Status Update

Status has always been a big deal to my mother. I guess it must be a lifelong concern because even at 81 she is playing her status cards at every opportunity.

Last weekend the ‘Village’ had a style show. I didn’t plan to attend with my mom but she was looking forward to going. One of my favorite residents, Phil, laughingly told me he was going to attend, but he would be on the second story overlooking the atrium, prepared to spit or catcall, depending on what seemed most inappropriate. He also told the coordinator of the style show to have plenty of duct tape handy. I love Phil.

Anyway, my mom was prepared to attend the style show but at the last minute she was asked to be a model. The store sponsoring the show was Coldwater Creek and my mother was asked to model something from their ‘junior’ department. Okay, so I’ve been in a Coldwater Creek store before and I’m sure they have perfectly nice clothing but I always think I’m simply not old enough to wear those fashions. I’m having trouble envisioning a junior department. Regardless, my mom was asked to participate. Initially she declined the invitation because she can’t walk very well without support of her walker or something to stabilize her balance. She was told, however, that a suitable escort would be found so that she could leave her walker behind. In no time she was donning a pair of red Capri pants and strutting through the atrium with a handsome stud on her arm. She suddenly achieved celebrity status!

Someone from the ‘Village’ staff took photos of her and gave my mom copies. She showed the photos to pretty much everyone in the place. All were impressed. I think she was the only model who merited a hunky guy as an escort, which improved her position considerably.

In addition to being a fashion model, she has started volunteering in the marketing office at the ‘Village.’ She invited a friend to volunteer with her a few days ago but apparently found the other woman’s inability to follow directions frustrating and finally concluding that the other resident simply hadn’t ever worked a day in her life. The first time my mom volunteered she was given a free meal ticket. After working the second time she asked for her free meal ticket and was told that the marketing budget didn’t allow for a meal ticket every time she worked. She was miffed about that and said she didn’t plan to volunteer anymore.

Perhaps we need to review the meaning of the word volunteer. Regardless, I’m sure the status she gets from ‘working’ there will have her back in volunteer mode soon. Not without complaining and griping about the lack of compensation, I am sure, but she’ll be working nonetheless.

Being in a relationship also seems to enhance one’s status in her living environment. I thought a romance was in the works a couple of weeks ago. She seemed to have her sights set on a particular man. She found a way to sit by him, boss him around, receive gifts from him and in general make sure he knew all about her. I thought for sure love was in the air. I expected a visit from Captain Stubing and Julie at any moment. But, it seemed to have ended as quickly as it started. I asked about him the other day and her response was, “Oh, he gets on my nerves.” “Why,” I asked. “He slobbers when he talks,” came her impatient response.

Clearly a deal breaker….status or no status.

She's Having Trouble Getting Acquainted?

The adventure continues…

Things are actually going along much better than I thought they would! Mommie Dearest has now been officially in her apartment for two weeks and, all-in-all, I think it is going great! She, of course, has a different opinion.

She needs a couch so I took her shopping for one. That is a trick. She can’t remember one couch from the other in the time it takes to go from one side of the store to the other. I finally resorted to taking a photo of each couch and writing down the cost and dimensions. It could take months for her to make a decision. In the meantime, without a couch it just doesn't feel like home to her.

There have been a couple of ‘down’ days. One when she forgot to take her medication. Her doctor didn’t seem to think it should affect her but I’m not sure he is right. That will require observation. Another day she was just tired and weepy. She said she didn’t understand why she had two husbands and neither of them stayed alive long enough to take care of her in her old age. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she probably sucked the life right out of them! When her second husband died I told her she could not torture any more men. Lately I’ve been thinking one more could be sacrificed. But, she seems to think all of the men where she is living are too old. My attempts at matchmaking have largely fallen flat. It helps the matchmaking process if those being matched are able to remember one another from one meeting to the next.

Several times she has told me she is having trouble getting acquainted with people. Evidence points to the contrary. When she lived in Michigan she had three friends. She and her three friends forgot they weren’t in junior high, apparently, and would go to the dining room, commandeer ‘their’ table and intimidate others from trying to befriend them or sit with them. They sat at the ‘cool table,’ I guess. Anyway, now that she lives in Colorado she can’t seem to find a ‘cool table’ over which to reign. Recently she has taken to sitting with a group of men who welcome her company and say it is much more fun when she sits with them. Perhaps she can do some of her own matchmaking! Regardless, she tells me…

...she is having trouble getting acquainted.

A few days ago, while having lunch with Mommie Dearest, a woman named Marge told me that my mother seems to be doing great, participating in lots of things and meeting lots of people. This was all happening while my mother was having another conversation with a different woman about how her children had taken her car away and she couldn’t drive anymore and discussing and with yet another woman her hairstyle and the possibility of my mother adopting a similar style. Regardless, she tells me…

…she is having trouble getting acquainted.

Yesterday my siblings and I got an email from Mommie Dearest saying that she was doing volunteer work with the marketing rep at ‘The Village’ stuffing envelopes and affixing address labels in exchange for meal tickets. Today she will be having lunch with prospective residents and telling them all about her experience with moving into Cherry Creek Retirement Village. I’m sure she’ll tell them…

…she is having trouble getting acquainted.

Savoring Summer

June 1 has come and gone. Thus marks the beginning of summer.

I am aware that the ‘official’ start to summer won’t happen for 20 more days but for me summer is now fully up and running. It happens to be my favorite season.

Its favorite status might be a throwback to the years when I was home schooling my children and summer marked a carefree time when the only requirements for the day were getting up in the morning and playing late into the night.

But being my favorite season could go all the way back to my childhood. I loved summer because it meant no school. Even in college, although I worked in the summer, there was a definite marking of time when school was out and summer was in.

Regardless, summer, as with every season, is nature's way of reminding us that time marches on.

In my early adult years I relocated from Michigan to Southern California and that was the first time I noticed that seasonal changes held within them significant reminders to stop and savor life. I was young and not as apt to reflect on how quickly time slips by but the lack of significant difference between an LA summer and an LA winter bothered me. It was then that I realized that the change of seasons is a regular reminder that time never stops. We grow older. Life changes and we can never slow it down. Without intentionally regarding each day as special, one melds right into the other and years pass before we even realize it.

In the years when my children were little the passage of time seemed at warp speed. Granted, the seasons changed; their birthdays and special accomplishments marked the years. I observed them with care but with so much happening there was little time to fully reflect on how fast it was all passing. At least summer afforded us a bit more down time to just relax and enjoy one another.

Throughout the years when I was working I rarely got to fully enjoy the seemingly purposeless days of summer. One season blended into the next without much fanfare.
Last summer I quit my job in early July. I vowed to fully embrace and savor each summer day. But, by the time my siblings and I had cleaned out my mom’s house and I had rested up from too many months of being overwhelmed…summer was coming to a close and I hadn’t embraced or savored.

And here I am again…another summer has arrived and another vow has been made! Maybe this year it is different. Maybe all this recent reflection on aging and the constant reminders of how brief life truly is will actually cause me to pause and savor this most favorite season.

I still have the daily routines to follow and a dissertation to write. But, it is all about to change. I can feel it. Just three short years from now my last baby will be finished with high school. By that time both my boys will have left home for good. The time for me to stop and savor these moments is now. I’ll never get these moments again.

So in honor of June 1, 2010…a day I’ll never live again…I planted sage in my herb garden and put of pot of basil and a tomato plant on my deck to be lovingly tended each day. By having to water and care for these plants I hope I’m reminded to slow down and lovingly tend to the people in my life as well.

Robert Frost said it best: “There’s absolutely no reason for being rushed along with the rush. Everybody should be free to go very slow.”