Tag: Project 365

family

Other Duties As Assigned

Sally14 Comments

Last night (and the night before) Laurel said to me as she went to bed, “I’m sorry if I come in.”  Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night with a bad dream and comes in our room.

“It’s okay,”  I told her.  “It’s in my job description.”

I probably should have looked the job description over a little more carefully before I signed on.  Not that I ever really looked over any job description;  I was usually just glad to have a job.

Like when I worked at the Baseball Hall of Fame, I think my job title was “Souvenir Girl” and that pretty much summed it up.  I sold souvenirs and tickets.  Maybe it specified that I wasn’t supposed to try to charge VIPs, like the time I was going to charge Bowie Kuhn admission, but I honestly never read through it.

But a Mom Job Description — whew!  There’s a good one that I’ve seen:  The Mom Job Description. (Click to see it.)

I actually think I could do it in five words.

and other duties as assigned

No matter how complete the list, it would still be incredibly incomplete.

I knew I would have sleepless nights.  I imagined they would end when my children slept through the night.  Not so.  It’s not always Laurel waking me up.  Sometimes I wake with a particular child on my mind and just pray for them.

Prayer is definitely somewhere in the job description.  Under communication — with doctors, teachers, waitresses, and God.  Yep.

Jacob getting a haircut a few years ago.

No one told me that when I became a mom, I would have to cut hair.  But I have cut the boys’ hair for years.  All my boys are now teenagers and beyond.  I tell them to get their haircut by somebody who knows what they’re doing.  And yet, what did I do the other day?  Cut Jacob’s hair.  And I still don’t know what I’m doing.

I knew when I became a mom that I would have to prepare meals.  I was okay with that because I know how to read recipes.  My creativity in the kitchen is pretty limited.  But did I ever imagine that I would have to triple or quadruple every recipe every written?  And kids think math skills aren’t that important…

And all those years of raising children are really just a warm-up for caring for parents, a job I’m now cowering from.  Other duties as assigned.

It doesn’t seem to get any easier.

And I just seem to get tireder.

But Laurel can still wake me up any night of the week.

It’s in my job description.

Alzheimer's · family

Quiet Miracles

Sally18 Comments

I am the world’s biggest fan of quiet, well, one of them anyway.  I love quiet and all the sounds of quiet.

It’s quiet in my home right now.  I hear the fan from my computer and a few birds singing outside. Mary is in the kitchen pouring a bowl of cereal.  It’s quiet.

My father ate a meal at the Manor with my mother the other day.  He commented on how quiet it was.

“It was a lovely meal,” he said, “but nobody spoke at all during it.”

“Well, Dad,” I reminded, “they may be hard of hearing or have dementia issues.”

“There may be all sorts of reasons for it,” he agreed, “but it doesn’t change the fact that there was no conversation.  It just seemed kind of strange.”

I tried to picture a table full of elderly people, focusing on their food and eating in silence.

Our dinner table is never silent.  In fact, it can be a rather raucous affair.

As I thought about the quiet of eating, I remember sitting on our side porch years ago next to a box with Monarch caterpillars and milk weed.  We used to tromp through the field and find dozens of the caterpillars, hiding on the bottom sides of leaves.  We would gather as many as we could find and bring them home to watch the miracle.

A supply of fresh milkweed would keep them busy for days.  If I sat next to the box in the quiet of the day, I could hear the small sounds of caterpillars munching.

Karl drew this caterpillar for me for Mother’s Day

munch…munch…munch 

nom…nom…nom 

squitch…squitch…crunch

When they had filled their full of milkweed, one by one they found their own private spot and hung upside down.  Magically, they chrysalized into beautiful green and gold jewel boxes.

They hung in silence.  No more sounds of eating.  If they weren’t so beautiful, they would be easy to forget.

Then one day they turned black, and it seemed that hope was gone, but for the slight movement.  A twitch here and there.  I would wonder if I was seeing things.  Slowly, the blackened jewel box would open to reveal a new creature with wet crumpled wings.

The Monarch miracle was one I never tired of witnessing.

It all began with quiet eating.  Strength for the journey.

Is that what is happening at the Manor?  The quiet eating, the gradual withdrawal into a private world, and then, when hope seems gone, the emergence into a new world.

I think there is a great, unimaginable beauty in shedding this earthly skin for wings.

Alzheimer's · Faith

Knowing My Name

Sally7 Comments
When Maggie can’t find her fish, she carries a different toy.

“You’re the lady with the dog,” a woman said to me at church the other day.

“The dog with the fish?”  I responded, half-questioning, half completing her sentence.

“That’s right,” she said excitedly.

Our dog is famous around Greene.  She carries a toy, usually a fish, with her on walks.  At Christmas, she carries a Santa.

And now I’m known as the lady with the dog with the fish.  All my life I’ve been identified by others — Dr. Pollock’s daughter, Bud’s wife, Philip’s (or Owen’s or Sam’s or Helen’s or Jacob’s or Karl’s or Mary’s or Laurel’s) mother.  It’s really okay — I kind of like being in the background.

The outdoor high ropes course at the Clark Sports Center in Cooperstown.

Yesterday, Mary did an outdoor high ropes course.  She said, “There were two rules.  The first was that you couldn’t call anyone ‘Hey, you’ so we had to learn everyone’s names.  If we couldn’t remember their name, we were supposed to ask them to tell us again because it’s disrespectful not to try to learn someone’s name.”

“What was the second rule?” I asked.

“I don’t remember,” she said.

When we visited my mother at the Manor, she was still in bed.  It was 11 AM.

“She’s being a stinker,” the nurse told us.

“Hi, Mom,” I said as I entered her room.

She turned and looked at me.  “Oh, hi,” she said.

“Are you going to get up today?” I asked.

“Not yet,” she replied.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked.

“Yes, I know who you are.”  She smiled at me.

“Okay, then,”  I challenged, “who am I?”

“You’re Sally.”

What a sweet little pleasure to realize that she still knows my name!

She knows my name.  I’m not the lady with the dog, or the one with a bunch of kids.  She knows my name.

Alzheimer's · Faith

My Inner Porcupine

Sally24 Comments

One of the most precious lessons I have learned (and am still learning) from my mother’s Alzheimer’s is not to take things personally.  I have such a tendency to do that!  When people say or do little things, and sometimes big things, that are mean or hurtful, I dwell on them.  With my mother, when she scolds or is angry, I just tell myself that it’s her illness talking.

The other day, I found myself doing it again — focusing on someone’s hurtful words and actions.  The thing is, other people may not have an Alzheimer’s problem, but they have a human problem.  We are all so painfully human.  Just as I excuse  my mother with her Alzheimer’s, I need to excuse others because they are just people.

Grace, grace, grace — so abundantly given to me, I should be able to share it.

There’s a porcupine within me
That bristles up at certain things
And I cannot quite control it
Or the turmoil that it brings.

When frightened, angry, hurt,
The little spears come into play,
And they prickle and they stab –
They make people move away.

Sometimes life is lonely,
With this porcupine inside.
Sometimes I don’t like me,
And I want to run and hide.

Why can’t I have a bunny
Hiding inside me?
With long soft ears and fluffy tail,
Huggable as can be.

Why can’t I have a puppy
Hiding there instead?
With wiggles, fun and energy –
A thing no one would dread.

But no, I have a porcupine
That I must learn to keep,
And the lessons that he teaches me
Are hard and sometimes deep.

But the lessons that I learn,
Painful though they be,
Help me to grow in grace, grace, grace –
And become a better me.