My niece, Vickie, has been with us for several weeks, and her presence has made such a difference. She has taken over after-supper clean-up and Mom’s laundry, and she’s here in the afternoon to meet Mom’s van so I don’t have to leave work early every day.
My employers have been very flexible and understanding with my schedule, but it was still very hard juggling everything. Trying to complete my work day from home was nearly impossible with Mom always forgetting or never really understanding that I was still “on the clock” and calling from the other room just to ask me random questions or tell me what the wind speed was in a town 30 miles away from us.
Thursday evening, I pulled out Mom’s white board and wrote:
Vickie and I are going for a walk. We will be gone about an hour.
Mom carefully read the message and looked a little alarmed.
“You’re going to go for a walk for an hour?”
I nodded. Her brow furrowed.
“That’s a long walk! Y’all be careful.”
I nodded again, we set out, and I carefully locked the front door behind us, as Steve was in the back of the house watching TV.
It was a very nice walk. The little downtown area was lively. There were so many beautiful cloud formations. Vickie and I got to talk without interruptions. We got our heart rates up!
We were gone for about 40 minutes. The door was unlocked when we got back, which meant that Mom had, at least once, gotten up to look out the door for us. Or maybe she just didn’t want us to be locked out.
Not The Roommate I Expected 