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 »
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 »
Three Years In
July 17, 2011
Alice flew in to Portland three years ago today. She was almost ninety-three years old. (See Alice bin Laden.) Read the rest of this entry »
Goodnight, Irene
January 16, 2011
When Alice arrived in the dining room, finally released from her apartment after a 12-day flu quarantine, she noticed Irene’s place mat was upside down. Without a thought, she turned it over and started looking around to see who else had been liberated. Read the rest of this entry »
Toast to Alice
September 9, 2010
I decided to extend the celebration of Alice’s 95th birthday by smuggling a contraband item into her apartment: a toaster.
Toasters are not allowed at The Place, and I’ve tried to imagine why. Maybe, long ago, a resident burned a piece of toast. An Emergency Anti-Toaster Meeting was called by the Director, who observed that the smoke alarm could have gone off. So then, put it in the rules and stamp it with a stamp: No more toasters!
One’s final years with no toast available except the cold, soggy version served at breakfast in the dining room–unbearable thought. What does one do with that yen, that ache of desire that comes late at night, the ache that toast and butter and strawberry jam will soothe? A delicious and sensual mixture–hot, slippery, and sweet–a satisfaction on the same continuum as something else that too often goes missing with old age.
One has lost one’s home, one’s animal companions, one’s garden, one’s trees, one’s husband or wife or partner, one’s comforts of the flesh. So much sacrifice. And now this little pleasure, too. Gone.
And maybe one’s adult children, if one has any, are far away or don’t give a damn or are munching away on their own toast, assured that one of advanced age needs neither sex nor toast when in fact one needs both, but toast anyhow will suffice. One pines for a slice of toast.
But no. One’s pinings had just better settle down. Go to bed. Count sheep.
For two years, Alice and I abided by the no-toaster rule, along with all the other rules of The Place. I listened to her say–very, very often–that she’d really love a piece of toast. She doesn’t even get the cold soggy version because she doesn’t eat breakfast in the dining room where it’s served. She’d like to have her hot toast in her own apartment which, by the way, is tiny and yet exceedingly expensive.
Apartment. Not a nursing home. Not a hospital. The apartment residents are men and women who may need help getting dressed or taking a shower on their own. Dropping a piece of bread into a toaster and taking it out again is not beyond them.
Maybe I’ve gained courage because I’ve never been spotted clipping a few of the many unappreciated roses along the chapel wall, at least not spotted by anyone except the neighborhood dogs. Alice loves the roses I bring her. And so for a follow-up birthday gift, on an impulse, I purchased a toaster at a nearby Fred Meyer store, along with bread, butter and jam. One-stop shopping.
Alice’s big blue eyes widened when she unwrapped the gleaming white toaster. I may as well have given her a brick of gold. “Can I?” she asked. “Really? Did something change?”
Nothing changed, I told her, and would she please keep it hidden when not in use? She immediately tried out several hiding places: hall closet, upper kitchen cupboard, lower kitchen cupboard, under the sink. Finally she found the right cubby hole.
Later that night she called. “The caretaker came by on her rounds to see if I’m all right, and she’s not coming back again tonight. So I’m going to have some toast and jam. No wait, wait! First I’m going to get ready for bed, then I’m going to have my toast and jam. Then I’m going to let the toaster cool down. Then I’m going to hide it again. And then I’m going to bed.”
Goodnight, TV set. Goodnight, La-Z-Boy. Goodnight, lamp. Goodnight, book. Goodnight, toaster.
The Dapper Man and the Mystery of the Fancy Chocolate
September 4, 2010
Alice has a new admirer. Unlike Mr. Fickle, he wears clothes that fit. “Sometimes he turns his collar up,” she told me. He is not tall, but his posture is admirable, shoulders back, arms like drumsticks at his sides. His “good head of hair,” precisely combed, is a pleasing shade of gray. His shoes are polished. He’s new at The Place and she doesn’t know his name. She calls him The Dapper Man.
The Dapper Man, one of the very few men in residence, took immediately to gazing at Alice from across the dining room. Last week he stopped by her table and greeted her and Irene. He said something to Alice that she couldn’t quite hear, but instead of saying her hearing failed her, she smiled and appeared to agree with him. She almost regretted this when he nodded and walked away slowly and more confidently than she felt the occasion deserved. Since then she’s been watching him to see if he continues to watch her and to observe what he’s up to.
The other night when she got to her table in the dining room, she found a brightly wrapped cube of chocolate atop her napkin. Read the rest of this entry »
Dining with Irene
September 2, 2010
When all is going well (no medical appointments, no trips to ER, no groceries to buy, errands to run, etc.), Alice and I speak on the phone twice every day, once in the morning and once at night. In the morning she tells me how she slept. In the evening she tells me what happened that day with Irene and her food.
(See Hello, Irene for how these two ended up eating lunch and dinner together.)
Whatever happens with Irene (age 109) and her food depends on the workers, who are called aides. So fast is the merry-go-round of poorly paid help at The Place that Alice barely has time to learn their names. (“Oh, you know who I mean, the one with the big gob of hair on top of her head; the one who shouts YOU GOT IT whenever anybody asks her for anything; the one whose pants are so tight they’ve got to hurt her; the one with the pretty teeth; the one with a bead stuck in her nose, with tattoos on her legs, with arms as big as three-year old kids, poor heavy girl, what can be wrong there?”)
These women, often single mothers desperate for income, will leave if they can get fifty cents more an hour somewhere else. Alice sympathizes with their lot, but her measuring stick for whether or not she likes them is how they treat Irene. Irene is almost completely blind and deaf, and perpetually at the mercy of a sweet tooth. Alice wants to outwit that tooth, but because she cannot feed Irene herself, the frail little body rarely gets much protein and very few vegetables. Depending on awareness, compassion, and time, the aides may or may not be able to pay attention to what the oldest person in the facility eats, or even if she eats at all. Because of budget constraints, they are rushed and overworked. They wash linens, respond to calls for help, assist residents in going to the bathroom, getting dressed, getting into and out of chairs, and so forth. And they serve as the wait staff in the dining room.
Alice regards Irene as a treasure. She believes that Irene should receive her meal first, always. Irene is, after all, one of the oldest people on earth. But The Place runs perversely on democracy. Sometimes Irene is first, but usually not, meaning she may have to wait up to an hour before she can eat.
Alice is normally shy of drawing attention to herself, but when she arrives at their table, she shouts out within earshot of the entire dining room, “Irene, it’s me Alice. I’m here now.”
And Irene invariably smiles when she answers, “I know who you are.” Which, to someone aged 109, is a sentence that carries more meaning than it would for you and me.
When she has to wait to be served, Irene occasionally calls to no one in particular, “When are we going to eat?” She might tire of waiting and return to her apartment hungry. But when she stays, she eventually insists on coffee and bangs her empty cup on the table until a hassled aide comes and fills it. Alice is unhappy about this banging, but she recognizes the frustration.
Last night Alice gave me a typical nightly report on Irene. Here it is in full: “The one with the gob of hair on top came and plunked down Irene’s plate way over at the edge of the table. At least she put the fork into Irene’s hand, but she didn’t pay any attention to me when I said Irene couldn’t see the plate and didn’t know where it was. Off she went. I stood up and tottered over toward Irene’s side of the table and moved the plate. She opened her mouth like a baby bird. She wanted me to feed her. But I can’t stand up long enough to feed her and there’s no room for my walker in that corner. I got back to my chair and called out that Irene needs help. ‘Someone help Irene! Please help Irene!’ They didn’t come and didn’t come and then finally the one with the pretty teeth came over and fed her two forkfuls of beans and she left and the tattoo girl came by and shoved a piece of pie in front of her. Irene pushed the dinner plate away and started eating the pie with her fingers because she’d lost her fork by that time. And then when I got up to leave after I finished eating, she reached out her sticky little hand to take mine and squeeze it, and you know, I have to grab hold of that hand, no matter how sticky it is. She eats with her fingers so much of the time because she keeps losing her fork, but I have to squeeze it, you know. Because it’s Irene. I’m sure she ate the whole piece of pie after I left, but I bet she only got those two forkfuls of beans. Oh Irene.” A long pause. “My goodness. How are they going to treat me when I’m old?”
She caught herself and managed to chuckle at the distant possibility that she might one day get old, but her blood pressure was up again, she said, and I promised to talk to the administrative staff because Irene has no relatives to speak on her behalf. I know what will happen because I’ve done this before. They’ll instruct the aides to put the plate where Irene can reach it and to make sure she eats real food. They will ask them to withhold sweets until she has finished her meal. But then these aides will scatter, one by one. They’ll be replaced by other overworked women on the edge of poverty, and these new women may or may not be able to afford the mindfulness necessary to see and to care about this ancient one, this redwood in a forest of venerable oaks.
© 2010 Andrea Carlisle
Dog of God
August 25, 2010
One of the members of what Alice calls “the Rosary bunch” lives across the hall from her. Edie is in her eighties, frail and slow-moving. She has a heart-shaped face and short gray hair. A gentle soul. She tilts her head far to one side when she speaks in a whispery voice that I’m not sure is the result of age or is her natural, life-long low volume.
Recently, Edie stopped on her way into her apartment to greet my dog, Brio, as we arrived to visit Alice. She misses her dog, who lives with her son now. We talked about how many people there at The Place left animals behind–with family, with friends, or with no one at all but the person who took them to the Humane Society. We talked about how the dogs, and cats, too, had to work out the displacement. Would they attach to a new person, stay faithful and wait for a return that would never happen, or give up?
Brio had been plucked from the streets of Los Angeles by animal control and saved by a rescue agency on the day she was scheduled to be executed. I found her photograph online and knew she belonged with me and I with her. But she was in LA. My dear friend Thalia donated frequent flyer miles so that I and another dear friend, Kathy, could go get her.
Kathy and I got a deal on a rental car at the Burbank airport, scooped up Brio (whose rescue agency name was Clarity) and headed back to Oregon with our navigator, Thalia, on her cell phone from home, checking online for pet friendly motels along the way and calling ahead to reserve rooms for us, as well as offering sound itinerary advice.
At no point on this journey would the dog answer to Clarity. Maybe she thought it was a little silly. We spent much of the road trip trying out other names, but none fit. Finding my dog’s new and true name of Brio took only about a week of living with her. She brims over with life.
With Alice at the helm, no dog who lived with our family got to sit on furniture, but Brio is invited to climb up on Alice’s green sofa, stretch out, and shed to her heart’s content. She is also allowed on the bed. Alice saves up bits of cheese and crackers for her visits and leaves a water bowl permanently on the floor in the kitchen. She keeps a tennis ball on her desk for games of fetch. When I once complained that my new dog had chewed up a pair of my favorite slippers, Alice leaned forward to better focus her weakened eyes on Brio’s face, smoothed back the floppy ears, and said to her, “You can’t be perfect all the time, can you?”
In short, Brio is her grand-dog.
About an hour after I’d run into Edie, Alice and Brio and I started out for a walk. To get outside we had to pass through the Rosary room, which is presided over by a statue of a shepherd with a lamb slung over his shoulder.
Alice–non-Catholic, non-Protestant, non-church-goer and never a Bible reader–pushed her walker up to the shepherd. “Every time Edie passes this statue,” she said, “she stops and kisses the dog.”
She kissed her fingertips and pressed them against the lamb’s forehead. “Like that.”
I suggested the animal might be a lamb and the statue might represent what Christians call the One Lamb of God.
Alice squinted hard at the statue. Her face clouded with confusion and then, from within, a church bell from childhood must have chimed. The confusion cleared away. She sat down on her walker, crossed her arms across her belly, and held on to her elbows with her hands as she rocked from side to side laughing. “I’m going to hell!”
We stayed in the Rosary room for a while contemplating dogs and lambs and the merits of each. Then we pulled ourselves together and Brio led us out into the light.
The One Lamb of God
Dog of God (one of millions)
Kathy and Brio
Thalia and Brio
In the Gloaming
August 9, 2010
Last week was rough on Alice–a trip to ER with heart problems, a two-day stay in the hospital, and a bout with flu when she got back home. All this has made her anxious, sad, and thoughtful. She called me a little while ago. She’d been thinking about this song (written in 1877; “gloaming” is an old Scottish word for “twilight”). She used to sing it, she said, while she was ironing our family’s clothes (six wardrobes, so she sang quite a few songs, but this is one she sang over and over).
Here’s a bit of it (complete lyrics at end of this post; click here to listen):
In the gloaming, oh my darling
When the lights are soft and low
And the quiet shadows falling
Softly come and softly go
When the trees are sobbing faintly
With a gentle unknown woe
Will you think of me and love me
As you did once long ago?
In the gloaming, oh my darling
think not bitterly of me
Though I passed away in silence
Left you lonely, set you free
She said she remembered today that my oldest brother, Bruce, once came to her as she ironed and asked why she sang this particular song. She had no idea.
Bruce–a brilliant, funny, and talented boy–died by suicide a few years later, at nineteen (no note, but a relationship had recently ended, though not with the friend shown below). After that our family lived in the mystery and misery of his passing. “Where’s Boo?” my little sister asked for a long while, and then finally stopped asking when we had no good answer for her. Now only Alice and I are left, and from time to time we still wonder how this death came to be.
I asked if she would sing In the Gloaming for me today, and she did, her voice a little trembly but still pretty. After she finished, she said that now she sees the song could be about suicide, and that Bruce may have understood it to be so.
We talked about why she had sung it so often back then. Was it a premonition? Or an unconscious cue to Bruce that she was sympathetic to how this sort of thing could happen to someone? Or was it simply a song that fit well with the rhythm of ironing?
These are the sorts of questions she and I are left with fifty-two years after Bruce’s death. I know she still cries about losing him and losing my father, as well as my other brother, Michael, and my sister, Marla, who both also died too young. But she’s a Scandinavian and a Midwesterner, and so she doesn’t let people see her cry in sorrow, not even me. Nobody at The Place even knows that she once had four children.
We talked about the song for a few minutes, and then she said, “I wonder what we’re having for lunch in the dining room.” Subject changed.
Once, I would have tried to make her linger in this kind of conversation. I would have wanted her to reveal hidden emotions, or hoped we’d keep pushing until we arrived at some insight. But now I wondered along with her, What would they have for lunch? We abandoned the deep conversation and let it slide into the mundane because it is her wish to do this, and she’s very old and tires easily and is in a gloaming of her own.
Bruce
In the gloaming, oh my darling
When the lights are soft and low
And the quiet shadows falling
Softly come and softly go
When the trees are sobbing faintly
With a gentle unknown woe
Will you think of me and love me
As you did once long ago?
In the gloaming, oh my darling
Think not bitterly of me
Though I passed away in silence
Left you lonely, set you free
For my heart was tossed with longing
What had been could never be
It was best to leave you thus, dear
Best for you and best for me
In the gloaming, oh my darling
When the lights are soft and low
Will you think of me and love me
As you did once long ago?
Music composed by Annie Fortescue Harrison for the poem In the Gloaming, written by Meta Orred.
This is a beautiful version by The Story:
Alice’s Make-Up Recipe
July 16, 2010
Alice told me she needed some “tops”–blouses, shirts, sweaters. We decided to take the new walker out for an extended spin at Lloyd Center, the nearest mall.
She had never heard of Marshall’s and wanted to go inside the moment she saw it, despite my hesitation. Once inside the door she looked around and loudly announced, “These are the worst looking clothes I’ve ever seen in my life.” Nevertheless, she dispensed with her walker and ventured off stiffly on her own, holding onto clothing racks jammed with floral prints and plunging necklines. I followed anxiously behind, pushing the walker, just in case. After a trip down the third aisle with no results, she grabbed it from me and got into position. “Let’s blow this joint,” she said, doing her best Brando from The Wild One.
Sears was next door, but that didn’t please her either. She held up a slinky black top with beaded buttons in a zig-zag pattern down the front. “Am I supposed to wear this?”
But when I found the Land’s End racks she began tossing blouses and sweaters onto the seat and arms of her walker, using it like a grocery cart. I felt awed by my mother’s capacity to keep going. She read my mind. “Aren’t I amazing?”
I agreed that she was. She turned her face up to me and wanted to know if her make-up looked okay. It did. I asked why she wanted to know. “Because,” she said, “I made it myself.”
A woman about a decade older than I hovered nearby, listening. Read the rest of this entry »
