13 Friday Jan 2017
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THE MARGUERITE CHRONICLES, January 13, 2017:
Mama looked over the table at me from her bench in our Outback booth, and asked, “Do I look old enough to be your mother?” Yep. Yep, you do. I hope.
09 Friday Dec 2016
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So, for once, I get my 96-year-old mama up, dressed, fed, medicated, and looking cute as a button for a trip to a funeral in Raleigh; and we’re actually gonna leave early rather than lat. I place her at the kitchen table with instructions to stay put while I get dressed.
And while I’m dressing, she grabs a hot bottle of forbidden nail polish and sneaks out to the car with it.
I come down the stairs and out the door to find her painting her nails IN MY CAR, and she has spilled half the bottle down her very favorite dressy top.
I cuss, (which I rarely do) and yell “Dammit, Mama” while pulling the top off over her head, leaving her half nekkid in the car with Micah hiding his eyes in the back seat.
I rush inside for acetone, & pour it all over the shirt, but it’s like tinkling in the ocean. Not enough acetone in Virginia to break down that stuff. The top is permanently damaged. And our extra half hour plus 10 more minutes disappears.
I’m completely undone that I lost my patience with her, because I’ve promised myself that I won’t do that.
And then I think about the switching I’d have gotten for pulling such a trick in her lavender ’65 Bonneville Broagham with the purple satin seats and I’m glad I have not yet spilled a bottle of nail polish down my favorite shirt.
And when I do, I hope my sons will yell “Dammit, Mama” at me and not feel bad about it.
05 Monday Dec 2016
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The Memomma Chronicles, Saturday Edition, July 30, 2016:
Yesterday, Marguerite got a great hairdo from sweet Louvenia over at Hair Worx in Odee. Louvenia does a great job with an old-fashioned roller set, just perfect for an old lady who likes to sit under a dryer and flip through a magazine.
So, last night, before Mama went to bed, she asked for a plastic shower cap to put over her head so her hair wouldn’t mess up overnight. I told her that wouldn’t work,we’d fix the hair in the morning, and she went to bed.
But she’s like a rebellious teenager these days, and no matter how many times you explain principles that she knew long ago and has forgotten, she is bound and determined to prove you wrong. And that’s why she’s 96.
So, ’round midnight, I heard her get up and went to check on things. All was well, except that the new curls were plastered, flat as a pancake, to her head, like they’d been glued there, and I was ready to cuss again.
So she explained. She’d gotten a plastic grocery bag out of the trash can it lined, wrapped it around her head, and went to sleep, not remembering that plastic on the head makes ya sweat if it doesn’t smother you first. Sweat+hairspray is one mean combination. So now, we have unlocked the secret formula for superglue, and poured a thirty-dolla hairdo down the drain.
05 Monday Dec 2016
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The Marguerite Chronicles, August 22, 2016, 7:29 AM:
Mama’s voice came from the dining room.
“Somebody come help me!”
I ran towards the voice and nearly tripped over her. She was on the floor with her head pointing north – her walker was cattywampus, on the floor, heading east, a dining room chair was turned over, pointing west.
Once we determined that she was fine, I had two questions: how’d she do it, and why’d she do it??
05 Monday Dec 2016
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THE MARGUERITE CHRONICLES, AUGUST 31, 2016. 3:19 AM:
A loud, high-pitched, prolongued screech, amplified by the baby monitor next to my bed, propelled me straight up, wide awake and into heart palpitations.
If you’ve ever had chickens, you know that sound. Roosters aren’t born knowing how to crow, and when they start practicing, it sounds plumb awful – other-worldly – nothing else anywhere sounds like that.
I ran back toward Mom’s bedroom, wondering if I’d find a stray rooster in full-out attack mode, or some kind of crazed intruder, but the crazed intruder thought didn’t kick in until I’d passed by all the kitchen knives.. Unarmed, I walked into the room.
Nobody. Nothing. Nada. Zilch – except for Mama, who’d pulled the covers up over her head and was still breathing, no blood anywhere, sleeping peacefully after whatever crazy dream made her screech like an adolescent rooster.
It was a good 2 hours before I could get back to sleep. And that, my friends, is why I fell so easily into rainy-afternoon-nap mode. Wonder what tonight holds?
05 Monday Dec 2016
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THE MARGUERITE CHRONICLES – SEPT 16 2016 – PART 2
♬♫♪ She’s ‘Down in Mississippi and Up to No Good’♬♫♪
05 Monday Dec 2016
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THE MARGUERITE CHRONICLES: SEPTEMBER 16, 2016, PART 4:
3:00 AM. George elbowed me awake to say, “Your mother’s in OUR bathroom flipping the lights on and off.”
Yep. She was. She had to walk past her bathroom into our room to get there, and she’s never done that before. I guided her back to bed, but she was in the throes of a full-blown Looney Toons episode, talking nonstop and intermittently making sense, and if her brain thought it, she said it.
Up again at 6, talking to the Choctaws. At 8, she snuck downstairs, this woman who hasn’t taken her own pills for 5 years, and bragged to our houseguest that she had taken her morning medicine.
Only it was her nighttime medicine.
Which meant she was going to be groggy on top on wacko. And then, Sister Margie calls from the beach condo to say there’s standing water on the floor of a bedroom and the sheetrock is wet, and I started calling Benchmark mulltiple times to get somebody over there…and then we were due at UHaul to pick up a truck for getting some furniture from my brother-in-law in Fredericksburg and there is not one spare inch in this house for another stick of furniture even if it is a zillion-dollar fine reproduction mega-desk, and I had to talk Mama down the stairs and out to the car one leg at a time because her brain was on the night shift.
There was nothing to do but strap her in a seat belt, pick up some grandsons and haul ’em all up I-95. And now we have a UHaul truck out front and no place to put the stuff that’s in it even though we do have a double garage and an 8-stall barn, and nobody to help unload it even if we did have room, and our front yard already looks like West Virginia but it has been too hot this summer for me to clean out the garage. So it’s not just Mama who’s Looney Toons.
The apple didn’t fall far, and it whacked me on the head on the way down.
05 Monday Dec 2016
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THE MARGUERITE CHRONICLES: 21 SEPTEMBER 2016.
George had made some surprise dinner reservations – I had the boys lined up to come and Memomma-sit, and we planned to do something special. (I have no idea what, because he won’t tell me.)
BUT — our day started with Mama needing medical attention. I told her we’d go to the doc.
“I’m too weak to get to the car. You better call those 911 people.”
So, I did, and the Powhatan Rescue Squad (the Squishy-Squash, as Emily used to call it when Chip was a volunteer) sent 2 fine EMT’s to help, and they hauled her to the hospital.
The ER at St. Francis was packed — they were OUT of rooms, but she got prompt attention, and they found that she had a raging UTI, in spite of preventative antibiotics — and it presented differently than the many she has had before. I had nothing to eat the entire day. though one of the kind staff brought me a little can of Pepsi.
We got to the hospital at noon, and eight hours later, we left to get prescriptions filled. I dashed into Panera to grab something for both of us to eat while Groggy-Mama reclined in the car. And Panera, the people who MAKE bread, were OUT of baguettes, soft rolls, and all other side items that I wanted. And OUT of most of the 99-cent bakery items offered with the meal.. And OUT of the green tea I craved. Disappointed, I dashed out with something that would suffice, and drove to Walgreen’s.
And guess what? They were OUT of one of the prescribed medications. Can’t get it till Friday. So, I said I’d take what they filled, and to put the unused prescription with it so I could take it elsewhere. Grabbed the bag through the drive-thru window, and halfway back home, realized they had not put the unused script back in the bag.
But the good news is that Mama was able to walk up the stairs to get into bed, and unlike the Emergency Room, Panera and Walgreen’s, she is not OUT of anything. For now!
05 Monday Dec 2016
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THE MARGUERITE CHRONICLES, September 26, 2016:
Mama may be 96; she offers me the use of ‘her’ car whenever we need to go somewhere; she asks if Lester Holt is any kin to us every single night; but she’s still savvy enough to say “Make sure I’m up at 9:00 PM, because I want to see the debate.”
She’s as politically interested as ever, this woman who read every word of the Greenville News, Charlotte Observer, or W-S Journal (including the classifieds) every morning at breakfast for most of her life. However, she lasted about an hour into the shouting match, and said, “I’m going to bed!”
05 Monday Dec 2016
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The Marguerite Chronicles: September 29, 2016
Mama looks over at me from her recliner and smiles. “I’ll tell you something funny on me…you’ll get a laugh.” (This is the first conversation she has initiated in quite a while. She usually responds, but doesn’t start off on her own, so I am thrilled.)
“This morning, I discovered that I didn’t have my teeth. So I looked all over, and guess where I found ’em?”
“They were in my shoes!!”
BethStillSings 