It had been more than two weeks since I had seen Mom when I visited her today. (I had bronchitis and didn’t dare bring the germs to her.) So when I walked into her home today, she skipped the formality of saying hello and went straight to, “I love you so much!”
How could you have anything other than a fantastic visit when it starts like that?
I had brought her a gift of an artisan-made coffee mug, so naturally we had to go test it out at Starbucks. Lucia was in top form—positive attitude, high-level mentation, happy, calm and just enjoying life.
We ordered our coffees and some lemon pound cake, then sat down at a sunny table. Lucia took a sip of coffee and then looked up at me and said:
We got it made!
As she continued to enjoy her cake and coffee, we chatted about my new job and the beautiful weather, but her mind was focused on the moment. She loves Starbucks. She said:
People just don’t know how fortunate they are to have a wonderful place like this to come and enjoy a good cup of coffee whenever they want to.
She’s right you know. It feels great to remember how lucky we are. To have my mother still alive at 95, to have time to spend with her, to have a job that allows me to set my own schedule, to have enough money to pay for the coffee, to have a reliable car with gas in the tank, to live where the weather is great . . . oh yeah, we’ve definitely got it made.
Lucia had a rough morning today, but once she got up and about, she was in good form. Jayme is flying in from New York tonight and Lucia really, really wants to see her. Here’s what she had to say about it:
I’d just have to hug her and turn her around and around and kiss her.
Sometimes you just have to forgive yourself for bad hair choices. In my defense, I must say that it was the Eighties and mullets were practically mandatory in my circle of local rock legends. I also was responsible for Lucia’s shag.
Mea culpa.
The difference is, I paid big bucks for my haircut (sheared by the lead singer of my favorite band) and Lucia’s was free. Yes, I admit it. I gave her the haircut. And the perm.
Mea maxima culpa.
But forget the haircuts for a moment. Isn’t this a totally sweet mother-daughter photo? Lucia and I have been resting our heads on each other’s shoulders and smiling as big as the sky for as long as I can remember. We’ve had our share of nasty spats, but we’ve always been each other’s security blanket, through good haircuts and bad.
Whenever I see Lucia, I always tell her how much I love her — and she generally says something like, “I love you more” or “I love you too; you’ll never know how much.” Yesterday she added a new twist that was so sweet it made me smile all day.
I gave her a manicure, trimmed her nails and painted them the same light-pink color as mine. She kept saying how much she loved it and how she bet her Mama never got such a nice manicure.
I told her it was really fun doing it for her because I love her so much. She turned to give me a smooch and said, “I love you too, so much.” Then she paused for a moment and told me:
It has been a year and a half since these photos were taken (Christmas 2007). Lucia was living at the überfancy Stratford in Lafayette at the time. It was a brand new assisted living residence that was more like a luxury hotel than home. They had a fancy chef, a couple of salons, a gym, their own movie theater and a lot of other perks. They treated Lucia like royalty, but she’s a little too country for the whole cruise-ship ambience.
After a couple of major health setbacks —that had nothing to do with living at the Stratford but nevertheless landed her in the hospital—she moved to the wonderful Williams Family Care home, where she still lives as of now. But she lost a lot of weight along the way (she now weighs 92 pounds) and she no longer is willing to wear her false teeth, so she looks really different.
Seeing these photos really makes that evident. (I ran across them while deleting extra stuff from my digital camera.)
Yes, time flees. Or flies. Depending on how you see it.
Lucia hasn’t been feeling up to snuff lately, but today she was delighted to get in the car, ride over to Starbuck’s, and sit outside in the sun with a cheese Danish and a good cup of coffee.
It was a lazy, mellow afternoon. Just the kind you want in the middle of summer.
Yesterday I brought Lucia over to my little Victorian flat in Alameda and made some of her favorites for her early Mother’s Day lunch: Fettucine Alfredo (or as she calls it, spaghetti with cheese sauce) and fresh-baked blackberry cobbler with ice cream.
She was in heaven.
After she ate, I brought my laptop over to the dining table and showed her this blog. She absolutely loved it, not because it was about her, but because she was amazed by the technology. She asked me how much the computer cost and said it was totally worth it:
Lucia was in top form today when we went to Denny’s. She read a tagline on the placemat and felt it was profoundly true, if not written specifically for her. She read it out loud to me as though she were reading the Bible:
The world looks better through a great cup of coffee.
Then she shared one of her favorite things in life:
The best thing in life is, when you’re hungry, right when they first bring your food and set it on the table, because you know you’re going to get to eat it.
We all know how much Lucia loves to eat. It’s one of the most sensual, delightful things about spending time with her. Today she expounded:
When you eat a grilled cheese sandwich and French fries, it tells a story all over your body.
I asked the logical question: What does it say? She told me:
It says, ‘Don’t be bitchin’. That was a good sandwich.’
She was full of good ones today. At one point she got a faraway look in her eye, just for a moment, then she snapped back and said:
Sometimes my mind runs away from me, but I grabbed a hold of it.
She explained that she didn’t know where she was for a moment, then she looked out the window and saw all the cars in the parking lot and she remembered we were at Denny’s. I love it when her metacognitive awareness is at a high level like that and she is able to tell me how her mind is working. I can’t imagine what dementia feels like from her side of the fence, but occasionally she is able to give me a peek. When she does, I am in awe of her courage and grace.
When I arrived at Mom’s home today, she was in bed taking a nap. I went in to say hello and she told me she was really, really tired. So I said I’d just let her rest instead of going for a ride in the car. She sat up and said she’d rather get up and go for a ride, adding one of her standard Lucia-isms:
“You know me, I’m a car-ridin’ dawg.”
She got up and put on a hat, and we drove over to Denny’s for the usual — a piece of pie and a cup of coffee.
I hadn’t had lunch yet, so I ordered a veggie burger for myself. Lucia was working on her hot apple pie a la mode when the waiter brought my order. It came with a big pile of french fries. I asked Lucia if she wanted some and she immediately answered with another of her standards:
“My name’s Jimmy, I’ll take what you gimme.”
She was in good form.
She did get a tiny bit mixed up about where we were, but in her defense I have to say that all Denny’s restaurants look pretty much alike, from Alburquerque to Saskatoon. She thought we were “out in that sandy old desert by Los Angeles.” It was a totally natural stream-of-consciousness progression that started with her reminiscing about hot apple pie being one of Daddy’s rest-stop favorites on our trips down to see Grandma in Fontana.
She thought it, she said it, bada bing bada boom, she was there.
When we left Denny’s, got in the car and drove around the corner where she could see the hills, she immediately started talking about how glad she is that she lives right there in that “beautiful part of the country. I asked her if she was happy to be back home and she said, “Oh, yes! It’s always a relief to get home.”
Bada bing bada boom.
Totally psychedelic. From Hayward to Fontana and back in less than five minutes. And all in her mind. Yeah, baby.
I just found this photo of Lucia, taken shortly after she moved to Hayward. We went for a ride on the Niles Canyon Railway and she was absolutely enthralled by the scenery. I took this blurry shot with my cell phone. It’s bad quality but I love it. It’s a quintessential portrait of an old woman. Her hands are amazing, as is the expression on her face.One of these days I’ll paint it.
It had been more than two weeks since I had seen Mom when I visited her today. (I had bronchitis and didn’t dare bring the germs to her.) So when I walked into her home today, she skipped the formality of saying hello and went straight to, “I love you so much!”
