How to explain yesterday?
    And, why explain yesterday? To repeat it, maybe, in the future. I wonder, though, if the problem isn't that Ancient Bodies develop a peculiar dialect through time, especially dense to those of us whose bodies are still engaged, overwhelmingly, in preservation rather than preparation for biodegrading. It is for this reason that I take pride in my mother's strength of will, as, sometimes, this is the only way I know to either back off on bothering her to sit up, to move, to focus, or to encourage a burst of in-my-environment consciousness on her part.
    After two, no, three days of living beneath a pale, almost jaundiced veil of lethargy, of mostly sleeping, mostly dazing out at the world, of me supplicating to her blood sugar, her hydration level, the echoes of her congested or dry coughing that seemed impossible to nebulize away, her body barely maintaining a minimum metabolic rate so that nutrition was no longer a matter of minerals or calories, but of clogging, on the fourth day she revived. Granted, since she was prone most of those days, she got a lot of supplemental oxygen. But, a revival is supposed to take place after effort. I don't understand the effort my mother was expending over the last three days and how it contributed over the weekend to a Memorable Monday.
    Sometimes, I wonder if it is simply a matter of color. She has a deep peach knit shirt that flashes equally well over either her black-black slacks (the ones with the diagonal side pockets full of Kleenex®) and her light brown pocketless pants. When she wears her peach shirt, as she did yesterday, and one of these pairs of pants, her brilliance, that glitter of vitality that disappears completely only at death, is enhanced.
    I used to think it was the bathing that stimulated her. Too many times, though, when we've needed a few hours apart, I've returned to find her cockily seated in either her rocking chair (experimenting with the remote on the TV to the place where I have to unplug everything and reset it) or at the dining room table (scouring both newspapers and all 6 tabloids for gossip and information so that she'll perform well during Jeopardy! and Hollywood Squares), fully dressed, well matched, obviously not bathed but humming as though she had. I wonder if, as we age, we become more comfortable with the habits of our youth. My mother, for a fair share of her growing up years in the central part of the country, bathed twice a week, sometimes three times if attending a special event. That is about how often she will deign to bathe, now, even though a mere four years ago a morning bath was her first order of business every day after breakfast. Since, in my childhood, I was trained to daily baths, I wonder if as I age I will not only continue, but find comfort in the ritual daily bath.
    This morning she has been up and returned to bed twice, but it is still early. I see evidence of her having been up in the night: the cheese has been left out (she prefers it warm, greasy and tupperware-hard, with cracks here and there and, yes, we have two blocks of each flavor of cheese we like, hers and mine) and a few more bites are missing from the blueberry dessert I prepared last night. Good. Since her appetite seemed healthy, yesterday, I reinstated her full level of diabetic medication and tempted her with tart (tart and sweet have always been her favorite flavors) offerings, yesterday: deviled eggs flavored with mustard, onion and dill relish; tabasco sauce in her V-8® juice; slightly sour cottage cheese ("Make sure it's old," she always reminds me, as I head for the grocery store); a lemony, low sugar blueberry sauce I improvised when it became apparent her sweet tooth was screaming. The temptation worked. I expect her blood glucose to beep in at a respectable 120-130 this morning; high for a 45 year old woman but a cause for celebration with my mother. I think I read someplace, in my wanderings to discover the mysteries of aging, that as tastebuds age prominence, not just presence, counts when flavoring food. My mother's experience seems to bear this out.
    This morning, since I have the time, I'm going to follow this post with two more; one, a personal 'rant' about diabetic glucose testing and the other a review of how my ideas are taking shape for the presentation of Mom & Me's history.
- posted by gail rae @ 09:26   email...this post