My mom is so cute. She gets very excited when she goes out in the car by herself. This morning, she went to a friend's house. Yesterday, she took back a few things to the grocery store. She's self-sufficient again and loves it. She still has to go very slow when she gets in and out of the car, but she uses her walker and gets around quite well. I'm really proud of her. She didn't just sit around getting worse - she didn't just give up.
My dad, on the other hand, gave up a long time ago. It makes me sad to watch him, a figure who looks nothing like he did when he was younger. He sits in his chair all day, watching the news or the military channel or the channel about animals. This is his escape from the reality that he will die one day. He either sits in his chair watching tv or sits in his office at his computer. I tried to get him into the pool when it was warmer, but for some reason, he wouldn't budge. He never goes anywhere and doesn't even sit on the screened in porch, where he would at least get some fresh air. I ask them to open up the doors in the morning to bring in some kind of breeze, otherwise it's stuffy and sad in here. There's something about fresh air that gives life to what is dull. My father, I determined, is just sitting there, waiting to die. Not consciously, I think, but because he does nothing, he mindlessly watches the world go by via the tv and computer, even though every now and then he calls my brother to change one of his stocks. My kids are not coming down to get me after all. I'm disappointed about that, because my parents would both have enjoyed Ashanti and it would have given my dad a change in his day.
I'll be flying home this week and instead of sitting here writing, I should be packing. I'm being very lazy about this for some reason. I'm not sure what I should take and what I should leave here. Because I'm flying, I can't take it all like I was planning. I really don't have that much stuff, so it's not a big deal, but I've never been good at making choices. If you give me a menu with a hundred things on it, I calmly freak out because I don't know what to choose. If I have to clean up a big mess, again, I can't figure out where to start. Big grocery stores are troublesome for me, as there is too much to look at, at one time. It's sensory overload, just like carnivals or circuses. Well, scratch that - I hate circuses, so I would never go there. But whenever there are a lot of choices or decisions or things to look at, I sometimes have a hard time distinguishing what is what. I decided that this is from adult ADD, but then it may not be that at all. It could be that I'm just weird. That's probably the best explanation.
So, I'll be moving home and won't be living with old people after this week. So it seems a good time to complete my blog. But I really don't want to. I mean, it can't go on forever and ever, so it has to end at some point, and this is the most logical point. Maybe I'll start another blog on an entirely different topic. I really don't know what to do, but I'm not done yet. I still have four days left living with old people, and I have no doubt my parents will give me something more yet to write about.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
It Was What It Was
I am back in Florida for a few weeks and then I am moving back up north to live with my daughter. My parents are doing well - my mom actually looks good and my father is doing well, however he looks like Howard Hughes. He refuses to cut his hair or his beard until he absolutely has to and wears a baseball cap on his head, I suppose to feel young again. I don't know. I hope he doesn't scare Ashanti when she comes in a couple weeks. This is the same man who made my brothers wear crew cuts when they were young, and wore his hair like that as well, all the years I was comin' up. It was definitely not the style at the time and I'm sure my brothers hated their hair like that. He was exactly like that sgt. in the Marines on the TV show "Gomer Pyle," way back in the 60's. In fact, when I watched the show, it was scary how much that actor and my dad looked and acted alike.
When I first walked in the house, I noticed that my mom looks much better. She actually had more skin on her face and looked healthy. She told me that she gained 5 pounds and I told her that that was awesome. She still weighs herself at Publix on the giant scale in the front of the store. I'm positive that she still announces to whoever is around at the time how much she weighs. She delights in this as much as I delight in a hot fudge sundae. As much as I love my mom, we are so not alike. She and I have much different ideas about beauty, self and raising children.
My mother is, in the truest sense of the word, a food "nazi." No matter which room in the house she is in, if I go into the kitchen at any time of day or night, she will be in there in the matter of seconds. She is quickly alerted by the sound of the refrigerator door being opened, no matter how quiet I try to be. Sometimes I think she flies in there with a swoosh of her wings. She feels she must sit or stand, guarding the refrigerator and watching every single morsel I put in my mouth. She will recite endearing phrases such as "Don't forget dinner is in twenty minutes," or "Why don't you go and take a nap now," or "Is that all the cookies that are left?" She has, and always had, a vehement desire to see that my brothers and I adhere to her strict serving sizes and demand for complete food submission. And because she was such a food "nazi" when we were coming up, as soon as her foot stepped out of the house, we would steal as much food as we could from the refrigerator and the freezer in the basement. And so, you see, because she wanted us so much to be thin and trim, she actually caused us to all be overweight. It's such a reverse-psychology kind of thing that I learned in grade school. She has yet to learn this and I'm sure it puzzles her why she never got us the way she wanted us.
The freezer in the basement was awesome. It held little pound cakes and treats that we would gleefully eat and then stuff the wrappers at the bottom of the garbage can. We did this for a long time before she actually began to wonder why the treats in the freezer seemed to disappear so fast. Those treats were not for us - they were for my father, who also got to eat ice cream from the container, eat off bricks of chocolate my Nana would bring for him and drink pop - all of which were off limits to us. Instead, we would have Jello for dessert, or fruit, or something equally not as exciting as what my dad would get. We would drool watching him down a 1/2 carton of ice cream with a spoon and imagined what it would be like to be able to do that. It became too much torture, so we actually snuck and ate several times out of the container, attempting to make the spoon carvings just like my dad's, and we got away with it for awhile. That is until she made my dad put the ice cream in a bowl.
In comparison, my kids pretty much ate whatever they wanted to, when they wanted to. I mean, I made dinners most of the time, but they were usually simple meals and I didn't worry about how many carbs there were, etc. I was always tired coming home from work, so I bought a lot of frozen pizzas and made tons of macaroni and cheese, because we received "free" cheese when my kids were young. The cheese was so processed that it hardly melted - it would just sit there and you really had to mix it up good or it was one big blob. But it was food (I think) and it filled our bellies. They also ate a lot of Ramen noodles. Whatever was cheap and still filled the belly. I never hounded my kids on what they ate or didn't eat. I never told them that people were starving in China so they had to finish all the food on their plate. I was determined that I wouldn't raise my kids the same way I was raised, but I probably should have made them healthier meals. When you're on welfare or making minimal money at your job and still have to pay for day care, the cheapest food is what you could afford. I'm not proud of that fact - but it's just the reality of it. It was what it was. It is what it is. I like that phrase a lot. It is what it is. Simple but absolutely true, without going into a plethora of explanations.
When I first walked in the house, I noticed that my mom looks much better. She actually had more skin on her face and looked healthy. She told me that she gained 5 pounds and I told her that that was awesome. She still weighs herself at Publix on the giant scale in the front of the store. I'm positive that she still announces to whoever is around at the time how much she weighs. She delights in this as much as I delight in a hot fudge sundae. As much as I love my mom, we are so not alike. She and I have much different ideas about beauty, self and raising children.
My mother is, in the truest sense of the word, a food "nazi." No matter which room in the house she is in, if I go into the kitchen at any time of day or night, she will be in there in the matter of seconds. She is quickly alerted by the sound of the refrigerator door being opened, no matter how quiet I try to be. Sometimes I think she flies in there with a swoosh of her wings. She feels she must sit or stand, guarding the refrigerator and watching every single morsel I put in my mouth. She will recite endearing phrases such as "Don't forget dinner is in twenty minutes," or "Why don't you go and take a nap now," or "Is that all the cookies that are left?" She has, and always had, a vehement desire to see that my brothers and I adhere to her strict serving sizes and demand for complete food submission. And because she was such a food "nazi" when we were coming up, as soon as her foot stepped out of the house, we would steal as much food as we could from the refrigerator and the freezer in the basement. And so, you see, because she wanted us so much to be thin and trim, she actually caused us to all be overweight. It's such a reverse-psychology kind of thing that I learned in grade school. She has yet to learn this and I'm sure it puzzles her why she never got us the way she wanted us.
The freezer in the basement was awesome. It held little pound cakes and treats that we would gleefully eat and then stuff the wrappers at the bottom of the garbage can. We did this for a long time before she actually began to wonder why the treats in the freezer seemed to disappear so fast. Those treats were not for us - they were for my father, who also got to eat ice cream from the container, eat off bricks of chocolate my Nana would bring for him and drink pop - all of which were off limits to us. Instead, we would have Jello for dessert, or fruit, or something equally not as exciting as what my dad would get. We would drool watching him down a 1/2 carton of ice cream with a spoon and imagined what it would be like to be able to do that. It became too much torture, so we actually snuck and ate several times out of the container, attempting to make the spoon carvings just like my dad's, and we got away with it for awhile. That is until she made my dad put the ice cream in a bowl.
In comparison, my kids pretty much ate whatever they wanted to, when they wanted to. I mean, I made dinners most of the time, but they were usually simple meals and I didn't worry about how many carbs there were, etc. I was always tired coming home from work, so I bought a lot of frozen pizzas and made tons of macaroni and cheese, because we received "free" cheese when my kids were young. The cheese was so processed that it hardly melted - it would just sit there and you really had to mix it up good or it was one big blob. But it was food (I think) and it filled our bellies. They also ate a lot of Ramen noodles. Whatever was cheap and still filled the belly. I never hounded my kids on what they ate or didn't eat. I never told them that people were starving in China so they had to finish all the food on their plate. I was determined that I wouldn't raise my kids the same way I was raised, but I probably should have made them healthier meals. When you're on welfare or making minimal money at your job and still have to pay for day care, the cheapest food is what you could afford. I'm not proud of that fact - but it's just the reality of it. It was what it was. It is what it is. I like that phrase a lot. It is what it is. Simple but absolutely true, without going into a plethora of explanations.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
A Letter to the Church
When even one person dies or becomes seriously ill in the body of Christ, it affects us all. It's like a ripple effect that groans with pain, even for those who knew not the peron who died or became ill. That makes the meaning of "body of Christ" much more real. I've heard that term for over 31 years now and I had an idea what it meant, but now I experienced what it means. Just as when you burn a finger or stub your toe, that particular pain affects my whole body, and until it starts to mend itself, that's all I can think of. The same applies to the mourning and grief of one who has died. Time is what heals in this situation and the scripture that says, "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning," is the absolute truth.
The young man who died the other day was only 25. So young with so much life to live. And yet it was cut short for only reasons that God knows. And I think of all the young men and women who end up in prison for the rest of their lives for their own doing and I mourn the waste of a life. And life or living becomes more paramount in my mind. When you're young, you tend to think that you have the whole world in your hands and that you're invincible. When you get older, you realize that none of that is true and you think quite a bit more about life and death and eternity. And you realize that the days we have here are truly short indeed.
I don't mean to be a downer for those who are reading this, but I sincerely believe that we need to examine our lives often to make sure we are living the best way we can. I want to be a blessing to others and live my life as one pleasing unto God. And because that is sometimes so difficult, I pray all the time that God's will would be done in my life.
I know some of you will roll your eyes over that statement, but that's ok. We each have to find our own way in life, and I've found mine. And you're thinking "I wish she would have written something funny instead," but there is a time for every season. I personally would much rather laugh out loud than cry, but that's just not the way life is. I picture in my mind that life is one very long (or perhaps short) road that has hills followed by valleys all along the way. So we're not always sad, but we're not always happy either. Kind of like a roller coaster. Kind of like the moods of someone with bi-polar. Except we're all in the same boat, traveling down this road of life together. A boat traveling down a road. Ok, not a great analogy, but you get the gist.
Love others, be kind to others and be a blessing to others. We just never know when our time on this road comes to an end.
The young man who died the other day was only 25. So young with so much life to live. And yet it was cut short for only reasons that God knows. And I think of all the young men and women who end up in prison for the rest of their lives for their own doing and I mourn the waste of a life. And life or living becomes more paramount in my mind. When you're young, you tend to think that you have the whole world in your hands and that you're invincible. When you get older, you realize that none of that is true and you think quite a bit more about life and death and eternity. And you realize that the days we have here are truly short indeed.
I don't mean to be a downer for those who are reading this, but I sincerely believe that we need to examine our lives often to make sure we are living the best way we can. I want to be a blessing to others and live my life as one pleasing unto God. And because that is sometimes so difficult, I pray all the time that God's will would be done in my life.
I know some of you will roll your eyes over that statement, but that's ok. We each have to find our own way in life, and I've found mine. And you're thinking "I wish she would have written something funny instead," but there is a time for every season. I personally would much rather laugh out loud than cry, but that's just not the way life is. I picture in my mind that life is one very long (or perhaps short) road that has hills followed by valleys all along the way. So we're not always sad, but we're not always happy either. Kind of like a roller coaster. Kind of like the moods of someone with bi-polar. Except we're all in the same boat, traveling down this road of life together. A boat traveling down a road. Ok, not a great analogy, but you get the gist.
Love others, be kind to others and be a blessing to others. We just never know when our time on this road comes to an end.
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