My mother’s passing

My mother hasn’t died yet, but she is passing away already. She’s sleeping more and translating the activities of the present and past less fluently.

Monday she obsessed about a brown blanket and the fight people had in her room over it. I asked questions to try to determine if she meant a black scarf that had come in the mail last week that I opened in her room or if this memory was about something else. As I was going through her mail I came to a full-page glossy ad and Mom got excited, saying “You found it. That’s the blanket.” So a brown blanket had never actually been delivered to her. But nevertheless the “memory” was strong for her and upseting. She wanted to just shake them (whoever they were) for fighting over something that was hers. She brought it up several times during both my visits this week.

So she’s passing away. She’s passing to places I can’t navigate. I just don’t have enough clues to use or the proper instruments. They don’t make a dementia GPS. Until now I’ve been pretty good at being able to wander through the world she’s described to me and understand it in terms of what I know about her past and how she thinks. She doesn’t seem to think the same way any longer. And her past is now murky and its pathways lost in the fog. So of it is kind of cute. She wonders how many times she was married because she’s sure it couldn’t just be that one time she remembers. Some of it is a little unsettling like when she asked me if I had a daddy.

When my father died it was all so much easier. He had been going to doctors and having tests to determine why he no longer had an appetite and it was hard to swallow. I called Mom and Dad one Mother’s Day, and Mom told me that Dad had told her not to be alarmed if he died during the night. He declared that he was through with doctors and that he was dying. He still looked healthy to me, but I took him at his word and flew to Texas to help get him hospice care.

Dad took control of the process as much as possible. He insisted on having a do not resuscitate form completed and prominently posted above his bed before he would allow a nurse into the house. He told me what to gather together in his workshop and who should get what. He eventually had the hospital bed put in the middle of the living room. He had me call a family friend and make sure that Mom could move in with her after he died. He tried to discharge all his responsibilities.

He had one big meal of catfish after I arrived and then stopped eating. He talked about WWII. He and I spent a lot of time just sitting together, with me massaging his legs and feet. We began saying good-bye, knowing exactly what we were doing. And, for the most part, doing it in silence. I have a powerful memory of laying next to him in bed and his fingers curling around in my hair. In that way he told me all I needed know and I completely accepted and acknowledged his love.

After the hospice nurse came and I explained his care schedule to him, Mom and I talked about whether or not either of us would be able to give him an overdose if he requested one. Mom didn’t think she could. I was pretty sure that I’d have a hard time, but that I could. He tried morphine once and declared that he hated the dreams it gave him and would not take it again. So neither Mom nor I ever were confronted with the reality of an administered overdose. Dad would die on his own.

Which he did, but it took several weeks. We watched him starve. This is not an easy thing to do, but it did give us time to say good-bye and understand what death means. It made me incredibly angry with death. I felt like the Grim Reaper was loafing somewhere and not doing his job. I became certain that if Dad asked for an overdose I would have given it to him. Being made to wait for death when you had already put out the welcome mat for him seemed cruel.

I’ve never thought of death as a terrible thing. Maybe because when I was in high school I was able to have a long talk with a woman who had been in and out of hospice care three times. This was a woman who was angry with death for taking so long. She was very comfortable talking about being ready to go, even while she had her nails painted every week and her lipstick applied every day. She was an amazing teacher.

I’m not sure what happens after death but I’m incredibly curious about it. It seems like it must be a great adventure. You’ll finally know the great mystery. Everyone learns it eventually, and I’m in no hurry to rush to the discovery, but I am excited about the future after life is past. I don’t know for certain that there is a new form of life after death, but I believe that there is. If there if conservation of mass, why not conservation of soul? Life is amazing and wondrous, so why not death?

So I’m not worried about Mom’s death. I think I look forward to it on her behalf. Like you’d look forward to someone’s graduation or wedding or other major life event. I’d like for death to allow her through those gates, pearly or otherwise, before she loses touch with her life here and now.

What does frighten me is that Mom’s life will become confusing, disorientating and comfortless. I want her to be able to leave it while still having a sense of wonder about all that life has offered her. I want her to be able to tell me what she wants before she dies, just like Daddy did. I want to be able to give her a few last gifts before she leaves for a new world.

I feel blessed in that I don’t have anything that I wish I could say or wish I could do before Mom dies. I don’t feel like there’s anything I need to be forgiven for or to forgive.

I do hope that I get to be near her when she dies. I was holding Dad’s hand when he passed away. And Mom and I were able to wash his body before we called the hospice. That times alone with his body was very moving and healing. Mom thought she wouldn’t be able to touch the body after Daddy died. But we both found it comforting. We had already said good-bye to the man we knew and washing his body let us say good-bye to it, too. I’d like that experience again, but I think Mom might be the type of person who wants privacy when she goes. And I can respect that. It’s probably what I would choose, too.

My friends should know that after Mom does die, I won’t be grieving in the manner that seems to be expected. I’ll be excited for Mom. I’ll feel relief that I don’t have to care for her. I’ll feel relief that she’s no longer upset by things which haven’t actually happened. I’ll have her ashes in my living room, mixed in with her husband’s. I won’t have a funeral unless her friends want one. And I’ll only want people there who knew her, and who can tell funny or endearing stories about her.

After Dad died, Mom and I went to the grocery store, bought orange juice with pulp (which Dad didn’t like so Mom never bought), and came home with a carpet cleaner. Mom was ready to move on her own life because she had already said good-bye. I think I’ll be like that. So don’t be surprised if I want to celebrate a little after my mother dies. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t love her, but that I’m thrilled to see her off to the solve the great mystery.

Health Hints – circa 1910

From my grandmother’s encyclopedia and Dr. George J. Fisher…

First of all, why are you in need of health hints? “Most of the sickness of to-day is preventable, and is due primarily to carelessness in living habits.” No “thrill of abounding health” if you don’t pay attention to your habits.

Breathe the good stuff

There were no such things as oxygen bars but there was the good old fashioned night air.

Sleep with the windows open, but be protected from the direct wind. Night air is not only not harmful, but absolutely healthful. … Bad air depresses all the organs of the body. Houses, working places, offices, hotels, trains, are abominably ventilated. Keep on the lookout or you will be constantly poisoned.

Not to alarm you or anything. You certainly don’t want to hyperventilate in your working place.

Move it

Even the people who prescribe barley water for everything knew about the benefits of exercise.

Of course outdoor exercise is best. Hill climbing is splendid, especially for a weak heart. … Baseball and tennis for the vigorous, golf and horseback riding and wheeling for the more mature, are excellent.

Wheeling is a metalworking process, but I don’t think that’s what the doctor meant. Maybe biking or taking your wheel barrow out for a spin?

The stimulating bath

The day’s work should be followed by a short, refreshing bath. Nothing will prove so cheering as this. When depressed or irritable, a bath will oftentimes drive dull care away.

That’s why there’s so much depression these days—too many morning showers and not enough evening baths.

Well-cooked diet

There’s no food pyramid, but there is an exhortation to not eat too much. And recipes found elsewhere in the encyclopedia support the doctor’s assertion to cook your food, and then cook it a little bit longer still.

…meat is only required in quantities by persons who work vigorously with their muscles. … To eat well-cooked foods, plenty of vegetables, liberally of fruits and cereals and sparingly of meat and pastries, all well masticated when eaten, is the wisest course. It is foolish to be too fanciful in the choice of foods and to punish oneself in eating raw foods and unpalatable mixtures. … Salads and highly seasoned dressings should be eaten with caution.

So no taco salads people!

We’ve been overworked for over a century

Fatigue products, 2009

This is a day when men and women are constantly overworking. Some housewives and many business men never know when to stop. Consequently, they constantly overwork and never get fully rested. They are tired and often don’t know it. They wonder why they are peevish and irritable. The truth is their blood is filled with fatigue products, their nerves are tired and insensible.

General hints for accidents

Keep your cool and keep everyone calm. It’s good advice in any situation. And get out and expose yourself to a few things.

It is well for one to get accustomed to the sight of blood. … It is a good practice to witness an operation occasionally, or to assist in dressing a wound for the purpose of schooling oneself.

Maybe take your kids to an accident scene and let them assist the paramedics. It’s never too early to start. You’ll be seen as a paramount parent.

Keep the good booze and tinctures ready

Whiskey of a good quality is valuable for many conditions, especially in case of snake bite, when it is a specific. Care should be used in giving it to children.

You’ll want tinctures of peppermint and ginger. Holiday cookies will not suffice. You’ll need the tincture of arnica, too, and no one has ever made a cookie from that.

You’ll keep your spirits up in an accident if you have spirits of ammonia and camphor at hand. Ammonia is even good taken internally. “It is a strong stimulant as an inhalant and can also be administered internally, the dose being 10 to 30 drops in sweetened water.” The camphor is taken internally at “1 to 20 drops on sugar. It is good to overcome gas in the bowels.”

Vaseline was still being used to treat burns when this entry was written. And please don’t ask why one would give someone ammonia internally because the conditions for taking these treatments is not given, only the dosages.

If someone is poisoned just give them olive oil. “In nearly all cases of poisoning, olive oil, if available, can be given in large doses, namely, a pint or more, as it neutralizes most poisons except phosphorus.”  (Unless you were living in Spain in May of 1981, and the olive oil you purchased wasn’t really olive oil.)

Emphasis is mine in the quote below.

For poisoning from acids, such as muriatic, oxalic, acetic, sulphuric (oil of vitriol), nitric, or tartaric, use soapsuds, magnesia, limewater, whiting, plaster scraped from the wall, milk, oil, and baking soda.

How on earth would anyone know if they suffered from muriatic poisoning? I do know that you could get oxalic poisoning from eating too much sheep’s sorrel, but, alas, I have no plaster to scrape from my wall, so don’t be eating that weed when you’re at my house. Eat the French sorrel instead. If you’re craving something sour, ask and I’ll show you where to find it.

When drugs were legal

You could legally overdose on any of the following: chloroform, ether, opium, morphine, laudanum, and soothing sirups. The treatment?

Provide plenty of fresh air, induce artificial breathing, apply ammonia to nostrils, give cathartics, and stimulants, such as coffee, brandy, and strychnine.

Yep, strychnine. In case they just tried to off themselves, so you might as well give them a little extra help.

Paris Green

Avoid being forced to vomit or smell ammonia by following the advice I can provide now that I have finished reading the entire section on poisons. Don’t such on matches or swallow the heads of matches. Don’t lick or drink paint of any kind. Avoid swallowing the pits of stone fruits. Avoid eating anything cooked in copper. Don’t eat the rat poison, Paris green, wallpaper or artificial flowers. Remember, for your general health and well-being, avoid raw foods.

Turn-of-the-century home nursing advice

Tidbits from my grandmother’s set of encyclopedias

Unfortunately they have decayed so badly that the covers and title pages are missing, but I think we can assume that they are from around 1915. Quotes from the section on What The Home Nurse Ought To Know:

On infant feeding

If a mother is very hot, she should draw a teaspoonful or so from the breast before nursing her baby.

I guess it spoils in the heat.

If the mother has been badly frightened or very angry or excited, it is not safe to give the breast at all; it should be drawn and the milk thrown away.

Am I the only  person who just saw the image of an angry woman sitting down next to a sketch artist who has to draw her breast before the woman is allowed to pump it?

It is a sin to give an infant one morsel of solid food of any kind, or anything but breast milk (if the mother is healthy) except water in moderate occasionally, but never soon after nursing.

If the Breast Milk Gives Out, or becomes thin or watery, of if the mother has consumption or any other long-standing sickness, the baby  must be put on the bottle and fed with cow’s milk….

I’m not sure why there’s an ellipses in that sentence. Maybe just to give you a pause to think about the horrors of having to use cow’s milk. Advice on how to pasteurize the milk is given. Heating is not enough; you also have to add baking soda for some reason.

To make this nearly like breast milk, add two cupfuls of water that has been boiled to each cupful of milk and enough white sugar to make it as sweet as breast milk. (Milk sugar, if perfectly pure, is better than white or cane sugar.)

I guess you have to do this to taste. Hopefully someone tasted the breast milk before the poor woman became consumptive. Milk sugar is a sugar comprising of one glucose molecule linked to a galactose molecule. I’m not sure where you’d get it besides finding it in the milk already.

When the baby is about a month old, barley water should be used instead of of plain water.

Barley water is good for many things. It’ll keep the baby from getting gallstones and lower his or her cholesterol, for example.

Don’t Feed the Baby with a Spoon.

Babies need to suckle and keep the food from getting into the stomach too quickly. Use a common bottle, a rubber nipple, and no tube. I’m not sure why you would need to be told not to use a tube, but for heaven’s sake, don’t use it.

On caring for an invalid

Here’s what you can give them to drink: Irish-moss lemondade (be sure to pick the moss free from sand and other foreign matter first), grape water, cinnamon punch, barley water (0f course), oatmeal gruel (I guess you  make this runny enough to drink), egg gruel, eggnog (yummy!), lemon whey (includes curdled milk), barley water (so wonderful it’s listed twice; the second recipe skips the three hour boiling process),  bran tea, egg lemonade, egg coffee, rum and milk, mulled wine, or flaxseed lemonade.

Gruels are more tempting to the sick if whipped to a froth with an egg beater before serving in a pretty cup.

I bet not. I bet that you dread seeing that pretty cup on your tray. I recall the basin we had for throwing up in when I was a kid. I was horrified when I caught my mother using that very same basin to hold soap and water for cleaning.

If you’re an invalid and want some booze, be sure to act in need of stimulation. That way you can occasionally get a doctor to prescribe rum, sherry, or brandy. Or, as in the case of my mother when she was a child, if you keep your weight down and seem anemic you might be told to drink a small glass of beer everyday.

Now the really lucky invalids get a good beef tea. Forget chicken noodle soup.

For the most nourishing kind of beef tea, choose a piece of meat from the lower part of the round. There is more juice in a piece of the animal which has been toughened by steady exercise than in a very tender cut. … Free from fat, put through the finest knife of the meat chopper, and cover with a pint of cold water. Heat slowly in a double boiler. In two hours the juices will be drawn out and the fiber left bleached white. A square of wet cheese cloth may be doubled and spread over a strainer, and through this the chopped meat be wrung perfectly dry. The juice ought to be red. … If the patient objects to the uncooked look of beef tea, serve in a red tumbler which is well heated, because the liquid cannot be brought to the boiling point.

If that makes you feel a little queasy, then how about scraped beef, creamed toast, broiled oysters, broiled squab, broiled sweetbreads creamed asparagus, gum-gluten biscuits, clam broth, tapioca, prune juice, or the ever popular slip. A slip is made from cornstarch, water, sugar, lemon juice, an egg white, and powdered sugar.

On stocking your  medicine closet

At the turn of the century a well-stocked medicine closet held the following items. Top shelf: antiseptic gauze, absorbent cotton, sterilized linen, bags for poultices, lint, surgeon’s plaster, finger stalls, rubber bandages, and court-plaster. I don’t know why you had to keep lint around. I guess this was before dryers collected it for you.

The next shelf should contain common remedies such as calomel, camphor, castor oil, cascara sarada, Epson salts, Jamaica ginger, glycerin, paregoric, ipecac, limewater, magnesia, sweet spirits of niter, oil of peppermint, quinene, rhubarb, senna, sulphonal, and flowers of sulphur.

If you have this stuff still around, you should probably toss most of it. Calomel acts as a purgative and kills bacteria, but it contains mercury and will poison humans, too. You can keep the camphor and use it for fireworks and embalming, but it’s still also being used medicinally. You can’t get paregoric over the counter any longer because it’s basically a tincture of opium. I love the sound of sweet spirits of niter, but the FDA banned it in 1980 because it was determined as the cause of an infant being poisoned instead of cured. And there was a lack of any evidence showing the drug’s effectiveness. Be sensible and make a pie out of your rhubarb instead of using it as a drug. Sulphonal isn’t actively toxic and it might help you get to sleep, but I suggest some warm barley water instead.

Your third shelf should hold drugs used for cleaning wounds and healing burns. So this would include alcohol, boracic acid, alum, carbolic acid, arnica, borax, charcoal, collodioun, witch-hazel, iodoform, turpentine, dioxygen, listerine, and peroxide. Aren’t you praising all that is holy for the discovery of bacitracin, neomycin, and polymyxin B? Some of that other stuff is still used for ear powders for dogs.

Your last shelf should hold the things you need for plasters and poultices: mustard, flaxseed, oil silk, bran, linseed meal, and antiphlogistine. You now find this stuff being used for horses. We no longer get poultices, but our equine pets still do.

You can choose to keep a small amount of this stuff with your medical supplies or just leave them in the different places in the house where you normally keep them: carbonate of soda, ammonia, whiskey, brandy, olive oil, sweet oil, camphorated oil, limewater, and oil liniment. No one was using canola oil yet; that didn’t show up until the 1970s.

Other tidbits

“A cure for eczema is to take yellow carrots, scrape them, and fry slowly in fresh lard till brown. Drain off the lard and melt in it 1 tablespoonful of powdered resin.” Orange carrots won’t work. And neither will fancy Crisco; you have to use lard.

“A valuable remedy for proud flesh, an obstinate outgrowth of flesh from small sores, consists of alum.” Shaming the flesh does not work.

“If possible, have no plumbing fixtures in a sick room.” No reason for this is given. Just to be safe, refrain from putting your sick person’s bed in the bathroom or kitchen. That sounds reasonable.

“The furniture of a sick room should be as simple as possible; all heavy draperies and upholstered chairs being removed.” Use your basic IKEA junk furniture. That way if the person gets sick all over it, you can take it all out and burn it.

“A single bed is far better than a double one, for various reasons.” You have to figure those out on your own because they are not listed. And I can’t come up with any. The dog and cat are going to get in your way single bed or king sized. Maybe it’s just that the laundry takes less time to dry.

“The patient’s hair should be combed twice a day at least. If it is a woman’s, part it in the middle and back, brush and comb one side at a time, and make it into two neat braids.” Chemotherapy wasn’t around back in the day, obviously.

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Skipping and choosing rhymes remembered

I’ve been feeling ill so to cheer myself up I decided to recall the nonsense I used to jump rope to. Please feel free to share some of your own.

Skipping tunes

I don’t recall any special moves for this one.

Sailor, sailor do your duty
Here comes Miss American beauty.
She wiggles; who wobbles; she does the splits.
She wears her dresses clear up to her hips.

This one began by jumping on one leg, then two, then touching a hand to the ground, and then two. I think it went on from there, but I don’t recall how.

Donald Duck was a one legged, one legged, one legged duck.
Donald Duck was a two legged, two legged, two legged duck.
Donald Duck was a three legged, three legged, three legged duck.
Donald Duck was a four legged, four legged, four legged duck.

Clapping games

HabMoo does not like it when I sing this one all the way through. But sometimes the need just strikes and I have to obey the call. (These lines probably don’t even really go together except in my head.)

My boyfriend’s name is Tony.
He comes from the land of Baloney.
With 23 toes and a pickle for a nose.
This is how my story goes.

One night while I was walking
I saw my boyfriend talking
to a cute little girl with a strawberry curl
and this is what he said, said, said.

I L-O-V-E love you.
I K-I-S-S kiss you.
I K-I-S-S kiss you on your
F-A-C-E face face face.

My mother sent me to the store.
She told me not to stay.
But I fell in love with the grocery boy
and stayed ’til Christmas day, day, day.

My mother wanted peaches;
my mother wanted pears;
my boyfriend wanted 50 cents
and kissed me on the stair, stairs, stairs.

I gave him back his peaches;
I gave  him back his pears;
I gave him back his 50 cents
and kicked him down the stairs, stairs, stairs.

Then there was this one where we competed to see what kind of crazy descriptions and accompanying hand gestures we could come up with.

Have you ever, ever, ever in your short legged life
Seen a short legged turtle and his short legged wife?
No I’ve never, ever, ever in my short legged life
Seen a short legged turtle and his short legged wife.

Have you ever, ever, ever in your snot nosed life
Seen a snot nosed turtle, and his snot nosed wife?
No I’ve never, ever, ever in my snot nosed life
Seen a snot nosed turtle, and his snot nosed wife.

… long-legged; google-eyed, greasy-hair, etc.

Counting rhymes

Engine, engine number nine
going down Chicago line.
If the train goes off the track?
Do you want your money back?
Y-E-S spells yes and you are not it.

Everyone always wanted their money back.

Bubble gum, bubble gum in a dish.
How many pieces do you wish?

Count out the number and that person is it, or if you don’t like that result, add “My  mother told me to pick the very best one. And you are not it.”

Veteran’s Day

My husband, father, brother, and uncles all served in the military. Yet it’s hard for me to identify much with Veteran’s Day. Hab Moo has the day off and that’s all the celebrating we’re doing. I don’t recall anyone in the family making a big deal of it. The holiday has always seemed like a day just for old men who missed their identity as soldiers.

It should amount to more. Serving in the military isn’t anything I’d want to do, but nations do need defensive and offensive capabilities. So I’m glad someone is willing to do it. Probably the best way to celebrate the day is to give quick, reliable and friendly service to all those so used to waiting around, and getting one set of direction to be replaced by a new set to be replaced again by yet another set of orders. And soldiers are always willing to accept a thank you for their service.

I’m having a hard time writing this post. I have conflicted feelings about the military. I hate the fact that it jerks my husband around. I hate the fact that they require him to be away from home so often. But I’m glad they have separation pay. And they are making my lack of full-time employment a lot easier on us. I like watching friends and family talk to Hab Moo about his experiences. It’s great that people buy him lunch every so often when he’s in uniform. But it’s still uncomfortable somehow.

I think I may have picked up some of my father’s messed up emotions about serving in WWII. He didn’t talk much about it, but when he was dying he talked about how he still resented not getting a promised promotion. I think he was proud of the work he did and he believed in what he was doing. He also lost companions, missed out on time with two kids and a wife, and endured a lot of physical discomfort. I think he just wanted to put it all behind him. I knew not to ask him much about his experiences.

Then my husband goes to war and we chat online every day and he suffers through sitting around and from a short-term lack of onion rings. I know that in other wars, some soldiers served their time away from the front lines and danger, but those stories never got told in books or film so it’s as if they didn’t exist. I feel like there’s no real story for soldiers today. The wars are too complicated or maybe the stories can’t be told until the conflicts are over or resolved somehow. Except for getting married two days before Hab Hoo left for his deployment, I don’t feel like we have any real story either.

I don’t even feel like the nation knows that their are men and women serving overseas. Maybe it’s because I’m in Minnesota, far from any large bases. I only know a small handful of others with loved ones serving. No one is growing a victory garden. Very few people are protesting. It’s like soldiers are custodians that are easily ignored. It’s not pleasant to think about the person who is going to clean the toilet you just used and it’s not pleasant to think of the person in Afghanistan trying to clean up that mess either.

The only times I’ve really seen veterans honored has been at pow-wows and rodeos. Then I have to fight back tears.

At all other times I’d rather not pay attention even though I know several people currently in Iraq or who have had at least one deployment. I’d rather talk with them about their cars than about their service. It’s awkward. If they weren’t in the shit then what is there to talk about. And if they were in the shit, then that’s too uncomfortable to talk about.

So I guess I’ll end by just saying that I do appreciate soldier’s service. And I appreciate what those left at home go through. I have no clue what it’s like to lose a loved one to a recent war or conflict, but I do grieve for such loses until the point I think about the soldiers I know and then I rush away from that grief.

I think I will refrain from apologizing for celebrating by doing nothing more than going to a Veteran’s Day sale. I mean that’s partially why we fight, right? To keep the American way of life and what’s more American than shopping at a chain store? Soldiers fight for those who are oblivious as well as for those who are actively engaged.

One more thing, though. I’m linking to an article written by a Gold Star Mother who challenges us all to pay more attention and take real action on this day: Veterans Day: Not for Sale. You should pay more attention to her than to this confused woman.

Today with Mom

Mom understands that today is today. That is about the extent of her current concept of time.

It began months ago—even before her recent heart attacks—when she called me at 12:30 at night. She was ready for her doctor’s appointment and wondered where I was. And why it was so dark outside. She asked others if they had noticed how dark it was that day.

This confusion progressed to the point where every time she got up from her bed, even if she had lain down only for a few minutes, she thought she should get dressed and have breakfast. This would be fine since breakfast is her favorite meal, if only people would give her cereal instead of insisting that she have soup, a sandwich or a casserole.

I don’t notice her fixatation on breakfast any longer. Perhaps getting out of bed is no longer any sort of cue.

She’s been very upset with my recent comments about how it’s going to keep getting colder outside. She thinks summer is coming. She told me she was sure that summer followed fall. She’s confused that her daughter and granddaughter aren’t busy putting in a garden. She knows that Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming soon, but not that those holidays arrive in winter. Today I asked her what the four seasons are and she could only name fall and summer, so I can see why winter is so frustrating for her.

She’s also convinced that her birthday is coming up and she’ll be either 92 or 93. She isn’t sure about the age. Her birthday is in April and she’ll be 89. But since she’s believed for several years that she’ll live to age 92, I never correct her unless we’re with a doctor who might need to know the truth. She’s quite pleased with herself for being 92 and I’m pleased for her, too. I hope she makes it to that age in my reality.

It’s been great for me that her sense of time is gone. Only a couple of weeks after I moved her into assisted living I asked her how she was getting along there. She acted surprised and reminded me that she’s been there for months. She will talk about things that happened there last year. Sometimes those things are happenings from 2 years ago or 10 years ago. So I have no guilt about the move because she adapted to the change immediately, if not before then.

She seems to know that she was born in Illinois and moved to Minnesota. She rarely remembers living in Florida, but often remembers living in Texas. She knows that she loved it there. She just can’t place it in any time frame. Usually she talks about things that happened during that time as having happened in Illinois which she left in 1973.

Distance is also confusing. The dining room and front door are downstairs in her mind even though her building is all on one floor. She knows that she once lived in Maple Plain. She still lives in Maple Plain but feels that she’s a long way away from her former home.

I’m thankful that she still puts her clothes on in proper order (as far as I know.)

What’s really strange is that she can’t remember my husband’s name most of the time, but she knows that he’s leaving soon to go to Georgia. Maybe she just thinks he’s always leaving. (That’s pretty much true. He seems to be training somewhere every year.)

All this confusion about time and space doesn’t seem to bother her much. I can’t imagine just accepting it or being able to function. It’s a terrifying concept for me, but it just seems puzzling for Mom.

My last observation from today’s visit is that while Mom is really an angel, her toenails would better suit a demon. I think I’m going to hire someone to trim them. Maybe a farrier.

Quiz: Poems of early childhood

This quiz covers some of the poems appearing in Childcraft’s Poems of Early Childhood.

Is Mary Poppins a Super Hero?

Well I seem to be coming up with more reasons why she’s a super hero than why she isn’t. Please enter the debate.

But before you do, I have another assignment. Jonathan Goldstein on This American Life, show number 241, has Mary Poppins and the Penguin meet at a dinner party. Listening won’t help you make your verdict, but it’s just too fun to pass up. Just be patient for the story to come on.

Childcraft: Music for the Family

I hope your family was musical. Mine was not. I grew up with only a few LPs in the house: Glen Miller, Mitch Miller, Johnny Cash, and a Reader’s Digest collection of light classical music. The radio wasn’t on very often and mostly it reported farm prices and local news. I did fall in love with Louis Armstrong as a child, though, so I must have heard him on the radio when Mom was too busy to turn it off. Mom didn’t like his voice; I thought he was the greatest singer and musician I’d ever heard. (I admit that’s not saying much.)

I was never given the drum set I wanted as a child (or the race car set, but I did have a pony.) I was given an accordion. Who gives a toy accordion? I think this speaks to the level of musical sophistication in my family. At a later holiday I received much better musical toys: a tambourine and a guitar. This meant that when the neighbor kids came over and we played “The Monkeys” I could be any of them except Micky Dolenz (and no one wanted to be Micky Dolenz.) I made a great Davy Jones, I’m sure.

This Childcraft volume of children’s music was probably more often used by parents and scout leaders than by children. My mother never learned any of the lullabies from the book, but I do recognize a few songs from Brownies such as “Oh, Dear! What Can the Matter Be?” and “Billy Boy.”

My suspicions that the encyclopedia publisher was aiming for the Canadian market was confirmed by seeing “O Canada!” under the heading of “Patriotic Songs.” The Christian bias remains with an entire chapter of hymns but “The Hanukkah Song” made it into the “Songs of the Seasons and Festivals” chapter. This was diversity for the 1940s.

It’s too bad that I didn’t remember this volume when I was learning to play clarinet and was looking for sheet music. All I ever had was a hymnal to play from. But my situation was nothing compared what what I read about Johann Sebastian Bach. He had to steal sheet music from behind iron bars and copy it by moonlight so he’d have his own music to play. And no one made me play my clarinet in the attic where poor George Frederick Handel had to play his clavier.

I did practice my clarinet willingly, unlike my sister who had given it up after playing for only a year or so. I even picked up a recorder to mess around with and tapped the keys of a Hammond Organ on occasion. I jumped at the chance to play the bassoon in band and loved the sounds that I could strangle out of that strange instrument. But I was never any good. When I was in high school my band teacher used to slap my thighs to try to keep me on beat. And I was never ever in tune. I loved to play but knew I lacked talent.

It wasn’t until Dad gave me a mountain dulcimer he had made that I learned what people meant when they talked about something being out of tune. I could never tune it, but I rested my hand on the base while a friend tuned it for me and suddenly I understood the concept. I could feel the vibrations changing as she tightened or loosened the strings. I still can’t hear any difference so mostly it sits in the living room as a decoration. Luckily the game “Rock Band” doesn’t require any tuning so I can once again play the toy guitar. I think that’s as musical as I’m ever going to get.

Childcraft: Art for Children

Masterpiece, the art auction game, is where I got my art education as a child. Any piece could be a forgery! So if an artwork wasn’t in the Art Institute of Chicago, the source of the images used in the game, I didn’t know about it.

It’s too bad I never noticed that I had this volume of reproductions of other pieces created by my favorite artists in the game: Mary Cassattt, Winslow Homer, El Greco. While the quality of color printing in this book doesn’t display any vibrancy, I think I would have enjoyed them anyway. I wasn’t particularly discerning as a child (or even now.)

When I was young, my much older brother was attending college studying art. The family made fun of him for this. It was not seen as any kind of legitimate study even though he was very talented and sold some of his work. A book like this one, encouraging kids to try all sorts of creative media, would have been a good alternative viewpoint for me.

I love it that the editors have included artwork by children in each section of the book. They are given the same amount of space and the same type of commentary as the artwork of the great masters. I can only imagine what it must have been like for the kid from Delaware with his or her collage of hay, coconut, and cotton featured on page 74. To open a real encyclopedia and see a piece of art you may have done for a school assignment there in print for the world to see must have been a rather heady experience. I think I’d be upset that my name wasn’t included since I’ve always been rather fond of my name. But I know I’d be thinking about how my artistic vision compared to Arthur Dove’s “Goin’ Fishin’” collage. I’d be busy that year making more collages and feeling pretty proud of myself.

Honestly, I should go through this entire book page by page and pay close attention. I haven’t heard of many of the artists included. I’m still limited in knowledge to what’s in my local museums. And I could use the reminder to look out my window and see shapes, colors, reflections, and light. The skill of observation is dulled, I think, as we age unless we actively engage it.