Day #5 Writing Through Covid-19: Fruit Salad

"Did you sleep well?" I asked as I set my parents' small table for breakfast. "No," my mother said. She had been up multiple times in the night. In the light of day, she had her bearings. But in the night, she'd been confused. "It felt like a nightmare," she said, "not knowing which door was which."

The day before, as I settled them in, I offered to put a blue painters'-tape path on the carpet to guide them from their bedroom to the bathroom. My mother laughed and assured me she would find the bathroom if we left the light on.

In direct conversation, my mother is lucid for stretches at a time. But twice now I've gone down to the basement and found my father softly explaining to her where she is, why they're here.

After lunch, I brought down a puzzle and dumped it out on the Ping-Pong table. My diligence to maintain distance and limit physical contact slipped considerably when I felt compelled to turn the pieces face up. My mother and I bowed toward the table, eagerly touching and re-touching the pieces we'd both just touched. Chalk it up to quality over quantity of life. We had a lovely time.

Later in the afternoon, my son and his girlfriend walked down the gravel road for exercise and "visited" my parents by walking past the window and waving.

"Enjoy it!" I announced. "This is the day's entertainment: viewing beautiful young people for one minute!"

My parents moved into Friendship Haven's most independent housing ten years ago. They were still alert and strong, and their friends wondered why they were so eager to move to a care center. But my parents wanted to be proactive in assuring their children would not need to house them in their dotage. My mother had cared for both her own father and my dad's mother and wanted to spare her children that. Last year they moved to a higher level of care. Two meals a day were provided, but they still had a kitchenette and some independence.

Their hesitation in coming to stay with me during Covid Time comes from an urge not to be a burden. They asked if they could cook their own meals on a hotplate. Could they wash their own dishes? We put a dorm refrigerator in the basement and stocked it with fruit so they can nibble at will, but I assured them it would be ultimately less work for me if I could simply share what I was already cooking for Dan and myself for meals. They acquiesced.

But last evening when I brought them supper, my dad was standing at the Ping-Pong table cutting up fruit for a fruit salad. He was using a table knife to slice a soft pear, banana, and orange sections directly on the table. He had placed the peelings and cores in the empty puzzle box.

At 89 and 90, my parents are the gentlest of people now. They thank me profusely for every simple kindness I show to them. I could tell it took my dad some effort to ask me--if it wasn't too much trouble--to have a boiled egg every two days or so. I was only too happy to accommodate this small request. "It's for Vern," he said sheepishly. "He likes his dog food so much better if we put a little egg on it."

I brought them a bowl of boiled eggs and placed them in the refrigerator. I discreetly wiped fruit juice from the Ping-Pong table and moved the peelings from the puzzle box to a wastebasket.


Enough.
Stay well.
Write.

Allison