You Got This Girl!

"Stop making all that noise up there!" Mom yells while banging on the wall. I quickly run into the room gasping, "Mom, what's wrong? Who are you screaming at?" "Those people upstairs are so noisy." she replies frantic and frustrated. Mom that's Angelo. He's just opening the garage to get the gardening tools out." "No! That's not Angelo. It's those noisy people in the building. The ones living upstairs over my apartment!" "Mom, there is nothing upstairs but a roof. There is no upstairs." Suddenly I remember that we do have an attic and some attics have drop-down steps. I'm really not sure if the attic of this ranch style home has steps because I'm too afraid to venture up there to see if there are drop-down steps. What am I thinking? By this time my own thoughts are confusing me. 

Looks like she's finally did it people. She finally got to me. I'm second guessing my own reality. I feel like I just got infected with a dipsey daft virus and if I stay in her room any longer I will start showing the full symptoms of lunacy.  I can see the signs on the wall. "Welcome To The Insane Asylum For Seniors." "Straight jackets are free - Drop your clothes off at the door." "Stay calm, someone will be with you shortly."

Very slowly I step backward out of her apartment, uh... bedroom. As  I step into the hallway, I start feeling dizzy.  I look for the first chair I can to sit down on and start trying to pull myself together. I remember seeing a video on how to calm down...

• Start by deep breathing slowly in and out while counting from one to ten 
• Gently pat your chest while counting. 
• Focus on your senses.

After taking a few deep breaths I soon start to realize I'm not insane. At least not yet. This was just a mild panic attack. The first I've had since my Mom moved in. I know it won't be the last. At least they won't be carting me off to the looney bin today.

I hear my inner voice say, "You're doing fine. Just take good care of her during the few golden years she has left and a big blessings will pour down from heaven somewhere down the line. You can do this. You're in control! You got this girl!"  As I close my eyes and think of the gentle swell of ocean waves coming from the horizon of a beautiful sunset, I feel a calmness come over me. I got this. All is well. 

The Uncontrollable Remote Control

Mom will go to great lengths to do absolutely nothing. For example,  3 or more times a day while laying on her bed and enjoying her TV shows she accidentally changes the channel or hits the power button and turns off the TV. She surmises that she did not do anything wrong. It's the remote control's fault. The remote has run amuck and it needs to be caught and disciplined! So after fiddling with it in order to make it work herself but then failing she quickly gets out of the bed and searches for someone to fix her remote.  

I dread the day when she can't find anyone in the house to fix the remote and ventures out of  the house.  She would knock on our neighbor's door, and when it opens she will say, "My stupid remote control won't work. Can you fix it for me." Of course the remote control works fine. It's the latest in remote control technology. The problem is for the past 12 months she has not learned how to work it. The poor thing. But it's not entirely her fault. To add to the confusion, some days she thinks the remote control is the cell phone.  

Since she moved from Maryland to Pennsylvania, we had to change cable services. The new service came with an upgraded cable box with remote control. We hoped she would have learned how to operate the new remote by now, but she hasn't. It would not be so bad if she would just put the thing down and stop trying to change the channel with those busy fingers of hers.  So three or more times a day she roams the halls searching for me or Angelo to help her make her remote work. 

Without her television shows she would  resort to staring at the walls and contending with her thoughts, good or bad, and she's not ready for that. So we've tried near genius measures to address her busy fingers and the uncontrollable remote control. For example;

1. We take the remote when she's ready to retire. When she gets up to use the bathroom in the morning we turn on her TV and select her preferred channel with one of her favorite TV shows. This works fine so long as we come out of our own slumber and hear her entering the bathroom.  Of course by noon she is back to looking for her remote to change the channel. 

2. Next we tried taking the batteries out of the remote so her fingers can be as busy as they want to but they do not change the channel, turn away from the cable box, or accidentally turn the TV off. This works fine for a while but at some point she notices it's not responding when trying to change the channel and insists her remote doesn't work anymore.  

3. We even tried buying a whole season of her favorite sit com, but she eventually gets tired of watching the same season all week. That's actually a good sign. It means Mom's dementia is not advanced to the point of forgetting what she watched yesterday. 

At the end of the day, it's a good thing she wants her remote fixed. The fact that Mom is hot on the trail of  resolving the uncontrollable remote control issue indicates that much of her cognitive functions are still very much intact and active. 

So go ahead Mom, do what you must. We're here for you sweetie. Let's get that uncontrollable remote fixed.

The Case of The Missing Pajamas

 

Honestly, there are days when I must retrace my steps to nudge my brain into remembering what I went into a room to get, or what I was supposed to do. For example, on this particular day, I was certain that I placed a clean set of pajamas in the bathroom for Mom.

When I glanced into the bathroom while prepping for Mom's shower, there were no pajamas! Then I realized that Mom just came out of the bathroom, and she has the habit of taking her pajamas and tucking them away when she feels that she doesn't need them at that moment. So now the hunt is on! Nope, they're not in the laundry basket of freshly laundered clothes. Nope, not in her dresser drawers. Nada, not in her closet. Negative, not in my closet. Now that leads me to look in the bathroom storage areas:cabinet, under the sink, in the tub, and in the dirty clothes hamper. Nothing, nill, zilch! Not there either. So I ask Mom if she saw her PJs and as no surprise to me she replied, “You gave me pajamas?” I answered, “No Ma’am, they were in the bathroom. Did you see them?” “No, I haven’t seen any pajamas.”

I decided to get off this spinning hamster wheel and just pick out another set of sleepwear. I'll give up the hunt for the missing pajamas for now. Later that evening, while collecting trash I noticed the unusual weight of the bathroom waste basket. I looked inside and there at the very bottom were the missing pajamas! "How in the world did they get in there?" I asked shaking my head. Well, I guess Mom thought that she no longer needed them.

Captain On the Fridge!

 

Normally she eats breakfast lying in bed in her "apartment." But, on this particular day she decided to be the captain of her ship. She's calling the shots today!  "Attention on deck! Captain on the Bridge."  And, today she wants to eat breakfast with her children in the kitchen! 

Eating at the kitchen table would be okay if it weren't for two issues: 

Issue #1- "There's no food in the fridge!" Oh, there's plenty of food in the kitchen. fresh fruit, dry fruit, canned goods, and such. There's also plenty of meat in the freezer, and fresh veggies in the bins, but when you open up the fridge all you see is whiteness!

Issue #2- Mom seems to think there should be a TV in every room in the house. There's no TV in the kitchen, just the music playing from an Alexa device! "Why is there no TV in here?" she asks.

It figures that she would want to show up in the kitchen just before shopping day! I'm hyper-panicking, and hyper-ventilating as I try to keep her from looking inside the fridge.

Why can't she just settle for a quick hello and then stroll back to her room and wait to be served like normal old people?  But no, the Captain wants to micromanage everything in the kitchen today, and no doubt, work her way over to the fridge. "Attention On Deck! Captain on the Fridge!"

The First Man I Ever...

 

"My Forever Love"

I remember reading a family reunion planning article titled "The Walk of Your Life." It included a scene from one of my favorite movies, about man who experienced the loss of his wife and the mother of his children. They all had a dire need to reconnect to her and to each other, so they decided to do something rather odd. They took a walk.  But not just any walk. It was the walk of their lives. The father took his children to a street in town where he first met their mother. They walked to a restaurant where they sat at the very same table where their dad met is future wife for the very first time. The children heard a touching story of how their parents fell in love right then and there. 

I imagined merging the present with the past by taking such a walk with my parents.  To see, touch and hear my parents romantic story come to life right before my eyes in a way I never experienced before.  Maybe that's what my mother has been trying to do in her later years.

To the consternation of her children my mother has had the habit of talking about how she met my father in her early years while living in New York City. The story often follows when the family decides to focus on someone's wedding anniversary or someone is describing a nice trip they took - she would interrupt and say, "Me and Donnie used to do that too." (Names are changed to protect the innocent.) "He was my first love. The first man I ever made love to."  

Mom would even tell total strangers her story whether they cared to listen or not. But when she interjected her story at a family gathering the males of the family would laugh and protest, "Mom, please stop! We don't want to hear the details of your love life!" But she ignores their desperate hand-over-the-ears plea for mercy and keep plowing on with her story.  Her words, "He was the first man to ever...", would quickly be followed by... "Augh, please, no Mom!!!"

If the sounds of agony from the guys were not enough, she often got the stories of her husband mixed up with those about a later boyfriend. So, when she says, "Donnie and I met at our workplace.” The women of the clan would chime in with, "Mom, that wasn't how you met Dad, that was how you met your boyfriend, Daryl." At the same time my poor brother would double over, acting like someone's fingernails were scratching down the surface of a chalk board. Me, my sister, my aunt and the rest of the girls are more than happy to help her piece back together her love story. After all, she only has one true love story to tell. 

So Mom, you go on trying to remember your story. We're here ready to take that stroll with you down the streets of New York City in 1958 and experience 'the walk of your life' together.

Keywords: funny love stories, young love, funny memories about youth, embarrassing family situations, aging comedy, aging humor

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