Recently in Daily Blog Category

#46 Stop eating before you are full

Michael Pollan has done it again!  The author of the Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, has written an even more accessible book about eating well, for health and coincidentally for sustainability.  It is entitled Food Rules, An Eater's Manual. It is out in paperback is small and has approximately one rule per page.  It is broken up into 3 sections which correspond to his general message message about food, which is "Eat food, mostly plants, not too much."

It seems like a simple statement, but contains much food for thought (forgive my pun). For instance food, means real food, nothing chemical, nothing fake- no phood!   Take this rule:

#2 Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

Each rule comes with a paragraph or two of explanation, but rarely over half a page long.

Another of my favorites in the 'eat food' section is:

#6 Avoid food products that have more than 5 ingredients.

Have you ever read the ingredients on most processed 'food'? It can be an extremely long list and most of them unpronounceable let alone edible!

I highly recommend buying a copy of this book- and USING the information in it.

 Intuition prods me to take a new way
     to the imaging center to get my annual mammogram
After a moment of doubt
     I turn onto the path to the bio-pond
          A sweet anomaly on Penn's campus
Overhung with trees and bushes
    drunk with last nights rain
          momentarily annoyed by second hand smoke
Unexpected in this little oasis
There they are- eight newly hatched ducklings
     unbearably cute and ridiculously fuzzy!
A small crowd of my own species
          oohs and ahhs
A two foot drop leaves me wondering
     will the mother prod them to a less precipitous spot?
Suddenly one sails over the edge-
          WHEEE!
Then two more , then the mother and the rest
   to human squeals and wordless exclamations
Grateful,
    filled with wonder and glee
 I head on my way
    with a little piece of inter-species delight
     tucked into my heart

 At our Quaker Meeting's weekend retreat on racial healing, lots about class come up, and I had the revelation (again) that Mom is just a working class party girl forced to pretend elsewise.  Not that there aren't other aspects of her personality worth mentioning, but she is definitely 'life of the party' to the core.  I really wish I had gotten to meet Granndpa Sam Outlaw, who I have been told she resembles more than any of his other offspring!

My mother, Martha Outlaw, is 87 years old and in the tenth year of increasing dementia.  Many of the last, approximately, 415 days that she has lived with me, I have been irritated or annoyed, until I realized a few months ago that I was actually deeply grieving the loss of the Mom I knew, while having to take care of this often amusing, sometimes cranky old lady who is masquerading as my mother!

Though frail, Mom has been incredibly healthy, until about 5 weeks ago. She got a bad cold with a lingering cough and then virtually stopped eating, with no apparent cause.  So we started taking her to the doctors to have blood tests done, and various x-rays and body scans.  It turned out to be an impacted bowel- but I won't go into the gory details here. She has gradually gotten better since 'the cure'. But there were some things still to check out, to make sure all was well, so back to the hospital we went.

 

During most of the previous 5 weeks she had no energy and was acting kind of depressed, but she was her amazing self at the hospital yesterday.  She was cranky and mad a Judy, her other main caretaker, on the way there, partly or perhaps solely, because she had soiled herself just before we left and Judy was pretty directive in the cleaning up of it- AND got it done!  But there was no problem getting her cooperation or the blood drawn once in the tech's room. There was a line of several people waiting when we were leaving and she commenting loudly, "Isn't it amazing how many people are lining up to get hurt!" That made just about everyone in the hall laugh or smile.  Then as we were entering the elevator, she turned and waved good-by, saying, "Take care everybody, hope you make it out alive!" This time even making me guffaw!

 

She was unhappy waiting so long for the x-ray, it was quite busy over there, but once we got into the x-ray room she flirted with the cute young man who was the tech.  It was not the quasi-obscene flirting she can do, especially with any man who seems remotely near her age, but sweet and funny and he was charmed.

 

I realized (again) as we were leaving for home, that Mom is such a great model for connecting with people in public places and though she gets to be briefly the center of attention, the life of the party,  everyone benefits.  It is not as self-centered as it has seemed to me in the past, in fact, it may not be self-centered at all.  When we hold back form connecting with the people we meet, perhaps that is the most self-centered we can be.  Making people laugh, or even just smile and especially when some outrageous thing she says or does makes someone's day, is truly a gift that she gives.

 

It can be oppressive, if one feels one HAS to be entertaining or make people happy, as I know from personal experience, but Mom does it effortlessly; it IS who she is.  May I grow to be so, in my own way.  May we all. So be it.

 

 

 

 

My mother's main problem is boredom.  Since she has dementia and her short term memory is shot and there are serious holes in her long term memory, conversation is almost impossible. She can only talk about things she can see right now, right here, the coffee, the food, the dishes, the snow on the ground, how cold it is, the coffee, the food the dishes... you get the idea. 

Mom was a good cook and a great baker, she used to be quite the seamstress, too. She can still do the Charleston, though a pretty low-key version.  What a dancer she used to be! Most of these she cannot do now, not even a little.  So she watches a lot of old movies, musicals are the best because they are happier (she can get pretty upset at scary or mean things).  We have gotten pretty sick of the Music Man, her favorite, which she sometimes watches 2 times a day!

 

So what's to do? A little over a year ago when my sister sent her to a senior day care center, she seemed to enjoy bingo quite a bit.  But she made it clear that she did not want to go to THAT place ever again. Perhaps in the warm weather she and Judy, one of her caretakers, could wander by the neighborhood senior center for lunch, bingo (if they have it ) and dancing. My guess is that she has forgotten about the other one by now.

 

I honestly didn't think, Mom would live this long. She has had this slow moving kind of dementia for 10 years now.  Her older brother had something very similar and died at age 88. Mom's birthday is in a few weeks and she will be 87.  So, in all likelihood she will be around for, at least, another year. Solving the boredom problem is essential.

 

She browses the newspaper, but often gets upset at all the bad news.  I had decided to stop getting the paper, except the Sunday edition, sure that it would serve her needs all week, but my husband signed us up for another 6 months before we had had a chance to check in with each other about it.

One morning a week a friend with an 18 month old comes over and hangs out with Mom, which she absolutely loves.  She adores babies. It tires her out, but that's OK. Shortly after this started about 5 months ago, I asked another friend whose child is a bit older, but that didn't work out, and its probably for the best since Ellie is really beyond the age that enthralls Mom. I should check in with Asa whose son Ely is only a few months old, since they now live in the neighborhood.

 

In her little trailer on the bayou in Tarpon Springs, Florida, Mom had taken to virtually plastering the walls and cabinets with family pictures and odd little newspaper clippings.  At least, they seemed odd to me.  Now I see that they could have been a way to stimulate her memories.  Mostly they were color photos with captions of wildlife and events in and around Tarpon Springs.  Some were photos of the impressionist masterpieces that she loved.

 

Although I have already put up maps in the 2 spots she sits for hours a day in our house, and also a cat calendar which she enjoys, I see now that I should put up a lot more stuff. The trouble is our local newspaper only carries BAD news.  I am not joking. Yesterday I looked though the paper to find something to put up and could find nothing!  Maybe I could clip some interesting pictures out of old National Geographics.

Since starting to write this- I find writing often helps me to understand what's going on- I talked with Judy, suggesting that when the weather permits she try walking around the corner with Mom to the Senior Center. That very afternoon she took Mom over there and they had lunch ($1) and played bingo and did a little dancing! Yay! But, now I have to register Mom.  I talked to the administrator who is very nice and got the lowdown on how to register her. Unfortunately Mom has no current documentation of how old she is! I am sure I will sort it out in the end, even if we have to get her a non-drivers ID.  (I can just imagine us waiting in that line for hours, and Mom asking me over and over again why we are there!)

Another thought I had was to get more children's books.  Mom actually likes to read them.  Sometimes she even reads them to the 5 year old who has been staying with us!  She can no longer read full length novels, both the small print and memory loss prevent any sustained reading. Perhaps I can find some of the old children's books she used to read to me when I was little.  Thrift store here I come!

 

This morning in our local newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, I read a piece about "A Gang of Killers..." about a horrible gang killling a year ago.  In it Kevin Riorden spoke words of wisdom which we all need to hear and take to heart in this day and age. Yes, the description of the torture and murders of the two victims was revolting, and it will stay with me much longer than I would wish. But when he reported that some were calling the perpetrators cockroaches, I was reminded of the genocide in Ruanda and Burundi.  Over and over the message was sent out via radio, "Kill the cockroaches! Rid our country of these pests!" inciting neighbors to hack down neighbors. Closer to home I am reminded of Abu Gahraib, the facility we, Americans, used in Iraq for torture and, yes, even, murder of detainees. This kind of dehumanization is never appropriate.

In the article is a quote from the movie Chinatown by a malevolent millionaire, "Most people never have to face that fact that at the right time and the right place they are capable of ... anything."  This is a needed reminder that all of us are capable of terrible things, thank goodness most of us never find out what we are capable of under the "right" (or wrong) circumstances. It is painful to remember that less than 100 years ago people, mostly African-American men, were lynched by mobs of average US citizens. (In fact, the last recorded lynching was in 1964!)

I know from my own life, now that I have almost reached 60, that I have done things, maybe not great evil, but bad things, most often unintentionally, but not always. When I search my heart, I know I am, essentially, no different from others who have done worse. When there is a cultural shift, when it becomes acceptable to call people names in public, especially dehumanizing names, it is a slippery slope, especially in economic hard times, to what happened in Germany. Hold people accountable for their actions. Do not begin to act like them, not even in the smallest ways by dehumanizing them verbally, not even in our rage and sorrow.

Fortunately, the reverse of the movie quote is also true. We are capable of compassion, seeing through stereotypes and taking action, brave, caring action in the right circumstances, or even the wrong ones. Let us seek, together, to reinforce this in each other, to encourage and inspire each other.  I am reminded of another quote, one of my favorites from Mother Theresa, "What I do you cannot do; but what you do, I cannot do. The needs are great, and none of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful."

Last night at 2:00 AM my middle daughter, Megan, a college student who currently makes her home at her older sister's a few blocks away, tiptoed into our bedroom and gently woke me with the words, "Mom, do you want to see the lunar eclipse?" Only half awake, I countered with another question, "Are you going up on the roof to see it?" Maybe, was the answer. Then she tiptoed out again, this time not to wake her Dad, since I was already awake, sorta.

I got up, still not fully awake, and pulled on my husband's fleece long-johns,  some warm socks, boots, a sweater and then traipsed downstairs to get my long wool winter coat and a hat.  Then I reversed course and went all the way up to the attic and climbed the ladder up to the roof.  No Megan. But the eclipse was well under way, about 3/4 accomplished, which was a very good thing since it was bitter cold and windy, and the eclipse was a very slow process.  I had never seen a full lunar eclipse before.  I lay down after a few minutes aware that I would get an awful crick in my neck if I didn't. A shooting star sped across the sky just under the moon, reminding me of the times I'd gotten the girls out of bed to see meteor showers, not so very long ago.

About 15 minutes later Megan showed up with her  boyfriend, Aron, and a stranger, named Min, they had met  who had been moon gazing from her porch on 47th Street around the corner. Aron lugged a rug up from the attic and we all lay down, cold but content to look up and the disappearing moon. Except that it wasn't really disappearing.  What was left as the brilliant light of the moon got smaller and smaller was a dusky copper-colored disk.  But you didn't notice that part so much, because as the bright sliver grew smaller, it seemed to become more and more brilliant, until it finally disappeared. Then the disk floating in the sky seemed almost red, but without a trace of reflected light. As the moon darkened more stars appeared. It was an odd sight, a scattering of brilliant stars and a dull reddish moon in the deep blackness overhead.

Min and I watched in silence, Megan and Aron snuggled and murmured to each other now and then. I had expected that when the light was fully eclipsed on one side of the the moon, it would appear on the other side as in the solar eclipses I had seen, but the rust-colored disk remained floating there as we watched. Just before we decided to retreat back inside to the warmth, I suggested we try to imagine that we were looking down into the night sky, rather than up. Why don't we just fall, or float away into the starry night? The Earth's gravity holds us to her. Could gravity be love of a sort? The sun holds the Earth, the Earth holds us, our galaxy, the Milky Way, holds the sun... a Universe filled with love, held together with a force more powerful than anything we could imagine or create.

Thank you , thank you, thank you!

This morning as my husband and I were waking up, he asked, "did you go up on the roof last night and watch the eclipse?"  when I replied in the affirmative, he quipped, "Megan knows her mother well." I smiled, albeit sleepily.  Yes, she knows me well and we have shared other nighttime adventures on the roof. For these things I am also grateful.  An amazing universe, a good, full life, full of hard things, grief and sorrow as well as all the happier things, but like the eclipse of the moon, the coldness of the night and the darkness of this time of year- all things have there beauty, and perhaps a deeper meaning than we can possibly know.  And for these I am also grateful.

Work Song, Part 2, A Vision
By Wendell Berry

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow-growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,
if we will make our seasons welcome here,
asking not too much of earth or heaven,
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides, fields and gardens
rich in the windows. The river will run
clear as we will never know it,
and over it birdsong, like a canopy.
On the level of the hills will be
green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting over its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground. They will take
nothing from the ground they will not return,
whatever the grief at parting. Memory,
native to this place will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibility.
 
 

I can't remember back before I loved chocolate.  Of course I started out on milk chocolate (that's how they get ya!). But I must admit I am a willing victim. Although I didn't have trouble giving it up the 3 times I was pregnant, its been an almost everyday habit the rest of my life. I learned several years ago that coffee is the most highly traded commodity after oil, which is #1.  I wonder how high up on the list chocolate is? I once saw a poll that claimed that vanilla ice cream was the #1 favorite, I didn't believe it for a second!

 

You can imagine how distressed I was when I found out that most cocoa comes from plantations where a kind of child slavery is practiced! SLAVERY?!!! Yes- I've checked it out. Although slavery is officially outlawed in every country of the world today, a kind of slavery is still in existence in many countries (even in the Ole US of A!) If you don't believe me google child slavery and chocolate! BUT, fortunately there are chocolate companies that have a conscience; not many and definitely not the BIG 5, such as Hershey, Mars, Nestle and Dove... There's Divine Chocolate, Green and Black's, Equal Exchange, Endangered Species Chocolates, Rapunzel, Droste, and more (google fair trade chocolate). The only downside, as you have probably already guessed is it is more expensive (which only makes sense that cocoa harvested by slave-labor doesn't cost as much- duh!).  Well I lied, there is another downside- a lot of stores don't carry fairtrade chocolate- and this can be hard on a chocoholic like myself.

 

So I have learned to stock up on my stash whenever I find a store that sells the 'good' stuff, so to speak, and remember to take it with me. (It has also meant some mighty struggles not to buy the ugly, slave produced chocolate, when I have forgotten to bring my own and the urge comes upon me!) Gradually over the past five years I have gained some will power and feel pretty confident about my ability to resist.  What is much harder and I still feel ambiguous about, is when I am offered chocolate at someone home (who doesn't know or doesn't care about  the slave labor connection to chocolate). It seems rude to either refuse or to make a big deal about it.  I am still working on this one; sometimes I eat a little of it, or say that I am not in the mood for it.  (Fortunately, I guess, I am wheat intolerant- so that is a good excuse for not eating chocolate cake or cookies.)

 

In just about a week, Halloween will be upon us.  I go back and forth about this holiday (right now I'm a bit forth!). It can get tiresome or it can be very entertaining (or both). We live on one of those city blocks that takes the holiday seriously since so many children have grown up or are growing up here.  Sometimes we have 800 trick or treaters!  I am NOT exaggerating; if I was going to exaggerate I would have to say at  least 1000, and to be truthful, and that might not even do it! I always try to get the cheapest candy possible AND for the last five years I have not given out any chocolate.

 

Here's an idea- what if all of us chocoholics refused to give out chocolate for Halloween that wasn't fairtrade this year! That would really make a statement!  What if we really did unite and refused to buy any more of the 'bad' stuff, ever?!   Money talks!  Heck, even if one tenth of us refused to by chocolate made with slave labor, the industry would have to take notice and do something about it!

 

Pass it on!

Here's to a future with no slave labor and really good chocolate!

Chocoholics United, Cannot Be Defeated!

Many years ago (at least 30!) I had the privilege of hearing the Esteemed Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis speak. (If you do not recognize them- google it.) During the Q&A someone asked something to the effect of with both of you having full blown careers, who takes care of the home? Ruby answered," Well after some soul searching we both agreed we needed a wife, so we hired one!" At 58 I finally knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, a writer and a preacher, of sorts, but subsequently it fell to me to take care of my mother, who has fairly advanced dementia, albeit pleasant dementia. She now lives with us and I am struggling to have a life besides her care and running our household.  All things being equal I would be suffering empty nest syndrome about now, since I took my baby off to college in NYC last Monday and my eldest moved out into a house of her own in July- but here I am managing  my mothers care.

Shortly after my mother moved in, someone (no one has owned up to it yet) left a book outside my bedroom door with the title. The 36 Hour Day; Taking Care of a Loved One  With Dementia (0r some such).  Oh, yes! that's why  feel exhausted all the time!  Often when I tell people that I have care of my mother they say something sympathetic and then ask where she is living.When I say,, I mean that she is living with me and I am caring for her, then either their eyes bug-out or they are speechless.  Once they recover, they call me a saint, which I am clearly not- but it is at least momentarily gratifying.

About a week ago a friend was telling me that her brother and sister-in-law are taking care of her father who also has dementia.  She mentioned they are also exhausted and they have 16 hour-a-day care for him, in the home.  Wow, I am struggling to get even 8 hours a day! In fact, my summer student help just had her last day yesterday and I am frantically trying to hie a replacement.  Since I am also determined to do the writing and preaching that I had already committed myself to before taking on my mother which will require going away for periods of time, I need to have adequate help in place to make this happen.

Over the summer I did some experimenting- we went away for 3 different weeks, on vacation with various family members. It was only partially successful- lots of glitches, tho nothing too serious.  But I just realized that what was lacking was an overall manager, aka a wife to over see all the pieces, fill in when necessary, listen when things don't go well, encourage when needed and draw the line when necessary.

So far only one person has shown much interest and I am not sure she knows what she'd be getting into! This whole thing makes me think somebody should start a business, forget life coaches, what we most of us need is a wife! Wish me luck!

Just about since the day my mother moved in with us and I took over her full-time care, I have felt  overwhelmed and exhausted. She has dementia and has already burned through my two younger sisters lives and my older sister moved all the way from Philadelphia to Dallas, just so she wouldn't have to take it on (the fact that her husband's new job was there only played a minor roll in the decision, though I suspect she influenced it for just this reason). Gradually with lots of help, actual hired help and help for me to figure out how to get my needs for adequate rest and solitude met so that I can do the job without killing myself (or my mother!), things seemed to be working out. Ironically, one of the answers to my needs for solitude (which are legion) is to get up earlier, before everyone else, go up on the roof, watch the sun rise and listen to the birds. This of course seems at odds with my need for rest and my sense that that  late afternoon cup of coffee was really not such a good idea. So I have been experimenting with taking a nap in the late afternoon, instead. This works best if my mother is napping as well.  I have been quite impressed with the results when it works out, which it does more often than you might think.

One of the things that I have struggled with all my life is the tendency to take on more than I can handle, coupled with a grandiose view of just how much that is.  Of course this comes naturally to a kid who felt she had to take on a parenting role when she was barely 11 and her dad died leaving her mother a widow with 5 children between the ages of 2 and 13, who never quite recovered. That's a bit of a nonsensical statement, I now realize, for just how does one recover from such a thing? It is a fact, however, that she did lose her faith and never found it again, until now, when she has lost so much of her memory that she seems to reside back before she even met her dear husband, even back to before she became a Quaker as a teenager, when her whole family joined the local Quaker Meeting. (We now sing a lot of Methodist hymns and she says a Methodist grace at dinner time, I presume, since it is one I never knew.) Music is an amazing thing, she also likes to listen to Ella Fitzgerald and other music from the forties (her courting days) and some of the songs bring up such vivid feelings of loss for her that she remembers that her husband, the love of her life, died and left her and she sheds a few tears. She will also get up and dance the Charleston at the drop of a hat, or less!

I have struggled, over my adult lifetime to say "NO" to things which are really not mine to take on, or are too much for me.  I have gotten better at it, but habits ingrained in childhood are hard to kick. Just now, in my life, as, you can imagine, I could reasonably expect that my plate is full. Taking care of my mother is really only the half of it. I have an over-worked family doctor for a husband, a daughter getting ready to go off to college and another house to take care of now that my oldest daughter, who has Down syndrome, has moved into her own home a few blocks away. OK, OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration, she and her housemate are doing just fine, but they do need some supervision especially since they moved in less than a month ago, and truth be told, though I assume less supervision will be required as time goes by, some will always be needed, and at least for now, the buck stops with me.

One of the folks I hired to help with my Mom, on a very part time basis, is a single Mom currently receiving assistance. While we were away on vacation a few weeks ago she staid over at our house as the night time help, and basically has not left since.  Her four year old loves being at our house and we enjoy having him. Since there are often 3 or 4 teenagers staying over, (it is summer and my youngest daughter's friends hang out here), it really didn't seem like a big deal at first. But then I began to notice piles of their stuff, mostly kids videos and bags of clothes here and there and began to get worried. It has emerged that there are some problems in the house they are renting and that it is really not safe (or doesn't feel safe) to be there until they are fixed. Since the mom has another part time job, she needs help with childcare while she straightens things out, but was afraid to be upfront with her needs.  I freaked out (in a mild way, at least outwardly).  Inwardly I thought, oh no, I can't take on one more thing right now, the ship might actually sink.

A housemate of ours (unrelated) listened to me vent about my fears, but they only seemed to grow, until I lost sleep over it.  Then something happened, I had a talk with God/the Universe/Mystery and was able to let it all go, give up trying to figure it out. At the same time, even though it still seemed risky, I was able to take a step towards the situation, not with a clear sense of being able to figure anything out or really make much of a difference, just to step out with a sense of trust that all would be well, in some unfathomable way.  (To be completely honest, it was a feeling, not formed into a thought, almost as if I was propelled forward- not against my will, just against my better judgment.) I volunteered to have the 4 year old for an evening and asked others to step up and help, successfully.  Those ducks just seemed to fall right into a row! And it is all manageable! It appears that the house issues are resolving, it may take another week or so, but the end is in sight, and (not without more bumps along the way, I'm sure) progress is happening- and guess what else? A little community is forming, where there is genuine potential for all of us to be  of assistance to each other when its needed-AND who doesn't need a little extra help now and then?