December 27, 2010
All of you who wished for snow. . . .
. . . .I expect you here, by 10.00 THIS morning to shovel my driveway.
Keith and Mer work at 11.00, Em at 5.00.
Be on time.
Or the penalties will be harsh.
Yesterday, I did something that MAYBE happens once a year.
If I'm lucky.
Outside of getting up to finish my posting, I spent the ENTIRE day in bed.
Yup.
Stephen drove Keith and Em to work for 11.00.
He drove Mer to work for 2.30.
He made two honey cakes, vacuumed, and did who knows what else.
Me, I slept.
All day.
THE only reason I even got out of bed at all was guilt.
The kids had finished work at 5.00, and I couldn't assume Stephen was going to pick them up.
At 4.45 I hauled myself out of bed, got dressed and picked them up.
And I would have gone straight back to bed, too, if we hadn't had been invited to dinner at our friends, Sylvia and Malcolm's house.
It was a lovely, adult dinner.
Punctated with the gentle nudgings from their two black labs for some love and affection.
Which, of course, I was more than happy to provide.
As soon as we returned home, I was back in bed.
Asleep by 10.30.
Until the obnoxious sound of roaring wind woke me up at 5.00am.
The dogs misinterprested my wakefulness as an indication that I wanted to take them out.
I normally take them out in whatever I've got on.
Not this morning.
Boots, coat, mitts, scarf just to walk down three steps.
It's not the journey that's the problem.
It's the waiting.
Frankie and Tikka just presume that as their beloved ground is now covered in snow, they must assess if everything beneath the cold, wet blanket smells the same.
In spite of me asking, then pleading, then demanding that they hustle it up cause Mama is cold.
Plus, the snow itself makes the two of them crazy.
Tikka lives for this weather.
It reminds her that all she suffered during the hot, hazy days of summer wasn't for naught.
She leaps and frolicks like she was a puppy again.
And I am so okay with this.
Just not at 5.00 in the morning during a snowstorm.
Call me crazy.
Speaking of crazy.
The Nursing Home prepares a wonderful Christmas dinner.
Which is no mean feat when you're feeding the 173 people who live there, plus their relatives.
They sell 50 tickets to their dinner, maximum two guests each.
They just don't have the room for any more.
Off Dad and I go.
Me all dressed up and looking pretty, because my mother always insisted that we dress nicely for Christmas dinner.
Dad looking like Dad.
The grumbling starts when my father, after getting the seat he wanted, right at the end closest to the kitchen to ensure early food service because he slept in, didn't get his breakfast or his tea (which is as close to a national incident as my father gets), is asked to move over smitch to allow enough room for one of the wheelchair bound residents, who had no family come for the dinner (but they did come and get her afterwards for the remainder of the day).
At first he didn't budge.
I not-so-gently nudged him and said, "Dad. Move over to make room for Bessie" (a pseudonym).
"I'm already at the end of the table."
"DAD. Move over just a little bit. No one is asking you to relocate to the kitchen."
He did.
And complained about being cramped for the remainder of the meal.
And announcing when he was finished and got up,
"Oh my legs are so cramped from being forced up against that table leg."
And people wonder where I get my penchant for dramaqueenness.
Next was the tea trauma.
My father has lived on his own for essentially the last three and a half years, give or take a couple of weeks.
And like his father, and his father's father, there is a predilection towards hermitism.
A trait they welcome.
He does what he wants, when he wants.
Just the way he's always wanted it.
Including ensuring his 7 liter mug of tea, made just the way he likes it, each and every morning.
Continuing, of course, throughout the day.
So the fact that he had overslept, missing his tea and his breakfast, did not make for a happy dad.
Add to that the cups at the nursing home do not resemble his 7 liter mug, and are more like those you would find in civilized dining establishments, because what nursing home wants their already bathroom frequenting residents to have access to 7 liters of anything liquid at one time.
He sits at the end of the table, ready to pounce when the already-running-off-her-feet-but- for-some-reason-still-cheerful kitchen staff member, Daisy (again, a pseudonym) comes out of the kitchen bearing the tea pot.
He drank that tea like he'd been stranded on a desert island for 20 years.
And then, like an overgrown and crotchety Oliver Twist, he holds his cup up and asks, "Please, ma'am, can I have some more???"
I thought just leaving him the pot would have made for a far easier meal.
At least on the tea front.
He practically tackled the woman with coffee pot for my mother, who was starting to launch her own stream of objections over the emptyness of her cup.
After this, you can imagine what I did when they came around with the trays of red and white wine.
Once they'd been caffeinated, they were ready to start on the next issue.
Food.
Luckily, there was a basket of homemade rolls on the table.
And like I used to do with my own children when they were smaller and complaining because things weren't moving fast enough to suit them, I buttered each of them a roll, and gave it to them.
That kept them quiet for a few minutes.
And allowed my dad to state upon consuming said roll,
"There. Now I've had breakfast. I'm ready for dinner."
They were only outdone by the resident sitting next to my mother.
When they brought her to the table, my mother rolled her eyes and curled her lip in disgust.
Merry Christmas to you too, Mum.
Upon pushing this resident, we'll call her Ingrid, to the table, the staff member leans in and says,
"Now Ingrid remember it's Christmas and you're going to have to wait your turn for dinner. You can't yell and scream to be served right away."
So when I was passing rolls to Mum and Dad, I heard a screech that just about knocked me out of my chair,
"GIMME ONE!"
You know I did.
Ingrid consumed that roll in a matter of seconds in spite on not having any teeth.
She has dentures, but she pops them out and puts them on the table when she eats.
I guess the staff didn't think this would go over well with the guests.
After dealing with Mum and Dad, dentures on the table would have been a holiday.
Finally, the meal was served.
Roast turkey, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, peas, squash. . .
It was lovely.
But of course, my mother sent her plate back when they had the audacity to forget she didn't want potatoes.
And my father praised the food, I'll give him that.
But he complained about the portions.
When they came around with the four kinds of homemade pie, apple, lemon meringue, pumpkin, and raisin, I was so stressed it was all I could do not to just ask for one of each.
Twice over.
All I could think of was that I had to go through this all over again at my house.
And I did.
Once dinner was over, Dad went outside for his after dinner cigarette and to put Mum's birdfeeder back in the tree, because, much to my mother's outrage, the squirrels knocked it off the branch.
And Mum and I waited for Stephen and the kids to arrive.
Because at this point, my mother hadn't made up her mind whether or not she was indeed coming to my house for dinner.
What she was really doing was trying to come up with a plausible reason not to come and her favourite, "there is snow on the ground" wasn't going to fly as outside, the weather resembled October more than December.
And we waited and waited and waited for Stephen and the kids.
They finally arrive, we exchange gifts, Mer grumbles under her breath about having to go to work and its already 2.15 and she needs at least two hours to get ready and we really have to go.
Family resemblance between Mer and Dad?????
Mum eventually agrees to come to dinner.
Only because she can't come up with an excuse not to.
By the time she makes up her mind, I have about an hour to get home, get everything else ready for dinner before I come back to pick her up and take her to my house.
And how come my father doesn't do this?
THAT is definitely a story for another time.
At home I bark orders like a 5 star general.
EVERYONE, including my father is put to work.
Well, Dad actually had to sit at the kitchen table with his 7 liter mug of tea first.
Because Frankie doesn't remember Dad from our horrific summer farmhouse visit, therefore he needs time to adjust to this stranger among us.
Meaning Frankie is in the crate and Dad is sitting at the kitchen table, in the corner because the sun is too bright inspite of my drawing the curtains as tight as they would go, not making any eye contact with Frankie.
Eventually Frankie lays down in his crate.
His signal that Dad could at least get up and move around with explosive barking emerging from my Frankie.
My father is one of those people where no matter waht you're doing, he has a better way of doing it.
I used to rail internally everytime he would do this.
Now, I just step aside and let him do it.
It saves both of us a lot of stress.
Besides, I still had to get my mother.
I left dad in the kitchen with the broccoli and cauliflower happily doing his thing.
Stephen was doing his favourite thing, running around the house with the vacuum.
And I left Keith in charge with explicit instructions to not let anyone touch anything until I got back.
Em, thankfully, came with me to collect my mother.
This is no easy feat.
When I arrived back at the nursing home to get her, she was ready.
Her winter coat, two sizes too big for her, was wrapped around her, with the zipper as high up as she could get it.
Em grabs the walker, I push Mum in the wheelchair out to the car.
We have done this many, many times before.
So getting her in and out of the car isn't the problem.
Getting her in the house. . .that's another matter.
She doesn't negotiate stairs very well.
Plus, since she fell and broke her hip, she has an acute fear of falling.
We arrive at my house and she sighs.
A sigh of determination that she will get into my house in one peice.
She refers to this process as "Stephen and Dawne dragging Janet!"
I park our car as close to the three steps leading to our walkway as possible.
Me on one side, Stephen on the other, Em behind us with walker.
We proceed.
And my mother, with her talon-like finger nails, reminds me of how much this walk into our house is costing her.
We get her up the first three steps, she negotiates her walker along the walkway to the next set of three steps, and somehow, someway, she gets into the house, and uses her walker to get to the kitchen table, where she sits in her chair with triumph, pride and exhaustion.
First order of business: coffee.
My mother likes her coffee.
Growing up, I don't remember her without a cup of coffee in front of her and the pot brewing from morn til night.
She is the only person I know who could drink an entire pot of coffee and still go to bed and sleep soundly.
It has to scalding hot and strong enough to peel paint.
I've seen grown men cry over trying to drink my mother's coffee.
Next: dinner.
What.
A.
Fiasco.
Trying to herd everyone to the table while the food is still hot is a challenge not unlike that of Perseus in Clash of the Titans.
The biggest challenge, however, is getting Stephen to stay at the table.
As I have said before, eating with Stephen is like trying to eat with a jack in the box that is plagued with ants in its pants.
I try to block him in by making him sit beside me, with Mum on my other side.
Because I have to be there in case she needs anything.
Like the bathroom.
My ill-equipped for the mobility challenged bathroom.
My dad took her the first time.
The only time.
And of course, it came to pass that there was no toilet paper in the bathroom, information my father is only too willing to pass on to me.
I ask Keith to get more toilet paper from upstairs.
Which would have been fine if Keith wasn't indisposed in the upstairs bathroom.
Eventually, toilet paper was procured.
And Mum grabs me and pleads that I take her to the bathroom if she has to go again.
We manage to get through dinner without me throwing myself off the back deck.
Everyone was unusually well behaved.
Only because we had company.
Josh.
Thank God he was there.
No dirty jokes from my dad, which always begin with an elbow to Keith's ribs and the "Hey Keith, I've got a joke for ya" or my mother complaining, loudly, that my father doesn't come to see her enough, or Mer (who was at work) feeling the need to share her evening escapades with my parents, or Em looking like she wants the floor to open up and swallow her, taking her anywhere but where she is . . .
Just Stephen jumping up and down from the table like he had a bad case of crabs.
It was almost civilized.
I owe Josh.
Big time.
Dinner ends with happily satiated family and friends.
Sweet potatoes, garlic mashed potatoes, parsnips in a tarragon cream sauce, brown sugar carrots, two roast turkeys, stuffing, steamed broccoli and cauliflower, homemade cranberry sauce, mincemeat and pumpkin pie with whipping cream. . . .
Lots of leftovers to give to our guests.
As soon as the last morsel had been consumed, and my mother had her next trip to the bathroom, she started on about leaving to get back to the nursing home in time for her pills.
The journey from car to house is no where near as traumatic as the journey from house to car.
Because for my mother, it's downhill.
There are no steps or hills at the nursing home.
Stephen and I, again on either side of her, manage to get her back into the car, while my father watches from the window.
Of course.
She was so exhausted from her outing she didn't even complain about my driving.
She just asked me if I would help her into her pajamas.
Which I did, of course.
And I wanted to stay with her a while.
Not just because I love her and want to spend time with her.
But also because it would mean I would arrive home after the dishes were done.
Alas, there was one errand left to run.
Mer.
Who had to work and missed all the excitement, and food, associated with Christmas dinner.
I made her a care package, and after settling my mother in for the night, I drove to the theater to give Mer her dinner.
And listen to her complain about not wanting to work and her boyfriend.
Who is no longer her boyfriend as of yesterday.
And you wonder why I spent all day in bed yesterday.
I.
Was.
Recovering.
In fact, just writing about it has exhausted me all over again.
It's only 7.07 am.
I think I'll go back to bed.
Until its time to get up again, and take the kids to work.
Which will be no trouble because the snow lovers will have been here to shovel me out.
Title Lyric: Christmas Dinner by Peter, Paul and Mary
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