by Kathy Brasby | Dec 19, 2014 | Seasons
The lamp burst to life, blasting light into Josie’s sleeping eyes. She awoke and glanced at the clock. 1:34 am. She’d slept an hour.
The blanket held her in a warm embrace but Josie broke free.
She shuffled into her mother’s bedroom. “Do you need to go to the bathroom again?” At 83, her mother was wheelchair bound and unable to get out of bed on her own. Josie did the lifting and transferring. But they’d been up at 11:47 and 12:29. Surely there couldn’t be much left.
Mom rolled her head on the pillow. “No, not this time.”
Josie settled onto the edge of Mom’s bed and adjusted her blanket, pulling the sheet under her chin. Just like her mother had done when tucking her into bed as a little girl. She laid her hand against her mother’s cheek, like her mother had done a thousand times. “Are you sure?” She really didn’t want to get up in another hour.
“I’m sure.”
Josie tried to clear sleep fog out of her brain. “Well, why am I up then if you don’t need anything?”
“I just thought you ought to know.”
Josie kissed her mother on the cheek, just like her mother had done to her so many times in the past, and padded to the cooling sheets. Better get to sleep before that lamp burst to life again.
Just like it would do a thousand times.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Dec 16, 2014 | Stories
Our pool table resided in the basement, piled high with boxes of outgrown clothes and books to be donated.
I listed the pool table for sale. That way the boxes could go away.
A young man showed up with his buddy.
I had asked $35 for the pool table because I had bought it for $25 at a yard sale. But it was a slate top pool table and connoisseurs liked that idea.
So this young man examined the slate and did a verbal fist pump. “Slate! I can sell this table anywhere for $200.”
I smiled. I just wanted it out of my basement and wouldn’t mind getting my $25 back.
“Would you take $30 for it?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Well, I need to come back with a pickup. Could you hold it for me?”
“Sure, if you pay today.”
He studied the table and his buddy. Perhaps the $200 sale loomed before him. “I wonder if we can get it home now.”
So they jumped into the project. My help was finding all the pool balls, which I carried to their vehicle, a dented and rusty old station wagon.
They sweated and struggled and leaned against the stairway walls several times. Finally they and the table emerged from the house.
With more grunting and groaning, they hoisted the pool table onto the top of car.
“We’re good now,” the new buyer assured me.
Later, I watched them pull out of our driveway in a cloud of white dust. They had tied the table onto the top of the car, running the ropes through the windows. I didn’t get to see them shimmy through the windows to drive away.
And I thought my $30 sale was a whole lot more secure than his planned $200 sale.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Dec 12, 2014 | Seasons
Marshall gripped the arms of the walker. “I don’t like this thing,” he growled at his wife as he shuffled toward the front door.
“The therapist said you needed to use it.”
Marshall didn’t answer. He lifted the walker onto the step and drug his foot onto the concrete. “It ain’t so easy, you know.”
Nora didn’t answer him. She waited until he had gotten into the house before she drove their car into the garage.
“So when’s that gal supposed to come again?” Marshall had dropped into the recliner as Nora came into the kitchen from the garage.
“Lisa? The physical therapist?”
“Who else?”
“Any time now. That’s why we needed to hurry and get home.”
Marshall grunted. “She makes me work awfully hard. This is not easy, you know.”
When the doorbell rang, Marshall called to Nora. “Hey, hey, she’s here. Don’t keep her waiting.”
Lisa entered in a flurry of bags and papers, her blond hair cute and her clothes stylish. She smiled at Marshall. “You look great this afternoon. Are you ready for me to work you hard?”
“Sure.” Marshall smiled at her. “Anything you say.”
Lisa had a full slate of exercises for Marshall and they worked together for almost 45 minutes. “All right,” she said. “That’s enough for today. I’ll be back on Tuesday. You rest now. Get a good drink of water.”
“I think I’ll do that.” Marshall grinned until she closed the door behind herself. “She worked me hard today.”
“I watched her closely,” Nora said. “I think that I’ll be able to help you with those exercises when she’s finished with her time.”
“Huh,” Marshall narrowed his eyes. “I’ll just need to rest then.”
“You’ll work for her but not for me?”
Marshall leaned back in his chair. “I may be old and tired but I’m not blind.”
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Dec 9, 2014 | Hope
My second black eye (see That eye for the first one) earned me a variety of responses.
This one came a few years after I was married.
I stood at the checkout counter of the grocery store with two kids, a full load of groceries, and a deep black swoosh under my eye.
The clerk took my check while staring at the cash register keys and returned my receipt while studying the scale below me.
As I walked to the car, a woman met my eyes (this was in a friendly small town) and then studied the pavement intently.
But a neighbor, who had just arrived in the parking lot, popped out of her car. “What on earth happened to you?”
At church the next day, a friend wandered up to me with a grin on his face. “So does Matt look as bad as you do?”
Matt’s my husband and our friends knew his character pretty well.
But I had to confess over and over that a male member of the family had done this to me.
Here’s the rest of the story:
I was tucking our younger son, 3 years old at the time, into bed and leaned down to kiss him on the forehead just as he moved forward to give me a hug. His hard head crashed into my cheek.
Let me tell you that such a collision paints the blackest swoosh you’ve ever seen.
My experience was simple but it gave me more empathy for women with black eyes not so innocently delivered.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Dec 5, 2014 | Seasons
The woman’s voice was urgent. “Your mother’s levels are too high and she needs shots to prevent blood clots. I’ve ordered the medication already.”
Jenny’s phone felt like a brick in her hand. She didn’t understand most of the words the woman spoke. Medical terms that meant little.
But what landed was the next instruction. “You’ll give her injections every day for two weeks and then we’ll test her blood again. When can you pick up the prescription?”
Injections? Blood tests? She would give the injections?
“We need to get this started today.” The woman on the phone added some instructions for the injections. Jenny’s mind caught half of the instructions because injections kept ricocheting in her brain.
“Call me if you have any questions,” the woman said. And then she was gone and Jenny had only the ricochets to deal with.
Two hours later, Jenny held the package of syringes in her hands. She pulled one out, an odd little combo with a spring in the middle of the syringe.
“I am supposed to inject this right into your tummy,” Jenny said. Her mother studied the apparatus.
“Well, let’s get it done, then.”
Tears prickled in Jenny’s eyes. Her mother lay on the bed, her stomach exposed. Her skin was soft and thin around her belly button.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t want to do this.”
“Oh, you’ll do fine. Just go.”
Jenny’s arm seemed heavy. She took a deep breath. Fourteen of these to give her mother?
She pressed the needle against skin and the syringe seemed to gain a life of its own, injecting and popping away in an instant.
“All right,” her mother said. “Got that done for today. Let’s go get some dinner started.”
“I’m so sorry, Mom.”
“Well, you do what you have to do.”
As Jenny helped her mother to the kitchen, she knew that that’s exactly what they had just done. But that didn’t make it easy.
They marched on.
Like this:
Like Loading...
