by Kathy Brasby | Feb 20, 2015 | Seasons
Elinore pushed her walker to the table and slowly settled into one of the chairs. “So, are we playing cards or dominos?”
Then she turned her attention to me. “Are you going to join us?”
“I’ll watch.”
Elinore nodded and picked up the cards. “I’ve been here for over a year now.”
Here was the long-term care facility where we sat and I was a visitor dragging my feet to walk through the doors.
“I put myself in,” Elinore said. “I had fallen again, in my apartment, and came in for a couple of months. For therapy. Then I went back to my apartment and I fell again. That was enough for me. I decided I’d rather live here.”
Rather? I leaned forward. “So you left your own apartment?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, sliding the deck of cards against the card shuffler so she could pick them up. “I just couldn’t be falling all the time. They cook for me here. And they have a lot of things going on.”
I wasn’t sure I approved.
“Don!” She pointed the top of her head at an elderly man shuffling past the table. “Don, you should join us. You like cards, don’t you?”
Don ignored her but Elinore didn’t stop. “Oh, come on, Don. This would be good for you.”
He stopped, raised his eyes to meet hers, and then grunted. “Ok.”
“So, Don, did your daughter come today?” Elinore said.
Don shook his head.
“Well, that’s a shame. But you can have some fun with us.” She dropped the cards in the shuffler and pushed the button. “I can’t shuffle anymore.”
Shortly, she had invited Clara and Martha to join her, too.
They were still playing cards an hour later when I left. As I stood, the four wished me a good evening.
These residents found a way to care for one another and Elinore led the way.
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by Kathy Brasby | Feb 17, 2015 | Hope
The secretary and I were the only two women working in this shop. There’s something about rubbing elbows with a bunch of guys that gives you willies at night.
Let me explain.
The secretary was deathly afraid of mice. This was not a good thing to reveal to a bunch of guys but there it was.
I wasn’t overly fond of them myself but determined not to admit to it. But the guys still tested me. I was in charge of checking in shipments – large and small – at our business and so one day found a small plastic bag on my desk. This wasn’t really unusual and I flipped the bag to check the shipping tag.
A dead mouse was stapled inside the bag.
I dropped the gift and looked up to see our service manager and parts manager peering around the corner. The service manager threw his hands in the air.
“It wasn’t my idea!”
And the parts manager put his hands up, too. “I didn’t put that bag on your desk.”
I decided to ignore Tweedledee and Tweedledum that day.
They didn’t harass me again – not enough hysteria to suit them, I’m sure – but one day our secretary came back from lunch to find a brown lunch bag on her desk. Stapled shut and wiggling.
She ran screaming to the break room, sure they had trapped a live mouse for her.
She refused to enter her office. So the service manager retrieved the bag from her office and brought it out, where he sliced off the top and set the trapped frog free.
Tweedledee and Tweedledum spent the afternoon freshening up the secretary’s desk before she’d return to work. Boss’s orders.
Something good did come out of it, though. Whenever the two guys got the idea to go in search of mice, they remembered four hours of scrubbing a desk and sat down until that idea passed.
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by Kathy Brasby | Feb 13, 2015 | Seasons
Fred knocked lightly on the door before leaning into the room. “Mama?”
Then he saw me sitting beside my mother’s bed. “Oh, excuse me. “
His mama and my mama were roommates at a long-term facility. His mother had the coveted half of the room near the window so he had to walk through our space to get to his mother.
“You’re fine,” I assured him. I was reading a book while Mom slept.
Fred was tall with more salt than pepper in his hair. About my age. I’d already noticed that most of the visitors were about my age.
For most of us, our mamas -and a few papas- lived here. This is our time of life.
“She’s sleeping.” Fred could see his mother in her bed. “Maybe I’ll come back later.”
“Don’t worry about that.” The voice was my mother’s. She looked at Fred. “We can sleep anytime. She can’t see you anytime.”
Fred still hesitated. Mamas train us well. Who wants to awaken a napper? We learned that with younger siblings a millennium ago.
My mother glanced at me and then at Fred again. “She will be disappointed. I would be. She wants to see you, ” she said.
Even at our age, Mama still gives good advice. Fred nodded and then tiptoed into the room.
Maybe he tiptoed so that he didn’t wake his mother before he woke her.
“Mama?”
I could hear a slight rustle. And then “Ooooh. Fred. It is so good to see you. I am glad you came. How are you?”
“I’m good.” I could hear Fred drop into a chair.
Mamas still know best.
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by Kathy Brasby | Feb 10, 2015 | Hope
My younger brother was a high school wrestler, which made for an interesting lesson in the folly of letting siblings mature.
His first practice of the season came shortly before my visit home from college. We hadn’t seen each other in a little while and he wanted to get me caught up on things. I could tell he was jazzed about wrestling. And I wanted to re-connect, too.
“Here’s a new move I learned,” he said. We were standing in the middle of the living room with a new carpet on the floor, a good thing as it turned out. “Watch.”
Watch wasn’t really the right term. Stand still and do nothing was a better term because he put one hand behind my neck, one behind my knee, and, whoosh, had me flat on my back.
“Pinned! Just like that. And it’s really easy,” he said. He had enough maturity, at least, to help me get back on my feet without first pressing his knee into my clavicle.
I wasn’t a wimp in the athletic department. I played basketball, softball, tennis, and flag football. I rode horses and faced thundering cattle. I was no fragile piece of china. But I hadn’t ever learned a wrestling move.
There are times when a polite retreat is wise. But I was a college student. Wisdom was like a tree in the mist. Sometimes I saw it, sometimes I didn’t.
“It worked pretty well.” I rubbed my shoulder where I had landed.
He grinned and I wondered when my tow-headed little brother had turned into this six-foot tower of muscle. “I’ll show you how easy.”
“Um, OK.” Remember the part about wise? Not so here.
He shook out his shoulders. “Easy to do. First you grab my neck.”
OK. I duplicated his opening.
“Then you grab my knee,” he said.
I leaned down to replicate his move. Suddenly the walls of the room swirled around me and, with a thump, I was on my back again.
He grinned, dusting his hands off. “That is how you counteract it!
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by Kathy Brasby | Feb 3, 2015 | Hope
When the trapped raccoon turned out to really be a restless skunk, people got a little antsy at our house.
If you’ll remember my story, we thought we were trapping the raccoon who had eaten our duck’s eggs a week before hatching.
We trapped a skunk instead.
Once the jabbering stopped, we still had the problem.
“I was going to work in that barn today,” my husband said. “I don’t want skunk stink in there.”
True. The skunk needed to leave without leaving his scent.
We called our neighbor, she of great farming wisdom. “Cover the cage with a blanket,” she said. “The skunk won’t spray while it’s under the blanket.”
Sometimes you just have to trust.
So my husband gingerly draped an old blanket over the cage. So far, no smells.
Then he grabbed his rifle. This skunk was not going to be stealing duck eggs anymore. With rifle in one hand and cage in the other, he headed for the far end of our pasture.
But not alone. He called to our older son. “You need to come with me.”
Some say looks can kill but this look could have sunk a ship. Our son had no interest in going to the far end of the pasture with a skunk and a man toting a rifle.
But sons are amazing.
He went.
When the entourage arrived to the little knoll with prairie grass waving in the wind, they decided they were far enough from the buildings to risk uncovering the skunk.
It was our son’s job to pull the blanket off the cage.
With a deep breath – maybe his last for all he knew – he crept forward to the cage and plucked the blanket with the tip of his fingers.
Courage is measured in many ways. But one of them has to be an 8-year-old willing his arm to grow as he slowly – can we say cold molasses here? – drew the blanket off the cage.
It was happy ending time. Nobody got sprayed except the cage and some prairie grass.
But I don’t think our son was in any danger. He didn’t stop running until the house blocked his path.
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