Separate Tables
April 13, 2013
As noted in the post One Good Thing, Mr. Fickle has been smitten for a while with a woman Alice calls The Young and the Restless (or, in notes to Nadine, Y&R).
Alice has marveled at Y&R’s jet black hair and wardrobe. Sometimes in our evening conversations I’ve learned what the woman was wearing that day: lots of makeup (always), several rings (usually), a brocade jacket and skirt. (“Imagine!” says Alice.) A dress with a skirt that swings. A sparkling brooch on a well-cut jacket, and so on. Y&R may have dementia but it’s done nothing to dull her sharp sense of style.
Nadine
March 25, 2013
“Nadine is not a bone eater,” Alice said.
It started with a tweet:
After the Fall Casserole (Revisited)
November 15, 2012
Alice misses Celia, and I miss her too. I decided to reread last year’s Thanksgiving blog post to remind myself of the fun they had together. Here’s the post again, updated to include the recipe for our friend Julia’s amazing apple cake. Read the rest of this entry »
Monkey Girl
September 15, 2012
Not long ago, Alice and I attended a small service held for Celia in the activity room at The Place. Her grandson, a man around fifty, walked in carrying an enormous bouquet, a laptop, screen, and disk of photographs showing Celia throughout her life. He also brought cookies, punch, and some good stories.
For example, he revealed that Celia had once kept company with a lynx.
The big cat shared her bed and slept with his head on her shoulder.
Farewell
August 5, 2012
Celia died on Thursday night. The confusion (Sightings) is over, the contradictions (Interlude) at an end.
Alice heard this news on Friday at noon. Two hours later she had what she calls an “episode,” which means she becomes dizzy, feels weak, experiences heat and tingling in her arms and legs, and her systolic blood pressure shoots up, usually over 200. She started having these episodes after Celia suffered a bad fall and left The Place for a nursing home several weeks ago.
Interlude
July 31, 2012
On Friday Alice learned from Celia’s son that his mother was, indeed, dying and it was happening quickly.
Later in the day, however, I called the nursing home and at once found myself in the peculiar zone of contradictory information that Alice had entered last week when she was trying to get news of Celia’s well-being. (See Sightings.)
I explained my concerns to the nurse on duty, who seemed surprised at the mention of imminent death, and I was taken aback when she told me that, although she could not give me details, Celia was fine.
How could she be fine?
What strange material is the veil that covers Celia and her whereabouts and her well-being.
Read the rest of this entry »
Sightings
July 23, 2012
“Everyone is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.”
- Jane Austen
Celia fell in her apartment several weeks ago and left The Place to recover in the hospital and then a nursing home.
Since then, she and Alice have spoken twice by phone. The conversations proved frustrating for both. Alice couldn’t hear, and Celia talked grimly about an uncertain future. She might come back to The Place, or she might have to move to another nursing home. Her living situation, she said, was no longer in her hands.
They gave up on phone calls. Alice has faced her friend’s long absence armed with nothing more than hope.
Then on Saturday, as lunchtime ended, the woman Alice calls the Bead Lady came to her table in the dining room.
The Bead Lady makes her own jewelry and usually likes to talk about the craft. But this time she touched Alice’s shoulder and told her how sad she felt that Celia had passed away.
She talked for a while in sympathetic tones but Alice couldn’t hear her. Finally, the Bead Lady pushed her walker toward the elevator, leaving Alice speechless and wondering if this news could be true.
In Alice’s mind, the Bead Lady seemed the weakest link in the slender chain of people around Celia. In fact, Alice had never even seen the two of them talking to one another. Was this some awful misunderstanding about Celia’s absence from the dining room or, given the wall of secrecy around health issues, had something happened Alice didn’t know about?
She set off to find out.
A Bit of Good Cheer
July 5, 2012
Alice lit up when I told her KD Lang had recently moved to Portland. She clasped her hands together and asked if it was possible we might run into her.
KD Lang had been one of her favorite singers back in the days when Alice’s hearing was fully intact. (During this same time period, Paula Poundstone was her favorite comedienne until Ellen DeGeneres came along. Are you catching a drift here?)
Alice’s No Good Very Bad Day
July 2, 2012
First of all, the hearing aid for her good ear fell from her hands when she was changing batteries, and it broke. The other one isn’t working at all, so the hearing situation is worse than usual.
Read the rest of this entry »
Fear of Falling
June 20, 2012
Celia fell on Monday and hit her head. Once again, an ambulance came to take her away. Left behind, Alice worries and wonders, just as she did last week when Celia was rushed off in an ambulance. (See Strange Aches.) Read the rest of this entry »
Strange Aches
June 11, 2012
On Sunday, Celia came to lunch and told Alice that her arms felt numb. She could not pick up her fork. Alarmed, Alice called one of the aides to the table and within minutes more aides arrived. Off went Celia to the nurse’s station and then into an ambulance.
Read the rest of this entry »
Dispatches from the Dining Room
June 5, 2012
Dispatch #1
As she approached her table for dinner, Alice spied something on the floor. With her poor eyesight she could make out that it was small, light in color, and unimportant as far as she was concerned. She ignored it. Read the rest of this entry »
The Big Squeeze
March 24, 2012
“You should start using this stuff too,” Alice advised when she picked up a tube of Neutrogena with Retinol on our latest trip to the grocery store. She took a long look at my face, examining creases and planes for potential meltdowns. Read the rest of this entry »
Happy Days
February 7, 2012
Why is this woman dancing? Read the rest of this entry »
Cheers
January 31, 2012
On one of our evening phone calls, I told Alice I was going to bring her a surprise. When I got to her apartment the next day in the company of my old friend, Gordon, she had written out a list of guesses as to what her surprise might be: Read the rest of this entry »
Update: Celia and Mr. Fickle
January 29, 2012
Since the report on big changes in the well-being of both Celia and Mr. Fickle in the Winter Stars post, several readers have written me to ask for an update. Read the rest of this entry »
Winter Stars
January 16, 2012
Two weeks ago, Celia saw Mr. Fickle emerge from his apartment and dance down the hall to the drinking fountain. A few days later, Alice spotted him dancing along the sidewalk outside her window. Read the rest of this entry »
What Mother is This?
December 29, 2011
“I have an inferiority complex,” Alice announced almost happily on Christmas day, as if she’d just found one in her stocking.
Read the rest of this entry »
Things Go Missing
November 28, 2011
Last week, Alice was unable to locate her curling iron.
After the Fall Casserole
November 21, 2011
Last Monday, at lunch time, Alice (age 96) and Celia (age 95) sat at their table scanning the coming week’s menu. “What is ‘Fall Casserole’?” Alice asked when she came to Friday’s fare.
Celia, who is disdainful of the cooking at The Place, didn’t bother to look up. “It’s probably made with leaves,” she said. Read the rest of this entry »
Order Up!
October 18, 2011
If you have an elderly mother from the Midwest, you are probably familiar with the sight of catalogs like these on her coffee table:
Read the rest of this entry »
The Children’s Hour
September 26, 2011
Alice once had a teacher who disliked her so much that, when she couldn’t answer a question in Civics class, he threw a book at her.
The Mystery of the Ugly Vest
September 8, 2011
All week Alice has been puzzling over a wool vest Mr. Fickle has been wearing to the dining room, despite temperatures in the 90s. Read the rest of this entry »
Looking Good
August 13, 2011
Not long ago, Alice asked me if it was okay for her to wear her “white jeans” to the dining room. She’d unearthed a pair from one of the Iowa clothing boxes she keeps in the back of her closet.
Read the rest of this entry »
Let Go and Let Alice
July 21, 2011
At her request, I took Alice shopping at Goodwill on “Senior Citizens’ Day.” She was once in the clothing business herself and knows about retail mark-up, so a five-dollar blouse slashed to four dollars makes her feel like she’s getting away with something just by being old. Read the rest of this entry »
Noteworthy
June 20, 2011
Because of their poor hearing, Alice and her new dining room partner, Celia, have started passing notes back and forth to learn about what’s going on in one another’s lives. They worry about how other people at The Place might react to what they’re writing because these very people are often the subjects of their exchanges. So they tend to treat the notes like CIA operatives would treat missives about undercover operations. In other words, they all but eat them once they’ve been read.
Whatever Libby Wants – Update
April 10, 2011
For the past month, Alice has been listening to her dining room partner, Libby, comment frequently on what’s happening with the flag, viewed from Libby’s position facing the front window: “The flag is waving. It’s windy.” “The flag stopped waving. Wind must have died down.” “The flag has a hole in it. They should replace it.” “The flag is at half-staff. Who died? Wait a minute. No, it’s not. It’s the normal way.” “The flag looks droopy. Must be sad.”
Libby cleans her fingernails with her fork, stares and points at people with palsy, shouts at passersby, and wipes her plate with her napkin when she’s finished eating and then uses the napkin to wrap up food she then places in a pocket she calls “the garbage dump.” She also talks with her mouth full.
