Tabasco

I swear to god this story is true.

So.........I picked up Mom today at the ALF to take her to a dentist appointment in Port Angeles. On the way back, we went out to lunch. I took her to the place where she and Dad used to always go (when Dad was still driving and both of them didn't throw a fit if they were away from their own bathroom for more than a half hour). I had forgotten about my last experience there (at the restaurant, not the bathroom) until Mom and I walked in and sat down at our table. Then it all came back to me--that horrific lunch. Dad and his chowder.

This happened at least a few years ago. Mom, Dad, and I decided to stop and have lunch. I don't remember the circumstances. Maybe we were coming back from somebody's doctor appointment. I dunno. I remember feeling a little dicey about going out with them. You never know with Dad. Because of his hearing loss, he talks really loud. Because of his Dad-ness, he says some pretty off the wall stuff. Like the time, at the same restaurant, he asked Mom, out loud, if she was wearing a bra, and if she wasn't she should continue not wearing one because he liked her better "free and liberated." Yeah. That was a fun breakfast.

But that was a different story. This one happened, as I said, at least a few years ago. We were sitting at our table eating. Dad had ordered a bowl of clam chowder. Don't remember what Mom and I ordered. Not important. What is important is that Dad was eating his clam chowder, and we were sort of chatting our way through the meal when I glanced over and saw that Dad had put tabasco sauce in his chowder. But......there was a LOT of tabasco! And......there was no tabasco sauce on the table! I was just lifting my gaze to say something like, "Whoa Dad, have some chowder with your tabasco!" when I noticed he was stuffing pieces of napkin into his nostril.

Yep. It was blood.

The tabasco. It was blood. In his chowder. Bright, red (Tabasco Red?) sprinkled liberally and surprisingly artistically, all over the top of his fresh bowl of hot, steamy chowder.

I have to point out here that, this was one of those experiences where you somehow remain amazingly cool as the experience is taking place.

Then you totally freak out later. At least that's what I did.

So I was very cool when I realized Dad's nose had drained blood all over his bowl of chowder. I remember how I calmly raised my right index finger to signal the waitress. She bounced over to the table, completely unaware of what she was about to witness. I pointed to the "tabasco" chowder and asked quietly, "I think we'll be needing a fresh bowl, and a towel." It took that poor waitress under a millisecond to process the evidence--Dad with napkins stuffed up his nostrils; chowder with bright red "tabasco" sauce sprinkled all over it--to figure out what was really happening. And when she did, boy, she moved like lightning. Towels, ice, fresh chowder--it all came quickly and with incredible efficiency.

Anyway...........that's my story. Dad and his chowder. I've never been able to use tabasco since.

Green Tea

So........Dad stopped drinking coffee about two months ago (about the time Mom moved into the ALF).

The reason for this sudden switch is up for speculation. Perhaps he felt guilty that I was firing up the coffee pot every morning for just him. Maybe he figured he was better off without the caffeine. Maybe he liked that he could make a cup of tea all by himself--independence and all that. Or maybe he read something in the newspaper or Time magazine about the health benefits of drinking tea. In reality it's probably all of the above.

His tea of choice? Good Earth's Jasmine Green Tea (shameless plug for Good Earth.....like it'll do me any good).

The point of this little anecdote? Well, I thought it was worth sharing what Dad said this morning as he waited patiently for the teapot to boil. You see......underneath all of the frustrating qualities that my Dad possesses--the need to be in control, the chauvinism, the over-protectiveness, the pathological stubbornness, and.....oh yeah, the need to be in control (wait, did I already mention that one? oops)--lies a deep current for all things poetic. For the most part, Dad views the world in poetic terms. It's just that, by the time the poetry crawls its way through the stubbornness, scrapes past the over-protectiveness, detours past the chauvinism, and finally, slogs across the need to be in control, there's generally not much poetry left. Most of the time, especially lately, what does manage to make its way to the surface is stuff like Dad's typical, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?" or "WHAT KIND OF ASSHOLE DOES SOMETHING LIKE THAT?" or, my personal favorite, the succinct but always abrasive and utterly jarring, "HEY!....."

But this morning...........this morning Dad wheeled into the kitchen and was standing at the stove waiting for the teapot to boil. I was standing next to him, cooking up a pot of soup for dinner tonight. It was quiet for about half a minute before Dad started talking (in his inside voice for a change).

"You know why I like Jasmine Green Tea?"

His tone was gentle, like a warm smile. I turned toward him, leaned back against the counter, put my hands in my pockets and said only, "What's that Dad?"

He continued, "Well.........when I bring the mug up to my mouth to drink it, I first smell the bouquet of jasmine with my nose, then when I take a sip, I get the soothing flavor of the green tea in my mouth."

Seriously, it could have been a commercial for green tea. Clearly, the poetry had somehow managed to blaze a trail to the surface, completely intact and unscathed. It was really a lovely moment--the quiet of the morning; soup simmering on the stove, wisps of Jasmine Green Tea wafting their way into the kitchen air, and now a bit of poetic reflection from my father. I just stood there, smiling at him and could only reply with a simple, "awesome."

Then Dad carefully placed his tea on the walker, turned away slowly from the stove (so as not to spill the tea), and headed for the living room where his Sunday paper awaited.

Two steps later, the slogging had apparently resumed. "HEY!....."

Annnnnd, he's back.

A Moment...

So......Dad made up a song a while back--Tell Me Pretty Girl. He sings it all the time, randomly, to whichever dog jumps up into his lap, whichever cat climbs into his chair, or he just sings it in the shower.

But today, he sang it to Myla, his newest granddaughter, who he met for the first time yesterday when my son and his wife arrived from San Diego. Here's the tail end of the song, and the moment when all of us watching simultaneously said, "awwwwwww."

Chinese Stew

So.........Dad and I went to visit Mom last week.

It was about twenty minutes after what has turned into Mom's very predictable momentary sob about wanting to come home that she suddenly perked up, dried her tears, snapped out of her customary breakdown and suddenly blurted out to Dad, "Hey, remember that Chinese stew you said you used to work with?"

Okay, a few clarifications here. One, even though the politically correct term for stewardess is now flight attendant, both my parents continuously violate this rule on two levels--they continue to refer to flight attendants as stewardesses, and most of the time they further demoralize the title by referring to flight attendants as "stews." Two, Dad is a retired commercial airline captain. Now you're caught up. Going on....

Dad, of course, didn't hear Mom's question, so she turned to me for help.

First I needed more info. "Chinese stew?" I asked her.

"yesss. Dad worked....for this s-s-s-stew from......China....and she.....runs this place."

"Here? As in (I gesture, indicating the entire ALF) HERE?"

"yessss," she nodded with complete clarity.

A couple of red flags went went up in my head at this point. First, Dad retired over thirty years ago, so any.....ahem, "stew" he worked with would today be, well, pretty old. And I didn't remember seeing any really elderly woman, of any Asian persuasion, working in my mom's wing of the ALF. It's a small area, I would've met them by now. Second, how would Mom know who "ran this place" anyway? I've never even met the person who runs the whole facility. I've met the admissions coordinator, the accounting person, the receptionists, the aides, the nurses, the head of laundry, the maintenance guys, and the housecleaners. Not one of them even comes close to resembling a very old Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Phillipino, Thai, Vietnamese, or Tibetan woman. (If I left anyone out, I apologize.)

I've noticed Mom does this a lot lately--puts bits and pieces of facts together to make a whole new reality. A couple of visits ago, she asked me if Dad was taking good care of Suki. Suki was our cocker spaniel. Actually two cocker spaniels. The first one I grew up with as a child. The second one was our family pet while I was in high school. I guess our family liked the name so much that we named both dogs the same thing. But in any case, Suki, both Suki's, have been dead for decades.

Clearly, as I tried to process Mom's question and thought to myself, Mom's brain was piecing together fragments of memories. Dad looked over at me, waiting for me to restate Mom's question to him. But rather than ask him the question which I was sure wasn't going to make any sense to him and only frustrate him, I just said I'd tell him later when we were in the car.

Which I did. Here's what I said to him once we got in the car and were headed home. I said, "Mom said that the Chinese stew you used to work with is the person who runs the assisted living facility." Then I waited as Dad absorbed and processed. I braced for the wrinkled brow. I prepared for the perplexed expression which would most certainly be followed by a shrug of frustration. A sort of "Mom's doing it again" shruf. (For those who remember--Shrug #1.)

But.......except for the shrug, Dad didn't really respond at all. He just listened. I asked him if he heard what I said. He said yes. That's all. We continued home.

Then, a really weird thing happened. About a half hour later, we drove into the driveway. I turned off the engine. I opened my door to get out. I took Dad's walker out of the back and wheeled it over to him. He carefully swung himself out of the Jeep, straightened up, grabbed his walker, and started off toward the house. But as he wheeled away from me he said this. He said, kind of chuckling in amazement, "Yeah that's really somethin' that that Chinese stew runs the place where your mom is."

Okay. Can I just restate here that.........NEITHER MY MOTHER OR MY FATHER OR I HAVE EVER MET THE PERSON WHO RUNS THE PLACE WHERE MY MOM IS LIVING! And also......I HAVE NEVER HEARD EITHER MY MOTHER OR MY FATHER MENTION ANYTHING........A N Y T H I N G........ABOUT A CHINESE STEWARDESS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT, PILOT, CO-PILOT, FLIGHT ENGINEER, OR CAPTAIN, EVER! E V E RRRRRR!

So like..........what is going on? Are my parents somehow connecting in some really strange dementia world of their respective subconscious minds? First my mother makes a completely preposterous nonsensical statement. Then, my father, approximately one hour later, totally corroborates my mother's completely preposterous nonsensical statement! As if he knew and understood exactly what she was talking about. My MOTHER doesn't even know what she's talking about!

I wish I had nice tidy ending for this story.

But I don't.

Chinese stew.

It's a head-shaker.

Blog Block

So............yeah..........I........uh............have been suffering from a major case of blog block. Not sure why. Not sure how long it'll last. Just thought I'd admit it.

For Whom The Bell Tinkles

So......there was this little bell see.........

Okay so we all remember The Bell. The Damn Bell. The g.d.m.f.c.s. BELL. Yeah, that The Bell. It's been a couple of months since The Bell was used. Now, with Mom at the ALF, there is, of course, no more ringing of the bell. It has been retired, as it were, and it sets, gathering dust, on the shelf in my office. So yeah, the Bell is silent....sort of. I say, "sort of" because, well, because though there may be nobody ringing The Bell per se, my brain continues to insist on hearing it.

We'll subtitle this post: An Update On My Ongoing Struggle To Exorcize The Aforementioned Bell And It's Nauseating Tinkle From My Psyche.

The thing is..........there are surprisingly many things that share the same frequency and resonance as the tinkle of The Bell. Allow me to share a few:

• The next door neighbor's telephone. (It's apparently just the right distance away, with just the right number and type of barriers between wherever their phone is and my ear, to mimic the tinkle of The Bell.)
• The exhale portion of my bulldog, Emily's deep-sleep snore. (It's that last little respiratory effort that produces this sort of ringing-whistling sound--a dead-ringer for the tinkle.)
• (You're not going to believe this one.) The silver bracelets that Steve Tyler wears on his right wrist. Okay, okay, so I confess, I watch American Idol. But seriously. Every damn time Steven Tyler moves his right wrist (which is a lot, trust me), those stinkin' bracelets tinkle. Drives me crazy. I'd mute the sound except, well, it's American Idol. Kinda need the sound on.
• The high-pitched meow of my cat, Peter, when he's at the opposite end of the house crying for no apparent reason (He does this ALL THE TIME--just cries, incessantly, and, might I add, usually in the middle of the night! Stupid, needy fluffball of a cat. By the way, anybody want a stupid, needy fluffball of a cat? Stupid question. No, of course nobody wants a stupid, needy, fluffball of a cat that cries incessantly in the middle of the night for no apparent reason!!!! How do I end up with stupid, needy pets that meow, and snore, and whine, and snort, and take up half the bed, and rub their eye buggers all over my legs, and drag their stinky butts back and forth across the same rug I do my yoga on.......sorry, digression....)

Case in point. This morning, right before I woke up, I was having this weird dream that I was in the kitchen doing......something.......and Mom started ringing the bell from her room and I yelled, "I'll be right there Mom!" Then, in my dream, I started thinking, "Wait a minute, I thought Mom wasn't here...." And then the bell rang again, and just as I started to yell again, I woke up. And immediately, some tiny part of my consciousness realized it was really Peter meowing (cuz I remember thinking to myself, "Oh it's just the stupid cat meowing!), but because I was still mostly in dream-mode, most of my consciousness was convinced it was really Mom ringing The Bell. So before my consciousness was awake and aware enough to know better, I was already out of bed and walking toward my bedroom door before my brain finally "came to" and I suddenly stopped and realized there was no bell, no Mom.....just a stupid, needy, fluffball of a cat and a really eerie dream.

So yeah.......The Bell may be on the shelf, but my brain keeps hearing it ring, or tinkle, or snore, or meow...

Sushi

The newest key to my dad's heart is apparently sushi. Exhibit A: Today's trip to Central Market where we purchased sushi for tonight's dinner.

Dad went to bed over an hour ago. But I'm guessing he just couldn't settle into the sheets without wheeling back into my room (at the other end of the house mind you) to tell me, "The next time we go to Central Market, let's get mackerel and tuna sushi."

"Okay Dad."

[Pause while Dad just stands there with a big ole grin on his face.] "Okay!" [Another pause. More grinning.] "And, let's go back soon!"

"Okay Dad" as I note my father's enthusiasm to return to Poulsbo NOT to see Mom, but........to get sushi.

[He turns and goes back to his room. Still grinning.] "Okay! Good night!"

Sushi. I have to admit, I'm not sure how I feel about my father's inner priority list...