It's a Luau!

On Sunday mom and I went to a Luau themed brunch at Walker Place, the unsubsidized condos for retired folks adjacent to the health center.  It's an easy way to take mom out to lunch without shoveling her into a car and dealing with the outside world.  Mom loves it, they have real china and cloth napkins and thoughtful servers that know the score with dementia and restaurants. Generally not the best mix.  We met another mother/daughter team and headed down to the Luau.  

As we age, food becomes a problem.  Mom's issue with food is that she loves, loves, loves it and can saddle up to a table and eat for hours.  A meal typically takes 2 hours.  Three meals a day and snacks means she's ingesting for about 7 hours a day.  As a result, she's getting a little rotund.  Mom's lunch date and fellow partner in crime on the dementia unit has a different problem.  K doesn't eat enough so mealtimes are very crucial.  She eats with her one good hand, using her fingers as best she can.  She is generally grumpy about being spoon fed.  Many residents on the unit revert to eating with their hands eventually.  I've noticed mom is starting to more and more these days.  

So the daughters go up to the buffet and choose our meals for our mothers.  I opt for fish, rice, fruit, salad and vegetables for mom.  Small portions.  K's plate is lots a bacon, sausage and other semi-portable high calorie foods.  The ladies commence eating and an hour and a half later there's a mountain of food on the floor, napkins thrown in a corner and mashed up cake that nearly got hurled by the ever demure K.  We have absconded with most of the place settings on the adjacent tables just to keep the peace at our own table.  Mom's coffee is too hot, K's coffee cup is too empty, according to my mom, and she frantically reaches across the table to try to fill that cup.  Then K yells out something to a passerby and my mom comments a little too loudly that some guy is really fat.  All in all, a pretty successful meal.  Crisis management is a good skill to have and we leave with most of our dignity intact.

Another time I took my mom out to brunch with Kurt, his mother and Henry.  I left my mom at the table for a minute as we were all getting ready to go.  When I got back to the table, there's mom drinking breast milk (!) out of Henry's bottle.  I tried to explain calmly (while freaking out on the inside) that bottles are for babies.  Mom simply replied with a gleeful smile, "I'm a baby, too!"

How does one respond to that?

Can you start a fire?

Another resident was on my case when all I wanted to do was sit with Mosey for a bit and chat about the day's events.  She cornered me with her walker in my mom's room and said, "I bet you know how to start a fire...you look like you're up to no good."  

I volleyed back, "Well, I do know how to start a fire but why do you need one?"  

She replied, "Oh, I'm not telling you because you're up to something, I can tell."  

She didn't have her wig on which was a bit of a shock because she's nearly bald, making her look like a short, fat Scrooge.  I muscled my way out of the room and she followed me down the hall, making more accusations.  I figured she wasn't herself without the wig.

Mom is steady as ever, ignoring the chatter, drinking her milk and slowly reading cards from old friends and family.  That's her favorite pastime, to pore over cards and letters, savoring the window to a world that is elusive and shadowy at best.  She thanked me for my help and gave me a kindly smile.