Smiling

I went to Eldervilla yesterday.  I hadn't been in a little over a week.  She was at the kitchen table eating her lunch when I arrived.  I sat down with her and we had a nice visit.  She joked with Mala, the care giver who was cleaning up the kitchen.

 

The thing I noticed most about her is how relaxed and happy her face looks.  She really does feel at home.  And she is definitely treating Sandy like her boyfriend, which he handles well.

(notice she has a new manicure)

 

I'm not sure who she thought I was but we talked about her parents and what they were doing today and I made comments based on things I knew about things when she was growing up.  It was a good conversation.

At one point she went to the bathroom and when she came back, she sat down and looked at me in amazement.  She had no idea I had come.  She said she had been talking to someone else and was surprised to see me there now.  Of course who "me" was, I don't know!  I know that many people feel very upset when their parents don't recognize them.  I guess after all these years, I'm just used to it.  It's not one of the things that upsets me.  I'm more upset when she has no connection to Bri and Lacie at all, just that they are "cute kids."

I did have a bit of a pang when she told me that my "glass paper" was pretty.  "Did you mean my hair?" I asked, since she had gestured toward my hair.  "Yes," she said, "your glass paper."  It gave me a pang because the subject of my hair has been an almost constant topic for decades.  One of the things my other has been VERY disappointed about all of her life was that she did not have curly hair, as some of her sisters did--and as I do.  She never failed to mention it for a long time  Every time she saw me she said "Oh look at that hair! It just makes me sick. That makes me feel so DISGUSTED."  Of course she meant it as a compliment because she wanted hair like mine, but I finally told her years ago how it made me feel to be told that she was disgusted whenever she looked at me.  She actually never used that word again and rarely mentions my hair now except to say it looks nice.  I'm not sure if I'm sad or happy that I never disgust her any more.

Sandy and I talked a bit.  Nancy, the woman whom the police picked up last week, fell in the ER and broke her hip, so she's been in the hospital and is moving to a convalescent home.  And I never dreamed that Jeannie, my mother's best friend at Eldervilla, is almost completely blind.  You'd never know it to watch her.

While we were talking my mother got up and went into her room and to bed.  I had been there for about an hour and a half, so I just left and didn't bother trying to tell her goodbye.

I often left Atria fighting back tears.  I have never done that at Eldervilla, and usually leave feeling so happy and grateful that we found this wonderful place.