Mom & Me Four Archive

    Minutes before my mother awoke on the day described immediately below, I realized that, in her peculiar personality, I had an avenue for dissipating my treacherous mood. I decided, as she shuffles through time immediately upon awakening, while I sit on her floor, play with the cats and banter her into her day, if I related my absurd expectations of eggnog and my equally absurd reactions regarding no eggnog to her, she would find the entire scenario hilarious; and I could depend on her gentle belittlement to set my mood to rights.
    It worked. Not only that, but she found it entertaining to kid me about eggnog all day long...so that we both ended up in excellent, top-the-other humor when she retired.
    Our days have continued in discombobulated mode. Some interests of mine allowed me to let her sleep in yesterday; thus extending her recently late retirements even later. This has been a little hard on me, as I require a good hour of cool down after she retires. When I'm exhausted, the need for that time remains. But, all is well today. I slept "enough" last "night", finally, by trashing the idea of putting off a few middle of the month chores. Mom awoke about a half hour ago, asked after those she thought were staying with us (this is frequent, now), whom I assured her had "returned to their homes", came out into the living room, looked at the clock, announced she was too tired to stay up and headed back to bed, after an underwear change, into what, luckily, was a dry bed that required no change. I told her I'd call her in an hour.
    "Good idea," she said. "I'll reconsider getting up then. When did I go to bed?"
    "Your light went out at 0300, Mom."
    "Try me at 1430, then."
    I was startled that this means that she pretty much consciously appropriates herself about the same amount of sleep-time that I appropriate for her from experience. I thought she was unaware of this.
    I got her moving again, yesterday, in the house, over protest, of course. She went in for a nap soon after complaining of stiffness. I thought, oh, shit, wrong timing; I'm going to have trouble keeping her up for the rest of her "day". She emerged from her nap, though, ready and willing. We had a good evening: Some Sorry (she won), some Scrabble (I won, although not by much...her dementia has caused her to become The Mistress of Two-Letter Word Trumps...I actually challenged some of her creations with the dictionary...they were all legitimate; her response: "Don't you know that almost any combination of two letters can be found in the dictionary?!?").
    We topped off the evening with a viewing of the rental, Akeelah and the Bee. I knew she'd like this one...she likes all movies about education. My unexpected pleasure was in watching her watch it. If available, I always cue subtitles for her. I was fascinated to note that she was silently mouthing the letters for all the words spelled in the movie. Later, I noticed that she was trying to beat the appearance of subtitle spelling, obviously testing her spelling memory. After the movie she asked if there was "more", referring to the possibility of "special features". Although she found those boring and we aborted "special features" viewing halfway through the second one, she remained fascinated with the issue of spelling. We talked about the training techniques of champion spellers as reviewed in the movie.
    "You know," she mentioned, "I wish I'd thought of those before. I'll have to use some of them next year. Remind me of that."
    "Good idea," I agreed.
    Then, at her nudging, we reviewed the spelling profiles of the members of our born-into family (two daughters who spell well, two who spell poorly, both parents good spellers) and thoughts on what accounts for this: Presence or absence of phonics training, which seems obvious, and the less obvious ability of being able to retain the graphic image of words in one's brain and "read them" off one's gray matter, rather than actually remembering letter sequence. I recounted to her what one of my college professors had said about spelling, that it is, essentially, a congenital skill.
    "Well, I don't know about that," she countered. "I taught myself how to spell correctly in college."
    I was fascinated. "Really," I said, "How did you do that?" I'm one of those "naturally decent spellers", so I was very interested in this.
    She responded with one of her you-would-ask-that psuedo grins. "Goodness, child, that was years ago. I can't remember."
    Sometimes, I wonder how much she "can't remember" and how much she considers silly to dredge up.
    Just before she retired she said, "Well! I certainly have a lot to think about before next year!"
    I wonder, now, if her unusually palpable sleep-dream-time includes classroom teaching. She's never mentioned it, but, then, maybe she wouldn't. Maybe the reason she mentions her Dead Zone visits is because, in her dream-mind, they take place here with me present. Teaching, though, would take place elsewhere and I probably wouldn't be present for those episodes...why discuss them with me?
    It's sunny, although a bit cool, today. I suggested, before she returned to bed that maybe a walkering around the yard this afternoon to take note of any remaining fall prep chores might be in order.
    She flashed me her comic look of consternation. "You're dreaming, girl!"
    No, Mom, you're dreaming...amazing dreams. Wish I was there.
    Later.