final book wasn’t published until 2014.)  I didn’t write this down or record it so it may not be verbatim, but I think it’s fairly close.  He said,

The main character in these stories is a boy named Janner.  When I started writing, I saw the man he would become, but I knew that he would have to go through many trials and difficult situations to become that man.  I knew that he would have to suffer some terrible things…

I have been thinking about some of the difficulties my own children have had to endure.  They are rather small in comparison to Janner’s battles with Fangs and Gnag the Nameless, but they shape my children nonetheless.

And then I started thinking about that whole idea conversely.  If my children didn’t suffer anything, how would they turn out?

For instance, in order to develop perseverance, they need to stick with difficult situations and work them out.  If I allow them to quit every time the going was hard or not fun or required something of them, they would become the kind of adults who always take the easy path, who quit, who are unreliable.

In order for them to develop compassion, they need experience some hard times and also experience unwarranted kindness to them.  I imagine that the guy in the Good Samaritan story who had been attacked by robbers didn’t later cross to the other side of the road to avoid helping someone who was different from him, although without his experience, he may very well have looked the other way instead of helping.

To develop patience, they need some annoyances.

To develop peace, they need some turmoil.

family · Grief · Life

Terrible

Sally6 Comments

The RDP prompt for today is twelve. I searched my draft folder and found this incomplete post that had last been edited in February 2016. My mother died in November 2015. I wrote so many posts following her death. I think it was my way of untangling the knot—and it helped.

This post was never completed. When I read it this morning, a flood of memories engulfed me.

Here’s the post which I called “Terrible.” At the end, I’ll try to complete it — though the 10 intervening years surely have changed where I was going with the original.

THE ORIGINAL

The one nurse said, “Well, I guess you’ve never seen a dying person before.”

She was matter-of-fact. Tart. A little smug. Definitely too cheerful.

The other nurse was different. Compassionate. Caring. Gentle.

“Can I do anything for you?” she asked every time she checked on my mother. “Can I get you anything?”

With twelve hour shifts for the nurses, we mostly saw only these two.

When I would ask the first nurse

THE 2026 COMPLETION

When I would ask the first nurse for anything, she did her job, but with so little compassion that I ended up avoiding her. Truth be told, today I can’t even picture her.

Forgettable — that’s what she was. I’m glad I didn’t spend time dwelling on her.

What I remember about my mother’s final hospital stay are definitely the kindnesses:

The other nurse bringing food in for us.

The doctor who called a family meeting. She began with these words, “Mom is very sick, and she isn’t going to get better.” She went on to talk about the fact that modern medicine could keep her alive, but we should think about what was best for her. One of my brothers still refers to her as “the doctor that told us to kill Mom.” It’s that dark famiy sense of humor that we have. I have no doubt in my mind that it was the right decision.

A group of women from the church came to the hospital room and sang to my mother. They had all been in the choir with her, and now they sang for her. It still brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. Out-of-tune warbly voices of older women joined in some of the most beautiful music I’ve heard.

My siblings and I gathered around the bed, each telling my mother that we loved her. My youngest brother told my mother that it was okay for her to go. I had heard that it can be important to say that, and he said it, all the while rubbing her foot as he stood at that end of the bed.

I feel pity for that nurse whom I had labeled “Terrible.” Her words, I guess you’ve never seen a dying person before, are so hollow.

I don’t know what prompted them, but today, I would take her hands in mine, and say, “I hope that some day, you can gather with your family around the bed of someone you love very much, and you can be with them when they pass. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Terrible vs. beautiful. I’ll remember the beautiful.

Life

Sewing With Burlap

Sally1 Comment

The good thing about burlap is that it is inexpensive.

The bad thing about burlap is — oh, where to begin?!

Burlap wears its flaws on its proverbial shirtsleeve, although I shudder to think how uncomfortable a burlap shirt would be.

It is coarse and crotchety, like an old man who has worked hard his whole life and never been been appreciated for a single thing he has done.

It frays easily and often.

It does not like to be straightened.  Lesson #1 in 4-H sewing decades ago included straightening the fabric.  Burlap is just ornery enough to say no.  It sort of looks like it is willing to comply, and then, BAM, an in-your-face refusal when the cutting begins.

Despite all that, burlap is quite lovable — especially if you’re partial to cantankerous types.

I’m sitting here, staring at various burlaps, trying to think how I can get along with them.  How can I coax this rough piece of fabric into something beautiful?

IMG_4499[1]

In my first attempt, I lined it with a cheery cotton print.  The burlap lost its burlap-ness.  It was like taking a hobo and dressing him in a business suit.  What makes a hobo appealing is his relatively carefree life, hopping trains, bumming food, answering to no one, but a businessman has to present himself just so, and answer to all sorts of people.

No, I was glad the lined burlap cone was nixed. It was too incongruous.

DSC02204

My next attempt was a simple burlap sack.  Simple. Hah!  To make a casing for a ribbon to go through was nearly impossible. And then, I didn’t cut a long enough piece of ribbon.  And then I kept wondering if jute would be better than ribbon.  And then I just got mad at the whole darn thing because it refused to look like what I had pictured in my head.

I had an idea for my next attempt.  I would work with the fray-happy fabric. I saw it on Pinterest.

Except… I’m pretty sure all those wonderful Pinterest ideas require fingers, and, as it turns out, I’m only equipped with thumbs. Ugh.

The more I fuddled around with the burlap, the more I saw this as life.  Things don’t always turn out the way we hope.  Plan A becomes Plan B becomes Plan C.

And still we remain hopeful. Still we try again.

[I decided to started searching the Ragtag Daily Prompt word in my draft folder so I could relook at some of the things written years ago. Today’s word was HOPEFUL — and this post came up. This post was originally written in August 2014 as we were getting ready for son #2’s wedding.]

photography

Juxtaposed

Sally3 Comments

The Lens-Artist Challenge this week is “to explore juxtaposition as a photographic technique.”

Years ago, I heard Nat Geo photographer Sam Abell give a talk on his photography. He talked about waiting for days for the light to be in the right place and for everything to come together for an amazing photograph. Even with all his planning and waiting, there was a certain element of luck or serendipity or something that came into play with the best photos. That, and shooting rolls and rolls and rolls of film.

Anyway, I snap pictures because I want to remember something. That’s pretty much it. I’m not an artist; I’m a memory keeper — although I think the best artists probably are memory keepers. Amazing memory keepers.

The following are my juxaposition submissions — with a little explanation.

Two #14s in perfect synchronization (2016?). What also makes it interesting to me is that one player is my son and the other his cousin who was on the other team. I only wish I hadn’t taken the photo in black and white but I was playing with settings.

That’s my mother in the foreground “resting her eyes” at her granddaughter’s high school graduation (2010). And that’s my youngest daughter looking at the camera and, I’m sure, wondering how much longer her sister’s graduation will go on.

My sister with her two younger brothers (1964). Juxtaposition of facial expressions?

Is this a juxaposition photo? I dunno. I thought it was funny — kids waiting to see Santa who’s getting a parking ticket from the military police. (circa 1964)

I took this photo today at the Munson Art Museum in Utica, NY. It made me laugh. Part of the museum is in an old Victorian house, with rooms staged with antiques, roped off with those red-velveted cords. Anyway, in one room full of glorious ornate pieces of furniture and statues and artwork, there was this yellow vase with a truck on it. Here’s the card that explains it:

I suppose tire theft isn’t funny, but I laughed. The artist, and the museum in the way it displayed his artwork, were very clever.

aging · books · elderly · Life

Morning Reading

Sally3 Comments

I start every day with reading. I’ve done that for most of my adult life, although what I read has changed over time.

These days I have four different books that I’m reading. It’s a weave, pulling threads from four different sources, and letting them intertwine. Sometimes it’s amazing how it works sometimes, the similarity between two disparate books.

This morning I was especially struck by that. I’ve been reading William Willimon’s book Aging: Growing Old in Church. I finally finished a very long chapter called “With God in the Last Quarter of Life” which was subdivided into topics like Grief, Church Participation, Being a Burden, Economics, etc. The last section was on Memory.

I cared for both of my parents as their memories shape-shifted and deteriorated. This section of the book hid hard and hit home as I remembered that period of time in MY life. Here are a few quotes:

One reason the aging remember is to preserve a now disintegrating sense of self. We remember selectively, even desperately, defiantly, having lost a job and some of our friends and family. Remembrance is an act of defiance against injustice, recalling the lives of past victims in order that their witness may not be lost. …

And yet some of our feverish attempts to hold on to our memories may be a sign that we fear we are being forgotten. We may have bought into the widespread American notion … seeing ourselves as the sum of our efforts rather than as a gift of God’s love and vocation. …

The elderly… can be living bodily reminders to us all that our lives are not the sum of our attainments, never our sole possessions, but rather, from birth to death, God’s gifts.

Compare/contrast/weave those words in with these words from Brian Doyle. I’m reading his collections of essays called Eight Whopping Lies and other stories of bruised grace. Today’s essay was “What Were Once Pebbles Are Now Cliffs” in which he remembers his sons when they were the size of pebbles; now they are cliffs.

Time stutters and reverses and it is always yesterday and today. Maybe the greatest miracle is memory. Think about that this morning, quietly, as you watch the world flitter and tremble and beam.

It’s good to be reminded that I am not the sum of my efforts, my attainments, my possessions. Every day is a gift. And memory is also a gift.

This post is brought to you by Linda Hill’s Stream-of-Consciousness Saturday, William Willimon, and Brian Doyle.