Sleeping Beauty

Another day has passed and Mom lies asleep in the hospital . It seems like just yesterday she was awake and joining in the conversation. But now she is slumbering in her bed like Sleeping Beauty unaware of those around her.The nurses have turned on a channel that runs a constant loop of waves and ocean sounds. It may be restful for Mom, however I can't stop thinking of the television screens in each home in the book Fahrenheit 451. The television screens were used in much the same way to keep the inhabitants in a trance so they would not be conscious of their surroundings.

Since I am not a scientist I would like those that read my comments to understand they are my own observations. I cannot help looking at her and thinking that perhaps dementia is a retreat into a safer place much like the baby inside the womb. For Mom it does not seem to be a scary place, but a cozy space with the sounds of moving water and darkness. She seems to be perfectly happy.

I have not given up, however, I still look for the Mom who used to bring me chocolate dipped cones when I was sick. That wonderful experience caused me to be "sick" on many occasions. She was a Mom who was totally devoted to her family. Her relationship with her own Mother was not close, so I think she tried very hard to be the best Mom she could be for her children.

My sister and I always had new shoes for church and the first day of school. When it was a very special event she drove us to the nearest town twenty miles away so we would each have a special dress purchased from a "real" department store. In the end even though she tortured me with countless smelly perms to make my straight hair curly, just like Shirley Temple, I would still forgive her, give her a kiss, put on my jeans, grab my baseball glove and run across the road to play with my boy cousins. Despite my Mom's example of how a proper young lady must act, I never wanted to transform myself into a girlie girl. For me life was much more exciting climbing trees and wrestling with the boys, not kissing them. Yuck!

Cooked Squirrel?

As Mom sleeps peacefully in her bed, I gaze out at the gray fog as it creeps slowly along San Bruno Mountain. I try to put the monster that resides in my mind, the skilled nursing home, aside acting much like a child who hides under the covers when his parents turn off the light hoping it will never appear.

I think, once again, of the stories Mom would tell us about her Texas days. Being a city girl she never knew that squirrel was actually a part of the East Texas food pyramid. Squirrels for her were cute furry little things you fed peanuts to in the park. So when her father-in-law presented her with a freshly skinned squirrel she had no idea what to do with it. So she put the whole squirrel into a giant stew pot, added water and let it boil. Needless to say when it was "cooked" it looked and tasted like a gray mass of slightly hairy rubber. Her failure in the kitchen was further proof to her mother-in-law that her son had made a huge mistake when he married a damned Yankee!

So What if She Was Not a Great Cook

Much of my early childhood my Mom did not work. Her job was somewhat, June Cleaveresque, a typical woman of the 1950's. She stayed home and washed clothes and hung them up on a line in the back yard. To make sure my Dad's khakis had a crease she put a metal form inside them and then hung them up. The cleaning and ironing were easy for her.

However, her Achilles heel was cooking. Mom was a terrible cook. She had never had to cook until she was married. The kitchen for her was uncharted territory.I remember the famous lopsided cake that she baked for the church bake sale. Mom thought she could disguise the top layer's unevenness by placing some pink plastic flowers on the sloping side. Not yet able to appreciate this accomplishment, I was mortified when she placed it proudly on the table with the rest of the cakes for sale. The long table was filled with baked delicacies of every kind, fancy coconut cakes, red devil and German chocolate cakes. I prayed that the cake would not be the last one left on the table at the end of the sale. To my relief, her cake was not the last one purchased. Mom was so proud of herself that she sent home with a beautiful smile on her face.

Longing to be a Child

As I sit in the hospital room I find myself wanting to travel back in time to the happier days of my childhood. On a hot summer day Mom would give me some money and I would ride my bike down a red dusty road to the grocery store. Our town had one store so the selections were quite limited for its shoppers. I could smell the hickory smoke coming from the smoke house in the back. The African American gentleman was great cook and a real magician when it came to barbecue. He could take any cut of meat and turn it into something delectable. I can remember consuming many spicy barbecued chicken legs and soda - truly a feast for the gods.

I selected two of the individual bottles of clam juice and hopped on my bike. When I got home my Mom quickly consumed one. I could never understand why she thought clam juice was so good. I thought the gray fishy smelling liquid was totally disgusting! But now I understand-it was the closest she could get to her memories of the San Francisco Bay area now that she was living in an tiny town in East Texas with a population of 699.

Mom

It is not my intent for this blog to be a bummer for those who read it, but I think that it is something that all of us will face or have faced in our lives. My Mom is eighty-nine and she is now beginning to show signs of dementia. Writing is my way of dealing with Mom as she is now and at the same time remembering the Mom I knew as I was growing up. Perhaps this blog is a way that I can celebrate and share my Mom's life with others.

The past couple of days have been both harrowing, frustrating and inspiring. What is happening to Mom, what does she really want to do with the rest of her life? Right now she has not been able to communicate very much. She has been in the hospital, on oxygen and not interested in food for two days. All of a sudden she asks for soda. Her grand-daughter carefully feeds her the soda with a plastic spoon and wipes her mouth. The process itself looked like a Mother feeding her small child. It looked like a task that Mom must have done repeatedly for her three daughters over the years. Sher remarked how great it tasted. A simple remark such as this one gives us a glimmer of hope about the possibility of Mom's recovery.