My alarm goes off at 6:30 am. I don’t hear Mom’s alarm going off – this means she woke up early, turned it off, and is already up. Not always a good thing.
I go outside with the dogs because the new fence our neighbor is putting up is not quite finished. The mosquitoes are happy to see me. The dogs do their doggie business and we all come back in. Gracie bounces back and forth between her kennel and the fireplace, willing me to walk faster so she can have her breakfast. Sophie stays safely back so as not to get bounced on.
Mom is already sitting at the dining table, getting fresh paper napkins to crumble her oatmeal cookie on. I go to Mom’s bathroom to check to see if her sink is wet, which tells me she’s washed her hands, which in turn tells me that she changed her Depends before coming to the table, unlike Tuesday when she was up before me and I had to refuse to give her her coffee until she went back to pee and change her Depends. The sink is wet this morning – all is well.
I get Mom a new glass of water and her meds. I stand beside her to make sure she takes one pill at a time, as she is less likely to drop them on the floor than when she tries to shove three or four pills in together. If I’m watching, it’s one pill at a time. If I turn away, I find pills on the floor later. At least the dogs don’t eat them.
I pour our cups of coffee, give Mom hers, and walk mine to my desk (really my sewing machine case, closed, with a desk pad on top – it actually works quite well).
Sophie barks to let me know she’s finished eating, so I step back outside with the dogs for additional doggie business. Gracie takes care of hers right away. Sophie stares at me, wondering why I’m standing out there. I wait a couple more minutes, wave away a couple more mosquitoes, then call the dogs in. Gracie runs through the door, but Sophie realizes her window is closing and heads for the far corner of the yard. I wait just inside the slightly open door, hoping I’m successfully hiding from the mosquitoes. Sophie disappears around the corner where the fence is unfinished. I go look for her and I think interrupt her looking for good sand to eat. She finally comes inside with me.
I move toward me desk and see my to-do list from yesterday and remember Mom’s laundry. I go to the laundry room, pull her clothes from the washer to put in the dryer with her pants that I forgot about yesterday and which are now all wrinkled. That’s okay – the wrinkles will come out with the addition of the other wet clothes. I hope I don’t forget them again today. I put the towels from the Bath Lady visit last night into the washer, along with the spider I surprised as I gathered them up.
I go back to the living room to pull the two pairs of socks from under her little pillow. “You can put these in your hamper yourself, you know.” She says, “Okay”, but it’s not the ‘I understand and will do what you ask’ Okay. It’s the ‘If I say Okay maybe she’ll go on and let me watch my TV’ Okay. I take the socks and put them in hamper.
I ask Mom to trim her fingernails (another item on my to-do list). She says, “Not now,” which is what she always says. It usually take two or three requests before she does it.
I finally move back to my desk, sit down for morning journaling, and have my first sip of coffee. As I’m writing, the phone starts singing a calypso song to remind me that it is now 7:05 and I need to tell Mom to get dressed, as she has, as near always, fallen asleep sitting up on the couch. I move to the couch, touch her arm, and say “Time to get dressed!” She gathers up several napkins and tissues to stash under her pillow, but I take them to throw them away. She puts the nail trimmers back in the little glass dish on the end table. I move them back to the arm of the couch and remind her she needs to trim her nails. “I don’t want to do it now!”
She leans back against the couch cushion, and I have to say, again, “Time to get dressed!” because she’s forgotten in our exchange with the napkins and nail clippers.
I come back to my desk, have my second sip of coffee, and resume journaling. I absentmindedly scratch at a mosquito bite on my leg. A few minutes later, I notice Mom come out of her bedroom, move toward the couch, then turn around and head back to the bedroom. For socks. She remembered that I had just cleared out her cache. She returns to the couch, and I hear her whistling, wheezing breaths as she works to get her socks and shoes on. I know if I offer to help, she will forever relinquish the task to me, and that will be one less thing she does for herself. One less thing she does at all.
The dogs start barking as the Wheelchair Transport car rounds the corner and approaches our house. Over their noise, Mom yells, “Kay! Kay! My ride is here.” I walk into the living room to check her shoes. Today, unlike most mornings, she has succeeded in getting both shoes on properly. Hooray! I take the pop-clip from the glass dish she has returned the nail clippers to, and clip her hair back out of her eyes. She keeps refusing a trip to the salon, even though a couple of weeks ago she asked Vickie to trim her hair with the kitchen shears. Vickie politely refused, reminding her grandmother that she is a nurse, and hasn’t been a hairdresser for almost 30 years. Mom still doesn’t understand why Vickie won’t just whack her hair off with those scissors in the kitchen drawer.
I corral the dogs into the studio and open the front door. “Will you be home at regular time?” she asks. I nod. “Tell Steve hello for me. Have a good day and I’ll see y’all tonight!”
She steps out the door, and I watch as she approaches the edge of the porch, heaves her walker up into the air and then down the one step. I want her to continue to have the strength to do things like this. I worry about her toppling over. Today she is fine. I wave to the transport driver and close the door behind her.
I finish up my journaling by writing out three affirmations, five times each. This morning’s affirmations are:
- I envision my life as I want it to be.
- All is well, and even better things are coming.
- I attract positive people and great opportunities.
Sometimes I find myself repeating them in my head later in the day, which I guess is the whole point.
The dryer buzzes. Back to the laundry room. I dump all the clothes from the dryer into the ‘Clean Clothes Only’ basket and take it into Mom’s room to put everything away: 8 shirts, 8 pairs of pants, 2 nightgowns, 2 housecoats – and 2-1/2 pairs of socks.
Not The Roommate I Expected 