Happy fall!? What was I thinking? More like happy winter here in the Rose City. We bypassed fall and went straight to misery. I am ramping up my whining a bit earlier than normal this year, thanks to a cold front and some gusty east winds. Only a few weeks ago I removed the sunshades from my front windows. Now it's already time to hang the plastic on the back windows. Fall was barely three weeks long. Why am I surprised? It's 2020. You'd think I'd be all ho hum by now but sometimes I can't believe this is real. This, meaning, like, everything.
After I moved Mom into the care home last month, many of her possessions ended up in my living room. Over the past month I've made a pretty good dent in the stacks of boxes and bags. I've spent several evenings sorting through old cards and letters, bundling up clothes, and organizing stuff into boxes for the thrift store. All the yarn disappeared from my front porch, thanks to two happy Freecyclers (I assume they were happy, I didn't actually see them in the world of contactless donating). Some things I don't know what to do with. . . . the $40+ toilet seat riser, for one, which we purchased to add to her toilet at the retirement home. It's the kind of thing you wonder, like, will I need this any time soon or should I . . . donate it on Freecycle? Yeesh. I think I can give it to the new care home. Still, I wonder, like, should I stash this away, just in case? You never know when you might suddenly realize your toilet is too low. It's 2020, after all.
When I packed Mom's stuff last month, I had little time to decide what would go with her to the new care home. For example, for many years, Mom kept a small basket filled with pastel-colored guest soaps on the back of her toilet. I assumed it was to gently combat the bathroom smells with pleasant scents of lavender, rose, lilac, and lemon. On moving day, I threw many disparate items into one box for later sorting, including the basket of soaps.
Eventually I went through the boxes and bags in my living room and found the basket of soaps. As I lifted the dusty basket, it fell apart in my hands, probably because of rough treatment during packing. I decanted the soaps into an empty yogurt container, maybe a dozen grungy soaps in various shapes and colors. A gray heart, a speckled egg. . . Should I donate them to the thrift store? I sniffed them experimentally. No odor. I examined them with a critical eye. Would anyone I love welcome these objects as a gift? Not a chance. I walked around my apartment with the container of soaps, reminiscing about my boasts about downsizing, and eventually ended up in the bathroom, as we are all wont to do, and there the soaps found a home on the back of my toilet, where they now sit gathering dust and doing nothing to combat the bathroom smells.
When I went through Mom's castoff clothes, mostly fleece jackets and cotton-poly knit polo shirts, I set aside a navy blue cardigan I thought she might like to wear again. I am not certain but I think it might have belonged to my father. It's nothing fancy, acrylic, I'd guess, loosely woven and unraveling in a couple places near the neckline. I hung it on a hanger and left it on a doorknob where I noticed it from time to time and thought, hey, I should mend that thing.
Tonight I looked at the sweater more closely. Mending is not a favorite chore. For Mom, I would tackle the job, but would she be glad to see Dad's old sweater? Or would it make her feel sad? What would the new caregivers think of Mom wearing a decrepit unraveling cardigan? Would they think Mom is a slob? Or would they blame the family (me) for not getting her some new sweaters? All this was going through my mind as I fingered the holes and wondered how I would mend the thing given that I have no navy blue thread, and I hate to mend. In the end, I hung it in my closet. It's getting cold in the Love Shack. Maybe I'll wear it for Zoom meetings; maybe people will think I look professional if they don't look too close.
I visit Mom at the new care home every evening after dinner. As you may recall, the first week was rough. The second week she was morose. By the third week, she and the main caregiver Erin were old chums. For the past week or so, we've visited outside on the patio. One evening I sat six feet away, making a face under my plaid mask while I watched Mom hug Erin like a . . . well, like a daughter.
The people at the care home are her family now. Anyone who prepares Mom's sandwiches and wipes her nether regions deserves family designation. I'm just the peripheral person who visits outside and pays the bills. It's okay. A month in and I am grateful daily that the move didn't kill her. Her life might actually be better. She sounds calm. She's doing puzzles. She looks clean. She's making more sense. She voted. Did you hear me? She voted.
This week my mission is to cover the east-facing windows with layers of plastic and drape my work desk in a booth of drop cloths hung from the ceiling. I hope this bit of crude remodeling will retain heat in my work area, where I spend most of my time. The heat comes from the $14.00 heater I wrested from Home Depot during a three-month slow-motion curbside pickup. Now I'm toasty warm while I doom-scroll, attend online webinars, mentor clients, and endure Zoom crashes. I'm glad 2020 is almost over but I don't expect much from 2021. Maybe spring will come again, who knows. I'm doing my best to bundle up and live in the present, one day at a time.
