Wednesday, August 3, 2005
Yesterday was a quiet, easy day...
...full of sleep, the second season of Mary Tyler Moore (her birthday present from me) and my mother's savory eating requests. We got in only two meals; a breakfast with buckwheat blueberry pancakes covered with maple syrup and a dinner of tomato bisquit pie, in which Mom suggested we include green peppers, which I did and which was successful despite the green peppers competing for nose time with the basil in the crust, with Costco chocolate cake. Normally if dessert is being served we have a Just Desserts dinner or she waits for a couple of hours after dinner to have dessert. Last night, though, she surprised me by deciding, after a healthy slab of the dinner pie, that dessert was immediately in order. I allowed her to name her size on the cake. After jokingly asking how much I was going to have (a very thin slice postponed for a few hours...I'm not much into chocolate; even less than I ever was; maybe because closely watching my mother gorge on chocolate for some years caused me to lose my interest in it), she announced she'd take the rest of the cake, then marked out an inch and a half slice; a reasonable decision.
The only stats I took were two blood pressures, morning and night, both neatly in her normal zone. The power went out for about 15 minutes during an evening rain storm, which was fun, truly; after I scrounged candles (birthday candles, I guess; the best kind of birthday candles one can have: Power-out candles) Mom talked about her grandfather, who loved storms [from whom I guess I inherited this love]: He would stand outside in the middle of storms in "rain clothes".
MCS sent an arrangement of lilies that filled the house with fragrance. We chatted (again, excitedly) about the upcoming Saturday during which my mother will be spending the day with MPS. Mom received a birthday phone call from MCF and promise flowers later in the week. When I reminded Mom (again; she's asked me for this reminder a couple of times in the last week) how old she is she looked at me as though I was teasing and remarked, "I couldn't be that old!" She was alert and clear. We talked about Mechanicsville, the people she'd known there, relatives alive and dead (all of whose dispositions she remembered without prompting) and gently mourned those who "should still be alive" (such as her sister and brother, my father and, surprisingly, The Big Girl) but weren't. We talked, too, about the eventuality of her 90s, upon which Mom, once again, cautioned me, "Don't get old, Gail," but continued, "Of course I'll make it to my 90s; why wouldn't I?"
All in all, a successful day. Mom and I remarked, simultaneously, that it seemed like a Sunday.
Her light went off last night at 2330 so in 15 minutes I'll be bringing her into The Day After Her Birthday.
Later.
The only stats I took were two blood pressures, morning and night, both neatly in her normal zone. The power went out for about 15 minutes during an evening rain storm, which was fun, truly; after I scrounged candles (birthday candles, I guess; the best kind of birthday candles one can have: Power-out candles) Mom talked about her grandfather, who loved storms [from whom I guess I inherited this love]: He would stand outside in the middle of storms in "rain clothes".
MCS sent an arrangement of lilies that filled the house with fragrance. We chatted (again, excitedly) about the upcoming Saturday during which my mother will be spending the day with MPS. Mom received a birthday phone call from MCF and promise flowers later in the week. When I reminded Mom (again; she's asked me for this reminder a couple of times in the last week) how old she is she looked at me as though I was teasing and remarked, "I couldn't be that old!" She was alert and clear. We talked about Mechanicsville, the people she'd known there, relatives alive and dead (all of whose dispositions she remembered without prompting) and gently mourned those who "should still be alive" (such as her sister and brother, my father and, surprisingly, The Big Girl) but weren't. We talked, too, about the eventuality of her 90s, upon which Mom, once again, cautioned me, "Don't get old, Gail," but continued, "Of course I'll make it to my 90s; why wouldn't I?"
All in all, a successful day. Mom and I remarked, simultaneously, that it seemed like a Sunday.
Her light went off last night at 2330 so in 15 minutes I'll be bringing her into The Day After Her Birthday.
Later.
