Mom & Me Four Archive

    No Caregiver-Out-of-Control episodes like last Thanksgiving! Actually, most of our trips are fun, stimulating and work well. It's just hard to forget the one day-mare of a trip!
    As before, the ID facility had no one waiting. Mom didn't even have a chance to sit before she was called to the counter. The picture they took, as is typical of ID card pictures, was horrible. Mom, the attendant and I joked about how she looked like a hardened criminal who'd spent several years in stir. My mother loved this!
    Mom and I were both totally stress free, so we spent two hours at the restaurant, talking, people watching and enjoying each other's company. The only curious episode is that the restroom, for some reason, had no air conditioning. Bathrooming my mother is always a concentrated chore for me, doubly so in a public restroom, even when the handicapped stalls are available. She was ready for a paper-underwear change by the time we hit the restaurant. This involved removing shoes, slacks, underwear, giving her thigh creases a quick clean and anti-itch cream refreshment, managing a Bathroom Supply Bag that was stuffed to the point of equaling two old time "doctor bags", then putting everything back on and in. Luckily, she didn't have a bowel movement! We joked our way through this, though, as well. At one point my mother reminded me that I "don't have an indoor voice."
    I quickly responded that this is because she doesn't have indoor ears.
    This set us both to laughing heartily, during which we heard the tiny bathroom door open, then quickly close without anyone entering. "Too bad people are so sensitive," my mother said.
    By the time we exited the bathroom, sweat was running down my face and neck and my shirt was soaked. The patrons at the first table we passed gave me a curious look. My mother noticed and said, "She was running laps in the bathroom."
    Although we didn't eat pie at the restaurant, my mother was so thrilled with the idea of taking pie home for dinner that she couldn't decide what kind she wanted. "Why don't you choose a couple and we'll freeze one?" I suggested.
    She quickly chose, count 'em, three different types, peach, rhubarb and chocolate silk! I stuck with my lemon cream cheese but I might trade it out for the rhubarb this evening, assuming that my mother doesn't eat that one tonight.
    The scenery was incredibly green, although no late summer flowers were in evidence. Often, when we take this trip, she doesn't remember it and considers it a "new route". Today, she remembered it and commented that she'd like to take this trip again "soon".
    "No problem," I said. "We'll be taking it again in two weeks."
    "Oh, that's right, I'll need to get my ID card renewed, again," she said. Time is a wondrous thing for the demented.
    Lastly, it seems that rush hour begins, on certain sections of the maze of Phoenix metroplex freeways, a little after 1400, now. I thought, by leaving the restaurant at 1400, we'd beat all congestion but I was wrong. Even, this, though, was instructive for both of us. "I'm sure glad we don't live here," my mother said more times than I can remember this afternoon while we inched the last couple of miles from 202 West through the section of I-10 West leading to the I-17 North exit.
    After she'd said this several times I told her, "You know, Mom, the next time you're sitting in your rocking chair up in Prescott asking me, disgustedly, to remind you why you 'ever bought this place', I'm going to remind you of this little jaunt!"
    She gave me a side-long sneer. "I'm sure you will, child, I'm sure you will."
    She got in some heavy duty walkering. Since she was on display, she performed admirably. Going into and out of the restaurant she had to stop and rest, a bit. The small of her back had begun to bother her, even though I prepped her this morning by substituting an adult buffered aspirin for her usual 81 mg tablet. I hadn't brought any more with me...I had no idea she would attend to walkering as vigorously as she did, especially at the military facility. I think she considered it her duty as a veteran to put on her best show. By the time we got home, though, her back was no longer bothering her. She was tired and generally stiff. She also had begun to get punch drunk during the trip home, as well as slipping in and out of time zones. She made silly, delightful observations as we passed through the many townlets scattered along State Route 69 from Cordes Junction to Prescott; one in particular in which she surmised how many of these townlets began: "I think," she said, "someone buys a plot of land and puts up a trailer. Someone else sees it and thinks, 'What a good idea!' They buy a plot 5 miles away and put up a trailer. Then, along comes a businessman looking for a business. He sees the two houses and thinks, 'I'll bet they'd like to buy their groceries close by.' He sets up a store and suddenly, lots of people who saw the two houses and day dreamed about owning a similar plot but decided against it because there was no store nearby start buying plots and setting up trailers."
    "And then," I said, "someone applies for an official postal code for the area..."
    "...and it becomes a town!"
    Another conversation I don't want to forget: We'd been driving quietly for a few miles. Suddenly Mom announced, "Mother and Dad finally bought a piano, you know."
    "Really!" I said. "I thought they were playing harps, now!"
    She gave me a funny look. "No, she said, I think that's Lucille (a long, long dead cousin of hers who, I think, actually played the violin). I'm sure they wouldn't mind if you wanted to go over and play it, sometime."
    "I don't know, Mom," I said. "Grandpa would probably get annoyed with me playing the same piece over and over."
    Again, that funny, sidelong look. No comment, though.
    I suddenly realized that she might be mistaking me for [her sister's daughter] who is an excellent pianist. "Mom," I said, "I'm not [name of her niece, my cousin].
    "Well, I should hope not! That would be quite a feat, if you were both Gail and [name of niece/cousin]!"
    So, I guess she just remembers me as a good pianist, even though, while I was obsessed with the piano when I was younger, I started playing it by ear in the third grade, I never had the fortitude to become good at it. I was eventually thrown out of piano lessons because my teacher discovered that the reason I'd always have her play the selections for the next week before I left class was so I could pick them up by ear and forego learning to read sheet music.
    Anyway, she's in bed, now, napping; went down at a little after 1700. Oh! And, she's just now up, hanging over the banister, saying, "I woke up thinking about pie..."
    So, I guess it's dinner time!
    Later.