Saturday afternoon, Mama came home from the hospital. Hospitals send people home after a short few days, whether they are ready to come home or not. They let us know that, if we felt we could not care for her properly at home, there were a couple of nice nursing homes in town. Sure. At least one of the homes has a very bad reputation for mistreating and neglecting the residents, and neither one has an adequate staff for the number of people living there. Dorcas has been looking for a new job for a few months, and since Tuesday she no longer works at “All About Kids”, so she will be able to stay with Mama quite a bit.
Last Tuesday evening, I took the kids to the library. Everywhere we looked, we saw friends and relatives. Katie was there, and she told Caleb that they had made him a birthday cake and dropped it off at our house. After we got back in the Suburban and were starting to drive away, one of the littles informed me of the cake.
“CAKE??!!” I yelped and stomped on the accelerator, thrusting everyone back tight against their seats, which made them all screech with laughter. They know I am not very fond of cake. Suddenly I remembered: a friend of ours was parked in front of the library, no doubt watching our maniacal departure that very moment, mouth agape in amazement.
I coasted back to a rational velocity.
Wednesday, I went to Wal-Mart for bins to go in the front hall closet. I bought five big ones to go on the floor, and six smaller ones to go on the shelf. Into these tubs I sorted gloves, mittens, hats, scarves, leg warmers, etc.; and the closet looks ever so much better. There are a lot of gloves and mittens whose mates are AWOL; they are probably sailing around the Bermuda Triangle in Amelia Earhart’s aeroplane with Erma Bombeck’s lost socks in the passenger seat and Al Capone in the cargo hold. It wouldn’t be so bad if the remaining mate was ripped and torn and used till it expired; but some of them are nearly brand new. Rats.
Ah, well; we do have more than enough gloves and mittens, courtesy of my mother, who often bought each child two or three new pairs each winter, and we are short on space in which to keep them...
You know, I’ll betcha if Amelia would have taken Wyatt Earp with her on that ill-fated flight around the world, she’d have gotten home safe and sound. After all, she was born in Kansas, and he was a member of a government surveying party hunting buffalo on the Kansas plains.
Eh? You want to know what that has to do with it? Well, but of course, it’s because people who are capable of guarding stagecoach shipments and who are not only proficient at reading a map, but also in drawing a map, would surely be good at finding their way through the Buffalo Triangle, don’t you think?
Wednesday I went to see Mama at about 5:00 p.m. She ate supper while I was there, and she ate better than usual, although it still wasn’t much. But she was so weak that just drinking tomato soup through a straw wore her out, and she often leaned back and closed her eyes. I had not before seen her so weak; talking was almost more than she could cope with.
Dorcas got a flu shot Thursday morning. The shot is not supposed to make anyone sick, since the vaccine doesn’t have a live virus; but just like Hannah did after getting that shot a couple of years ago, Dorcas promptly came down with the flu. She had a fever, ached all over, and felt nauseated. So much for her plans to stay with Mama Saturday night.
One day I did something monumental and unimaginable in our house: I set all the clocks on the right time, rather than ten minutes fast. Our clocks have been ten minutes fast for the last several aeons, in order that we would never, ever be late, don’t you know. JST. That’s Jackson Standard Time, according to a good friend of mine. Of course, every one of us, right down to Caleb, knew perfectly well how to subtract ten minutes from whatever time the clocks told us it was. Sooo...expect us to be ten minutes late everywhere we go for the next few eons (slightly shorter than an ‘aeon’, but a long time, nonetheless).
The nurses, or perhaps one of the dietitians, asked Mama for some suggestions of things she liked to eat. She happened to mention tomato soup, and she wound up with a steady diet of it ever since--and she would like other things, too. While she was eating supper Thursday evening, a technician--I think he was probably from Omaha ‑‑brought in a big machine to take a picture of Mama’s heart. Too bad he had to interrupt her supper; she needs every bite she can take, and she might’ve eaten her cottage cheese if he hadn’t have come right then. I was able to watch the sonogram on the machine’s big screen. I could see that the heart was pumping fairly strongly--he later said the heart muscle was healthy, which encouraged Mama--but there are a couple of valves that sometimes do not completely shut on the ‘dub’ part of the heart’s regular ‘lub-dub’ rhythm.
Hannah took baby Aaron to see Mama for a few minutes. Aaron started to cry after a bit, and Mama, hardly having enough strength to speak, teased Hannah, saying, “Oh! I thought you pinched him.”
That night, we went to Wal-Mart so Caleb could spend some of his birthday money. Caleb’s money doesn’t really burn holes in his pocket like it does in a couple of his siblings’ pockets; he generally puts the majority of anything he gets into his savings account, and then eagerly awaits his statement from the bank. He got a remote-controlled car, and my toes have been in mortal danger ever since. Socks’ socks have been worried about their general well-being, too.
One evening we stopped at Ampride for a mug of coffee; Larry went in to get it. As a few of the children and I sat outside in the Suburban watching people entering and exiting, I spotted a skinny man inside the store walking to the checkout stand. His hat was on backwards, and his messy, oily hair stuck out in spikes all around the edges of the hat and through the hole in the cap, which was at the front of his head.
“There’s Daddy,” I said, and all heads turned toward the store window.
Victoria snorted. “No, no, that’s not Daddy,” she informed me, “Daddy is the one with his hat turned around forwards!!”
Friday I was wearing a very full yellow broomstick pleated skirt, a soft yellow silk blouse, and a thick, nubby knitted ivory vest with fuschia and kelly green embroidery on it. The blouse was one of my favorites, because it is so soft and feels so nice. But it’s definitely showing its age, because it has now expired and is going to bits and pieces. First, a small rip appeared at a side seam near the hem. The tear took a square corner and started ripping right across the bottom front, heading for the button placket. Every time I tucked it in, it ripped the more. Then it split at the shoulder seam, and kept right on splitting. Later that night, I was showing Dorcas the lacking shoulder molecules, and noticed that the sleeve was separating from the bodice.
“Good grief, it’s falling apart,” I said, and tugged on the sleeve.
It came off.
Dorcas looked amazed, and then burst out laughing. A few minutes later, I was standing talking to Joseph. He was just into a lengthy saga about SomethingOrOther, not seeming to notice that one of my sleeves was considerably shorter than the other, when I reached up, got a grip on my remaining sleeve, and pulled it off without any trouble whatsoever.
Now that stopped his narrative in midstream and made his eyes open wide.
“My blouse is losing molecules,” I remarked serenely, trying to keep a blank face.
“You don’t say,” said Joseph.
I got a different blouse to change into, and threw away the old one, first removing the pretty yellow buttons off it--and I didn’t even have to use scissors; I just pulled them right off, easy as pie.
I bought myself a cute little purple headphone radio at Wal-Mart for the price of only $5.00--and that’s all it’s worth, too. On AM, I have the following choices: the Columbus station of KJSK, or the Columbus station of KJSK, or the Columbus station of KJSK. The tower for KJSK is about half a mile from our house; that’s why the signal bleeds over onto every other station, from the top of the dial to the bottom. Now and then, if I stand on my head, wave one foot wildly toward the east, and flap both ears with all my might and main, I can hear vague broadcasts from a big Omaha station. Well, it so happens that I don’t like either one of those stations. Bleah.
I tried FM, and found Nebraska Public Radio, where I heard that two more people had been found to be infected with Anthrax, and the FBI had discovered the postal box into which the infected letters had been dropped. Now, I wonder, since the general public has learnt that piece of information, will the culprits be sitting politely in their laboratory, wrists extended, waiting for the FBI to break down the door and come barging in, cuffs in hand? Imagine those turbaned criminals giving a courtly bow of the head and intoning, “Salami.” (That’s the proper Taliban greeting, isn’t it?) “Where y’all been so long?”
I sure hope no super-sensitized person comes visiting at my house, because he would likely find white powdery substances everywhere he looked. That, on account of the fact that I like powder, and on all surfaces in the bathroom that are even remotely flat there is a fine film of fragrant powder. Victoria’s room sports the same sort of powdery dust, because she is particularly fond of Johnson baby powder’s delicate scent, and when four-year-olds powder their feet, they powder everything within thirty square feet.
And where there is not powder, there is dust.
One time not long ago, we were fishing at Lake Babcock where the Loup Canal flows into it. The sun had gone down, and it was dark. Caleb and Joseph each had a walkie-talkie.
Suddenly, close downriver, there was a bright flash and a resounding ka-BOOOOM!!!
Caleb grabbed his walkie-talkie and asked Joseph, who was standing on a walk bridge not far away, “Joseph!!! Did you hear that big bang?!!”
Understand, there was no possible way he would not have heard that bang, unless he was stone deaf; and then he would most certainly have seen that blinding flash. And even if he was also completely blind, he would surely have felt the concussion.
“No,” responded Joseph quite calmly, “What bang?”
Caleb was astonished. “Mama!” he exclaimed, eyes wide, “He said he didn’t hear that!”
“Of course he did.” I grinned at Caleb. “He’s pulling your leg.”
Caleb keyed the mic. “Joseph, Mama said of course you did.”
“Oh,” replied Joseph, “I thought it was a fish jumping.”
Caleb giggled. A bit later, he was fiddling with the walkie-talkie, trying to make it play a different ‘paging’ sound.
“Joseph?” he asked, “How do you change the ring?”
“You go to the jewelry store,” explained Brother R. Helpful, “And trade in the one you don’t like.”
“Ugh,” sighed Caleb, “There he goes again.”
Friday afternoon Hester went with Emily out to their farm. (Emily’s family’s farm, that is; not Hester and Emily’s farm.) Emily is one of her best friends and a second cousin to boot, which makes it all the better.
After we ate supper, we went to retrieve Hester. When we arrived, there was Hester sitting on the porch with Emily, not at all looking as if she was ready to leave any time soon. Dorcas walked up to the porch.
“They are just getting ready for dessert,” Hester told her.
So we said we’d come back shortly, and went off again.
Dessert. Now, that sounded mighty good. We drove to Cuzzins’ Corner, and Larry and Joseph went in and bought raspberry flips, blueberry turnovers, and mulberry Danishes. And chocolate milk to wash them down. We drove through Pawnee Park while we ate. Mmmmmmm...
“I feel like I just gained ten pounds,” I told Larry.
We returned to the farm. Larry’s cousin and her husband rushed out and invited us in--and fed us the rest of the dessert Hester had stayed for.
Twenty pounds and counting.
The girls--Hester, Lydia, and all their cousins (this is the family who had eight girls...and then one boy, just to finish the family off with aplomb)--went out to see the horses again, and Victoria and the two littlest girls, Michaela and Katrina, played with a big Barbie doll house.
After a pleasant visit, during which time we were well entertained by a calico kitten very similar to our late calico cat (and I do mean entertained; she even played the piano for us), we went to Pawnee Park and played tennis. Brrr!! It was cold! The game seemed a bit stiffer than usual.
Teddy has been borrowing Dorcas’ car, because he has torn his pickup apart trying to find a short in the wiring that is causing all sorts of things to misbehave. Since he uses it to go on dates with Amy, Larry calls it the “Brotherly Love Car”.
Saturday after he got off work, Larry took pity on Teddy and helped him track down the problem with the wiring. They finally got it fixed. It was the fault of the people who put the rebuilt transmission into it; they’d pinched off some wires and caused a bad short. It’s a wonder the pickup didn’t catch on fire and burn down garage and house right along with it. Furthermore, there is a crack somewhere, and it is leaking oil. They ought to refund Teddy at least part of his money for all the problems.
In the meantime, since I’d finished sorting and arranging the front coat closet, I decided to sort through both big wardrobes in the garage. They were both crammed clear full of coats and sweat jackets and coveralls. I was almost done washing clothes when I started going through the wardrobe, and then I discovered lots of coats and jackets that needed to be washed. There was soon a pile of things by the washing machine higher than my head. And one of the Helpful Hatties who carried things downstairs for me put some of the stuff on the washing machine lid, so I had to use a crowbar and the Jaws of Life to get the lid open, because the pile was too heavy for me to lift. It wasn’t long before I ran out of detergent.
Earlier in the afternoon at David’s shop, Larry was cutting metal, and a tiny piece flew into his eye. It was hot, too. Although it didn’t exactly feel like it was burning, the heat, I think, caused the piece to stick to his eye good and proper. All afternoon, he kept thinking it would come out on its own, but at midnight when he tried getting it out with a Q-tip and it wouldn’t come, and he couldn’t sleep because it was hurting so much, I decided something had to be done.
I called the optometrist (since Larry wouldn’t do it), and then reached over and put the receiver on Larry’s ear so that he was obligated to talk to the doctor himself. In ten minutes we were at the Optometric Center, where the doctor met us and looked at Larry’s eye. The metal, after being in Larry’s eye just those few hours, had already turned rusty, and the doctor had to use his buffer--sort of like a miniature sander--to get it out of Larry’s eye. It took quite a while, and when Larry and the optometrist finally came walking down the hallway, Larry sported a big brown plastic patch (it looked like leather) over his eye, with a strap around his head to hold it on.
“Just in time for Halloween,” Larry told me.
“If you ever get metal in your eye again,” the doctor instructed Larry, “Come in right away, and we’ll be able to get it out easier, and your eye will heal quicker.”
(That’s what they told him the last two or three times it happened.) The doctor said he should wear the patch for twenty-four hours, so as to keep his eye shut and not get it infected. He said the eye would feel something like a skinned knee for a while, because of his ‘buffing’ it, or ‘sanding’ it, to get the metal out.
After we left the Optometric Center, I drove to Super Saver for more detergent and fabric softener for all those coats. I then took us on a jaunt down Shady Lake Road, but I might as well have been all by myself, Larry was so sound asleep. Home again, I washed three more loads of clothes before bed.
Well, Larry kept the patch on for eight hours, I think, and then, after helping Victoria get dressed, he slept in the recliner until church was over. Now, as I type, he is up fixing pancakes. Anyway, he managed to keep his eye shut for about twelve hours. One pupil is bigger than the other, on account of the medicine the doctor put into it to dilate it. But it is feeling better.
* * *
This afternoon I went over to Mama’s house to see how she was, and to see Loren and Janice, my brother and sister-in-law, who were there. I don’t get to see them often, because Loren sometimes works quite a ways from home. He’s been doing extraordinarily well at his job, selling memberships like hotcakes, same as ever. He’s a first-rate salesman, and that’s the truth of it.
Mama’s oxygen machine was against the far wall, sounding sort of like one of those old water coolers. I asked her how she was, and she said, “Oh, I’m just trying to breathe...” She smiled a little bit and continued, “Still trying.”
I looked at Loren, and he had tears in his eyes. He said she was a little better than she had been in the morning before Sunday School, probably because her heart medicine had started taking effect.
I stayed with Mama tonight while everyone else went to church. She is eating fairly well, although it never seems like quite enough, but she is just so awfully weak and frail. Every slightest exertion leaves her winded, exhausted. She is still the same as always, in that just as soon as she figured church was over, and we could hear car doors shutting and vehicles leaving the parking lot, she began worrying over whether my family needed me at home.
I was helping her into bed when the girl who was going to stay the night with her arrived. So I came home, pleased to find Bobby, Hannah, and Aaron still here. Families are comforting commodities, are they not? I highly recommend them: mothers... fathers... brothers... sisters... sons... daughters... sons-in-law... daughters-in-law... grandchildren...
And even cats. Kitty just came purring around my ankles.
Goodbye...I’m off to pour some fresh cat food.
P.S.: KEEP!!! That’s what you do with bees; you keep them. Remember, in my last post, I said some friends of ours ‘raise’ bees? I knew that wasn’t quite right. They are beekeepers.
Don't say 'duh' to me!!
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