In the Sunshine
After my grumbles of yesterday the sun finally shone today. So my mother, who is eighty-five, had a little snooze in the sunshine.
She decided to sit by the shed to wait for the man to arrive.
What man?
Well, she didn't know. A man had rung, apparently, and said he was coming round today for some purpose. She couldn't hear a word he said so had given him my mobile number but he didn't ring it.
Anyway, he never did arrive so the Strange Man and his Strange Purpose remain a mystery.
Most eighty-five-year-olds wouldn't sit on the ground like that but my mother's quite happy that way. She only slept for about twenty minutes and then was back to her usual business, working in the garden.
Her deafness is becoming a real problem - it isolates her, and she's very sociable. She's astonishingly fit, physically - - but she just can't hear. Part of the problem is that she won't wear her hearing aids very often - she always talks as though the hearing-aid designer did it just to annoy her. "They make everything too loud."
Of course, the idea is that if you wear them for long enough, your brain screens out the extraneous noise - - but my mother's having none of it. She puts them in for five minutes or so and then I have to go back to yelling.
I find it exhausting, especially when I just can't find her in the house or garden and I have to go round everywhere shouting my head off.
" - - - Ah, there you are. I've been looking for you for twenty minutes."
"Oh, did you call? I didn't hear you."
"No, Mum, but then you wouldn't, would you?"
"Pardon?"
We have endless conversations like this. My mother doesn't like being eighty-five, and I don't blame her. It is, of course, better than the alternative, which is being dead - - but her preferred alternative is to be twenty-five again. Again, I don't blame her. But it can be hard to deal with sometimes.
She decided to sit by the shed to wait for the man to arrive.What man?
Well, she didn't know. A man had rung, apparently, and said he was coming round today for some purpose. She couldn't hear a word he said so had given him my mobile number but he didn't ring it.
Anyway, he never did arrive so the Strange Man and his Strange Purpose remain a mystery.
Most eighty-five-year-olds wouldn't sit on the ground like that but my mother's quite happy that way. She only slept for about twenty minutes and then was back to her usual business, working in the garden.
Her deafness is becoming a real problem - it isolates her, and she's very sociable. She's astonishingly fit, physically - - but she just can't hear. Part of the problem is that she won't wear her hearing aids very often - she always talks as though the hearing-aid designer did it just to annoy her. "They make everything too loud."Of course, the idea is that if you wear them for long enough, your brain screens out the extraneous noise - - but my mother's having none of it. She puts them in for five minutes or so and then I have to go back to yelling.
I find it exhausting, especially when I just can't find her in the house or garden and I have to go round everywhere shouting my head off.
" - - - Ah, there you are. I've been looking for you for twenty minutes."
"Oh, did you call? I didn't hear you."
"No, Mum, but then you wouldn't, would you?"
"Pardon?"
We have endless conversations like this. My mother doesn't like being eighty-five, and I don't blame her. It is, of course, better than the alternative, which is being dead - - but her preferred alternative is to be twenty-five again. Again, I don't blame her. But it can be hard to deal with sometimes.
posted by Daphne at 7:55 pm
3 Comments:
I think she and my Dad would get on very well. He's 86.
In the second picture, your mother appears to be engaged in water divining. Tell her (AT THE TOP OF YOUR VOICE!) it is normal to place one's hazel rods close to the ground...not halfway up a tree - unless of course she had just detected a massive underground reservoir.
YP, those are obviously pruning shears. Are you just being difficult?
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