Book 3 Chapter 8 Section 2: The Pond (My Last Days with My Mother)

 Book 3 Chapter 8 Section 2 The Pond (My last days with my mother)

Every nursing home tries to find a way to make itself unique, to set itself as being different from all of the others.  Jeff spent a lot of time picking out just the right place for his mother.  Cost was a major factor that he had to consider, but the ambience of the place was also important.  The nursing home that he chose was different from all of the others that he visited in that it had an outdoor park set right in the middle of a vast complex of residential buildings.  It had a pond as its centerpiece.  Since it was an open-air park, ducks have found their way into this area, and they could often be seen flying in from the overhead skies to land in the alcove.  Aside from the ducks, there were fish and turtles in the pond, and the wildlife made the park very welcoming.  A final nice touch was when the management planted all sorts of fauna around the pond and the lush, green area made the residents feel like they are in a public park.  A walking path led to a gazebo and the whole area was wheelchairs accessible.  It was all laid out so perfectly that the pond invited anyone who had leisure time to come and visit for a while.  This oasis was a place of peace and tranquility

Whenever a visitor came to The Masonic Home, they must stop by the front desk to sign in and get a visitor’s nametag.  The receptionists always stopped Jeff on his weekly visits to ask, “How is your mother.”  It was the same question that she asks every week and Jeff’s inevitable response was “She is not going to get better but will only get worse.”  It was a dark statement and the receptionist looked glum whenever Jeff said it, but he was tired of the forced concern by some of the staff and decided the way to cut them short was to tell the truth.  Honesty always through them off and the eldest son was free to move on from the foyer to Sally’s Garden where Gail was committed to stay.        

As soon as Jeff enters his mother’s bedroom, he immediately tells her to get ready to go for a walk.  If Gail was given a choice as to whether she wanted to leave the room or not, she would always pick staying put.  He helps his mother into the wheelchair and then pushes her out of her room and through a maze of corridors.  After a short walk, they find their way to the pond and parks themselves next to the water.  The morning sun shines in and it feels good on their skin.   Since Gail doesn’t get out of her room very often, much less leave the wing, she almost never gets to go outside.  As a result, her skin is pasty white and the pallor of her face is grey.  Jeff locks the old woman’s wheelchair into place so that Gail doesn’t accidentally go tumbling into the water, and he takes a seat at a bench. Mother and son sit in silence.  There is no need to interrupt the respite with conversation because nothing new can be added to the conversation that they have already had on previous visits.  They close their eyes before lifting their faces towards the sun.  Their pale skin begins to burn but, almost recklessly, they two do not move from their perch because the moment is too nice to give up on easily.  The waterfall provides a constant tinkling for ambient noise and, when they tire of the sun, they open their eyes to watch the goldfish swim in the pond.  If they are lucky, they get to watch baby chicks following their mother in or out of the water.  Ducks take off and land from inside the confines of the building that surrounds them.  The whole environment is so inviting that neither one of them seem to notice the time passing.

For just a little while, Gail seemingly escapes the doldrums of living in a nursing home.  For the time being, mother and son had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, so they may as well sit and enjoy nature for awhile.  Yet when the baby chicks no longer distract them and the ducks have flown away, Gail and Jeff look around the residential buildings that surround the pond and become conscious of the fact that they were being watched.  They see old people looking out of their windows, spying on the middle aged man and the old woman, and Jeff knew that the nice feeling of having escaped the confines of the corridors and rooms of the nursing home had vanished.  In their imaginations, they were on a lakeshore, or somewhere in the wilderness, but now reality hit and they knew that they were back at a retirement home.  They didn’t like the idea of being observed and so the two walk and wheel their way back to Gail’s room.

When it became time for Jeff to leave, he had slipped into the habit of kissing his mother’s forehead before he found his way out the door.  This was something that he had never done while growing up and certainly could not have done it in adulthood.  He had seen one of the caregivers hug his mother’s head and was expecting Gail to explode in rage at this act of unwanted familiarity.  Instead, the old woman obviously enjoyed the human contact and was not defensive or angry at all.  It was a little embarrassing that a complete stranger had to teach Jeff how to show a display of affection towards his own mother, but from that point on, he determinedly gave his mother a kiss on the forehead as he left her room.  Gail always smiled bashfully at this act of love.

Mother and son settled into this routine and enjoyed the best relationship that they ever had.   Part of the reason why the two became close was that Gail became completely dependent on Jeff, and she knew it.  There was always a glint of recognition when Jeff entered her room; sometimes Gail would exclaim “Jeffrey” when she saw her son, and then he wheeled her down to the Sunday service.  Although she was never particularly religious, now that Gail was on the decline, one of her few coherent thoughts was that she wanted to go to mass.  As they waited for the nondenominational service to begin, Jeff pulled up a chair and talk to his mother for a while.  It was mostly idle talk as he verbally checked off a list of his siblings, and their children, but most of this was old news that Gail had heard before.  Once the service began, mother and son usually fell asleep, just like almost everyone else in the hall.  The preacher wasn’t discouraged and carried on with the service.  He reads some scripture, uses some talking points that he found online for his sermon, and the whole insufferable ritual is over in twenty minutes or less.  When he is done, and the service is over, the caretakers must wake everyone up and send them to the common area for lunch.  Jeff wheels his mother to the dining room and read to her from the newspaper while they waited for her fried chicken, the special on Sundays, to arrive.  Once she was served, Jeff took his leave, because that was a good break off point.  On his way out of the door, he promised that he would visit again in a week.

The weeks turned into months and the months turned into years.  Gail came to expect that Jeff would visit on Sundays and that was how she marked time.  When she saw Jeff the first comment that came out of her mouth was, “It must be Sunday!”  That was the most emotion that she would display unless something was bothering her.  For example, one time when Jeff entered the room, he found his mother crying.  When he asked what was wrong, she whimpered, “I have enjoyed my time at summer camp but I am ready to go home now.”  Dementia shrouds her memory and she walks around in a fog, trying to figure her little world out.  One week she may remember that her father fought in WWI but she won’t remember that her husband was dead.  Sometimes she confused her son for her deceased husband.  She furrowed her brow as she tried to remember who her brother and sisters were when Jeff mentions their names.

Gail’s tablemates at meal time are Eloise, MaryAnn, and Helen.  If this were a country club, or even a normal restaurant, then the room would be filled with chatter.  But this is a nursing home and the residents do not talk to each other while they eat.  They don’t even want to come to lunch and have to be coaxed out of their rooms.  Out of the three people that Gail has to share a table with, Maryanne looks the most normal because she vibrant and takes pride in her appearance.  However, when forced to engage in conversation, it becomes immediately apparent that Maryanne has no short-term memory at all.  Sitting between Gail and Maryanne is Helen, who is prim, proper, and so polite that she introduces herself to her tablemates every time that they sit down for a meal.  When the meals are over, and before they are wheeled back to their rooms, Maryanne whined pathetically to no one in particular, “I want to go home.”

Eloise had rounded out the table of four, but then something went horribly wrong for her because one day she stopped showing up at the table.  Her room was vacated and she was transferred to Judy House, the part of the complex reserved for the residents who cannot feed themselves or do their own toileting.  Even after sharing meals with Eloise three times a day for a year and a half, Gail did not notice when her former tablemate disappeared.  Artie, who doesn’t respond to anyone who tries to get her attention, replaced Eloise.  Meanwhile, in the background, there are some residents who should be sitting at a table but refuse to associate with the others.  Snooks acts just like a little kid and steals food to take back to her room when no one is looking.  George moves so slowly with his walker that he always arrives late and the rest of his table is finishing up by the time he arrives.  The main reason why he was so slow was that he used a walker and his pants would often accidentally drop to his ankles.  He had lost so much weight that none of his clothes fit him anymore.  Since he had to use both of his hands to hold onto his walker, he couldn't reach down to pull his pants up.  He had to wait for someone on staff to help him.  In the corner of the dining room is a woman who nobody seems to know.  She complains about everything; the food, the temperature, and the fact that no one comes to visit her.  “All we do all day is sit on our butts all day,” is her favorite line and the staff goes out of their way to avoid her.

Once he drops his mother off at her room, Jeff walks down a long corridor to the exit.  As he does, he sneaks a peek into the rooms of the residents if their doors are open.  Most of the old folks are either sleeping or watching television.  One passive aggressive man blares his television as loudly as possible because he doesn't want to wear his hearing aide.  Everyone in the hallway has to listen to whatever he is listening to because the volume echoes throughout the wing.  Finally, as he makes his way through the foyer, Jeff waves goodbye to the nosey attendant who is still staffing the front desk, and he makes his way out the front door.  On the stoop is an old man sitting in a wheelchair.  He stations himself in the exact same spot every week and spends his afternoons sunning his bones.  “Not a bad way to spend the final days on this earth,” Jeff thinks to himself as he gets into his car and drives away to begin working on his weekend chores.

Niko and Sandra Triantafillidis

                                        Niko and Sandra Triantafillidis

            Niko and Sandra Triantafillidis are wrapping up the third leg of their around the world tour.  Niko had been working fourteen-hour days at a job that gave him little time for leisure, so he saved up his money to take an extended vacation.  He bought a Ford F150 and tricked it out with a canopy that can lift and expand in the bed of the truck so that the couple can stand up inside when they like.  Niko bolted an extra gas tank to the truck, attached a special filtration system for dusty roads, and then shipped the truck to Africa and the United States for their road trip.  There was also a fold away bed so the F150 had everything that the young couple needed for an extended road trip except a shower and toilet.

            For the first part of their trip, Niko and Sandra flew to Brazil and took a bus trip to Ecuador, Columbia, Bolivia, Peru, and Argentina.  They learned that the problem with taking the bus was that when they were at a beautiful spot where they wanted to spend some time, they couldn’t do it because the bus wouldn’t stop.  Therefore, for the second leg of their trip, they shipped their truck to South Africa and drove it to Botswana, Zambia, and Namibia.  Then they flew to Asia to visit South Korea, Bali, Japan, and Australia.  The final stop of their trip included a stopover in Hawaii before they pushed on to Los Angeles where their truck was waiting for them.  Niko and Sandra drove up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco.  On their way to Louisville, the young couple drove down to Las Vegas, up to Wyoming, down to Austin, across to Pensacola, and then up to Kentucky.  They only had a 90-day visa, so instead of going to Alaska, as they wanted to do, they drove to Toronto and flew home to Germany.

            Because they were on a budget, a favorite activity for the couple was to visit national parks, where the admission was free.  And since they had a lot of time on their hands, Niko and Sandra volunteered at different places.  Helping to raise baboons at the animal rehab center in South Africa, for example, was an outstanding memory.  The parks that they will remember the best are Victoria Falls in Zambia, Machu Pichu in Peru, and Iguazu Falls in Brazil.  Swakopmund in Namibia was a good memory because it had been a Germany colony before World War I and traces of the old empire still remained.  For example, the street signs, are still in German.  The National Forests in the United States are also free so the couple visited Yosemite, Death Valley, Yellowstone, the Monument Valley, and many others.

            Of course, no trip of this magnitude can happen without a few snags.  Niko and Sandra had a hard time finding clean water and relied on bottled water.  It is easy to forget to use the bottled water when doing mundane tasks, like brushing your teeth, and one little slip up can result in diarrhea.  There is nothing worse than being sick while on the road.  Another problem was when they shipped their F150 to South Africa, the port authority demanded a bribe to release the vehicle.  They paid the bribe but once they had the vehicle in their possession, they were afraid to leave it alone.  They were the lone white couple in many of the areas that they visited and that drew a lot of unwanted attention.  Since they were outstanding, anyone could track their movements and break into the truck when they knew that Sandra and Niko would be gone for a while.  Another example of unexpected frustrations was when the young couple was trying to obtain the right stamps for their passport to move from South Africa to Zambia.  They had to wait four hours to get the stamps and still didn’t know if they bought the right ones or if they paid too much for them.  There was no official present to help.

            Still, life is short.  When the time comes for looking back, what great accomplishments of yours would you like to look back upon?  Wouldn’t you like to say that you have travelled around the world?  Niko and Sandra will always have memories to share.  They have laid on their backs and listened to lions roaring at night as they drifted off to sleep in their truck.  They have seen Lake Titicana, the birthplace of the Incas, while touring Peru.  They saw the deep ravines in Fish River Canyon in Namibia, the game reserve in Botswana, and the canopy of stars at the Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah.  All of these memories were gathered through the course of one long trip, and now they can spend a lifetime enjoying them. 

"Teacher and Traveler" introduction and cruising

Introduction

When I was growing up my parents took my three siblings and me on a yearly summer vacation to visit our extended family.  We alternated between seeing my father’s family in Minnesota, my mother’s family in Vermont, and my grandmother who lived in Florida.  Although none of the places that we visited was tourist attractions, it was the feeling of going on an adventure that I really enjoyed. Our trips were the highlight of my childhood and, once I started a family of my own, I knew that I wanted to give my children this same sense of adventure.  The difference between my parents and me is that they went on their vacations out of a sense of filial duty.  Today, since my whole family lives nearby, I knew that I could take the kids anywhere that I wanted.  The only reason to go on a trip, then, was to make some memories. Our vacations have helped to bind us together through shared experiences.  I know that this is a cliché but, just because it is a cliché, that doesn’t make it any less true.  All of the trips have been the effort worth it because they allowed us to spend some quality time together.  In addition, they became a way for me to reward myself for grinding my way through another year of work.  For me, there is no better way to pat myself on the back than to spend time with my family. 

The fun for me is the challenge of laying out a good vacation.  It provides me with a brief respite from my work life.  The planning, and the trip itself, get me out of my rut for a while by exploring what other cities, and countries, have to offer.  The key is to get an anchor event for every place that we are going to visit.  Once I have the event, then I start working on the hotels and all of the other logistics that go into a well laid out vacation.  My personal preference is to visit new cities to see the best that they have to offer, whether it is a museum, or a major attraction that the place is proud of.  When the kids were small I could do whatever I wanted as long as I incorporated some fun side trips, like going to an amusement park; but as they got older I had to bend and do what they wanted to do, like going to the beach or build in an afternoon for shopping.  Compromise has become a big part of our time together.

            When we first started taking our family trips, I was very concerned about money, so we took many car trips because they were relatively cheap.  I prefer driving to any other mode of transportation because I feel at peace while in the car.  While driving on an extended road trip, I am forced to slow down.  I know that no matter what I do I won’t be able to get to my destination quickly, so I settle in for a long ride and allow my mind to wander.  The constant drone of the car propelling itself down the road blocks out all distractions, and the vibrations that my vehicle emits have a calming effect.  To ensure that I am comfortable on a long ride I sit on a soft pillow, and then stuff a second pillow at the small of my back, next to my lumbar, to avoid back pain.  In effect, I become locked into position into my seat, just like the drivers at the Indianapolis 500.  Yet, I feel free.  I like to drive through the night because when it is dark out, and there is little traffic on the road, I can I work myself into a trance.  Before I know it, the hours have flown by and through concentrated thought; I have exhausted myself mentally and physically.  Finally, at the end of a long road trip, I park the car, and unbundle myself from my seat.  My whole body creaks and groan as I stretch while I get used to standing on my legs again, but I feel completely satisfied.

For me, the destination isn’t as important as having the whole family do the trip together; there is no ultimate Mecca that I feel like I have to visit and that gives me a lot of freedom to mix up the type of trip that our family takes.  We can go to Europe, or not.  There is no place where I have a burning desire to visit and, when we first started out, the only rule was that our destination had to be within a ten-hour drive.  Over time, when money became less of a concern, we started to take cruises.  New Orleans is only a twelve-hour drive so we took many ships out of that city and, when we had exhausted all of the destinations out of New Orleans, we started to fly to other ports. 

Even when the trip doesn’t go well, I would argue that the vacation was still worth it because we had a shared experience.  For example, when we drove from Cape Canaveral back to Louisville, it took us about eighteen hours in the car.  We sat in a traffic jam in Atlanta for three hours in the middle of the hot August sun.  By the end of the drive, I was carsick.  For the first and only time, I had to turn the driving over to my son because I literally couldn’t sit up straight.  I was exhausted, hot, and dehydrated.  Yet, even this drive I don’t regret because we all suffered through it together and we still laugh about it to this day.  On the other hand, I didn’t repeat the mistake of driving through the afternoon sun in a southern city during the summer months.  

  One final reason to travel is because it makes my family appreciate what we have.  After seeing the poverty of Belize City and Mazatlán, for example, and observing how the unfortunate live, we are better able to suffer through our relatively small inconveniences of congested traffic and long checkout lines.  We didn’t expect to see the poor people; that experience was just a residual of a long bus trip, but it is something that will always stay with us.  Often the true adventure is experiencing something that we never expect to have seen or done.  

            I have divided this book into sections, depending on what type of vacation we took.  The comic cons, for example, are a totally different type of vacation so they deserve a separate category.  Other than the trips are organized to descending order; the most recent trip are mentioned first in each category and the trips that took place years ago are last in each category.  If we went to the same place twice then I combined them into one entry.  After putting in literally hundreds of hours to write this book, my only hope is that you will enjoy it.



                                    Forward on Cruising

I like the big cruise ships because I am a gym rat.  The bigger the ship, the better the gym, and since I go to the gym twice a day, the facilities mean a lot to me.  First thing in the morning, I get up, grab a cup of coffee, and wait outside the gym door until the manger opens it.  Sadly, I am not alone, and several of us muscle heads stretch and loosen up until the door opens.  While the others make a beeline to the treadmills, I go the weight room because so few people are there at that hour.  A stretch and abs class is offered at 7:00 so I do resistance training for an hour and then join the class.  After weights and the stretching class, I take a run to rid myself of any energy that I might have left.  This is my favorite part of the whole day because I like to run around the upper deck while watching the sun come up.  The growing daylight, reaching through the clouds, looks like a painting by Monet, Gaugin, or Cezanne.  I give myself permission to be myself; to not feel guilty about going to bed so early so that I can get up and run in the morning.  

After an intense workout, I can relax, and I meet my wife back at the room.  This leads me to my second favorite hobby on the cruise and that is eating.  I love to try new types of food, like frog legs and escargot, because if I don’t like it then I can pick up something else.  Experiencing new foods is low risk on a cruise ship because if you don’t like what you ordered then the waiter brings you something else.  Everything is all-inclusive on the ship so I can try several entrees in one meal if I want.  Also, I like the meals because it is then that we have our family time.  Everyone gets together at breakfast and dinner to talk about excursions and whatever happened that day.  Everyone is in a good mood because the excitement from the day hasn’t worn off yet and because we are hungry and know that we are about to be fed.  Even the fussiest eaters of my family cannot complain because there is such a variety of foods at the buffet.

            My wife, Tracey, is blind.  The reason why she likes cruising so much is that the ships give her complete freedom.  All of the rooms and the elevators have been labelled in Braille and those signs at least point her in the right direction.  When we first get on the ship, Tracey maps out where our room is in proximity the restaurant, casino, and stairwells.  She can find her own way around in that confined space.  If she wants to go to the far end of the ship, to lay out on the serenity deck for example, then she will need some guidance.  Aside from that, as long as she stays in the same general area, she has complete independence.  Her confidence in her ability to navigate the ship has grown with every cruise that we have taken and I am proud of her.
            The nice thing about a cruise is that they offer a little bit for everyone.  For example, Grant likes the comedy shows and the trivia games.  Lillian hates the sun because she burns so easily, but she likes Karaoke and dancing, so she has something to do.  Virginia has never met a person whom she couldn’t turn into a friend, so when she is not with the rest of the family, then she is palling around with some new acquaintances.  Everyone is happy while on the ship and we all have grown to enjoy leisurely dinners together when we can share the new and interesting experiences of our day.

My son in law, Tanner, even came with us for one cruise.  The purpose of the trip was to spend some time together, so I only ordered two rooms on the cruise ship and there were three people in each cabin.  I was expecting for the third person in our small room to get a bunk bed but instead there was a pull out sofa for the third bed and it blocked the door every time we opened it up.  The result was that when I left the cabin early in the morning I had to climb over Tanner.  It was like a comedy sketch from Saturday Night Live, because any time we moved around the cabin we were tripping over each other.  When I remarked that Tanner had been a good Joe about it, Lillian responded with, “Well Virginia has not been a good Joe about it” because she complained whenever someone climbed over her bed.

            Part of the fun of cruising is sharing a table with complete strangers for our meals.  We have met an array of people, including a know-it-all, a Debbie Downer, and a guy who looked like a rap star with his over-sized glasses and his clown watch.  When the matre d' put us with the rapper and his entourage, I would have thought that there would be no interaction between us since we are so different.  Yet the rapper turned out to be a nice person and we chatted amicably.  As we were talking, I silently chastised myself for prejudging people by the way that they look.  It was a lesson that I had to learn again two days later when I saw a twenty-something girl in the lobby who was poorly dressed and sported several tattoos.  "White trash," I thought to myself.  However, when we sat down at the same breakfast table, I learned that the girl had been in college for nine years to get her PhD in psychology.  The cruise was her last opportunity to spend some time with her parents before she moved to Alaska to complete the doctorate program.  Fortunately, I kept my observations to myself, once again, I realized that traveling breaks down prejudices, especially when you are forced to spend time with people who are different from you, and I am still learning not to judge people by their appearances.

No matter where we go, there are no shortages of characters on a cruise ship.  Meghan, who was working on her PhD in math, and Justin, her husband who, upon meeting me, said, “I feel the need to make him proud of me!”  I was a lot older than Justin and I think that I was a father figure to him.  Then there was Roscoe, the writer and reenactor, who liked to practice magic in his spare time.  Roscoe hailed from Wichita and was on the cruise to see the grave of the famous outlaw named Soapy Smith, who was buried in Skagway.  Cathy was an older kindergarten teacher who bought the unlimited drink and bingo package.  She got her money’s worth because she was drunk for the whole cruise and spent most of her time at the bingo parlor.  Finally, Tod and his wife were a religious couple and they were paid by their church to take two mentally handicapped adults on the cruise.

            The more earthy passengers enjoy going to the pool parties, but it is not my thing.  To fill in some of the down time on the ship, the cruise director held games like Pool Olympics, Majority Rules, and The Perfect Couple.  The competition that stuck with me the most was the “Mr. Sky” contest.  Volunteers were called up on stage and encouraged to perform sexually suggestive dances.  The participants included a man with Downs Syndrome, a Dad with a huge paunch, and a couple of truly buff guys.  Watching this parade of dancers in the front row were three little girls, a couple of mothers, and a grandmother who used a walker to get to her seat.  I thought that the parents of the three little girls would have a lot of explaining to do some day and, probably, the little girls would not thank their parents for taking them to a strip show.  Even I had to spend some mental energy trying to erase the images of the dancers from my memory.
            The pool parties and getting seasick are two of the things that I don’t like about the cruises.  Also, just getting to port can be a pain.  On our last trip to New Orleans we had to ordeal of driving through a monsoon to get to the parking garage.  The last time that we flew, our departing flight was an hour late because they took so long to load our luggage onto the plane.  We missed our connecting flight but the airline was good enough to give us a voucher for a hotel room and a food voucher as well.  When we finally got a flight out, our plane ran into some turbulence, but it was the flight attendant, and not the passengers, who panicked.  With fear in her voice, she ordered everyone back to his or her seats and to buckle themselves in.  If we weren’t concerned before, we certainly were now worried.  We landed safely but these incidences lend themselves to the fact that it is the journey to our destination, which can put a damper on a trip, but rarely does the cruise itself disappoint.  

Thanks,
Jeff