“I like to just sit and look at you…” my Mother tells me when I visit her in Chapel Hill. It’s as if she needs to memorize my presence as I do hers - to save me for all those days when we aren’t together and until the next visit.
Last week I took a flight to Raleigh Durham, rented a car, and in twenty minutes was at Carolina Meadows and the Fairways, the assisted living facility where my mother lives. I know my way as if I lived there because I’ve been so many times. As I drove through the entrance I was reveling in the flowering trees with new leaves, brilliant pink azaleas, and the blue and yellow pansies bordering the neatly mowed green lawns. All seemed so lush and manicured - a refreshing change from Vermont where spring is very late this year.
On the way, I passed my parents villa on the corner lot at 318 where they moved in 1993. The garage door was open with a view of stacked storage boxes and overflowing shelves of stuff and two strange cars parked in the driveway. I noticed rosebushes and flowers planted in newly dug flowerbeds in the yard and a decorative flag hanging over the garage. Mom and Dad were the first to live in this spacious house where the garage was used to park the car and the door was never left open because that was unsightly. Neither of my parents particularly liked gardening preferring to spend their time on more intellectual pursuits - Mom writing novels and Dad preparing foreign affairs lectures.
I parked my rental car in the new Fairways parking lot that was not finished when I was there in January, and hurried up to apartment 212 where I found Mom sitting in her tidy one bedroom apartment waiting for me. This is how our visits always start now that she is alone and so much has changed. She looks up when I walk in and I feel relieved to know she will cheer up while I am there. I silently make a wish and hope that I can take some of her sadness away.
Mom is appreciative of anything I do for her and has come to depend on me ever since Dad became ill and and passed away last year. This is a role reversal of earlier years when I looked to her for help and support. She now knows that she can count on me to be there for her although it took me awhile to get used to this shift in our mother daughter relationship. Now I love to helping her. I find myself observing her closely and learning how to grow old gracefully. I want to always remember these last years.
At 91, Mom is never critical and the perfect listener. Although she is frail, hard of hearing with failing eyesight, she wants to know what is happening in the world, and in all of our lives. Perhaps this is why she gets frequent phone calls from children and grandchildren who want to tell her things. She draws the line at complaining and becomes impatient with residents who are critical of whatever is going on at the Fairways. She prefers to keep a positive outlook and despite the fact that she is alone, she often says she feels fortunate to be so well cared for where she is.
My mother is a real lady. Her grandmother Virginia, for whom she was named, made a lasting impression on her growing up and taught her to always "do and say the kindest thing in the kindest way". Whether or not she is aware of it, she lives by those words each day and is loved by everyone who takes care of her. She always follows rules, and spends much of her time doing the right things in caring for herself. Few people would imagine how adventuresome she was as a young woman when she left her home in Iowa to go to South America by herself, marry my father, and have three babies in different foreign countries.
I am always surprised when she asks me to help her get rid of things and especially the “katchy bachy” (a made up word we learned in Argentina). When I look around I see everything neatly put away and very little junk. I remember the stories she would tell us as children about the messy house she grew up in. My grandmother was a free spirit who never felt the need to put away anything so that there were stacks of books everywhere on the floor and clothes were thrown into paper sacks when they took trips. My mother said she vowed when she grew up not to live that way and of course, she hasn’t. She married my father who never had patience for anything out of place. Now that she no longer has to please him she still keeps things neat as a pin and cleared out. She was always my role model for being able to throw things away easily. I am sad when she wants me to clear out more books out of the bookcases. Knowing her love of literature and good books, she has lived surrounded by her favorites but now, of course, her eyes no longer allow her to read any of them. She listens to books on tape instead.
Each time I visit, we have fun sprucing up her wardrobe. My mother is probably the best dressed resident at the Fairways taking care to wear something that pleases her every day. She still puts on a hint of make up and even a necklace to go with each outfit. No sweatpants or polyester for this 91-year-old lady! I have learned that putting on a favorite outfit everyday does help morale. I like to shop for her as we both take pleasure in soft, pleasing colors. She likes to wear yellows, spring green, soft turquoise and celestial blues. My sense of color comes from her and often we will appear in the same colors without having consulted each other beforehand. When I was growing up I loved shopping together and it became something we did even after I was grown up. Now I go to stores and pick out what I know she’ll like and bring it back for her to try on at home. I always leave her with some new clothes that she will enjoy putting on each morning.
The days went by so quickly this past week and the dread of having to leave stayed with me all the way to Vermont. I called her when I got home to tell her I had arrived safely and she thanked me again for coming. “I’m wearing the flowered jacket you bought me the other day at Belks. It cheers me up,” she told me. Now we are back to emailing daily and I call her every afternoon and keep the memorized picture of her on the sofa in her apartment in my head. I hold my breath and hope she will be there waiting for me the next time I come.
