Saturday, February 8, 2014

What’s this word, Rob? Mom does word search puzzles every day when she isn’t watching TV. Where’s this word, Sandy? Rob, is this right? Asking these questions often enough sometimes elicits a curt answer.

Rob insists upon surfing the web at the same counter where mom sits. I encourage him to escape to saner, quieter quarters, but he persists. So if mom asks him another annoying question, he will just have to deal with it. Men and mothers! And if I hear him sigh in annoyance once more… But he is very helpful and far more patient than I. He is not watching his mother decline before his eyes. He is solicitous and I am grateful for him. He’s out shoveling snow as I write.

When I taught school ages ago, I had a delightful student who observed at a nursing home where we went to entertain the elderly that the elderly become like little children. Old people have to be led by the hand just the way little children do. They become like children again. He wasn’t aware at that time of the irony of their also returning to diapers.