Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2004-11-19 - 6:19 a.m.

Relative Truth

Got a call from my mother this morning. I mean this morning - it came in at 4:05 a.m. I didn't pick it up because Older Daughter had left the computer volume muted and I didn't hear the phone. This is a bad thing, because calls at four a.m. are calls you really don't want to pick up but you really NEED to pick up. In this case, I'm going to forgive her, however.

It seems that my mother was unable to find her magnifying glass, which she uses for reading, and that she'd been looking for it "all morning", and that the problem was that my kids had been playing with it and taken it out to the car, and she was mightily irritated, and we were going to have to do something so this sort of thing didn't happen again, and if I planned to continue to bring my kids to her house they were going to have to be taught not to touch ANYTHING of hers, and (sixty second message timer cut her off.)

Part of this is true: we WERE there last night.

That would be the only true part.

Sigh.

Four ayem.

Another sigh.

The difficulty in dealing with dementia is that it's hard not to react to ridiculous content. I listen to that message, I feel PISSED. My kids go up with me EVERY week on our mercy errand, to bring her dinner and do her shopping and clean her house and give her a bath and clean clothes and change her sheets and do her wash and so on; they don't WANT to, but they do. She starts out after me, I can shrug it off (mostly.) But don't mess with my CHILDREN, bitch.

So it's good I didn't answer that call. Because four a.m. is not my finest hour, people, and having the phone ring at that hour gives me an incredible jolt of adrenaline, which I may have cleared from my system by getting really nasty with her.

Which would be pointless.

My guess is, based on history, that she had a dream that this happened, and will have NO recollection of having called me at all. Nor having been nasty about my kids.

So there's no point telling her that my kids would NEVER touch her stuff; never have, never will. Their only interest is in finishing dinner and getting away to work on homework while I do her bath and kitchen. They're a little old to play with magnifying glasses, and she might think twice about accusing them if she wants groceries.

Okay. Now MY meanness is out. I feel better. I can delete the message, which the kids never had to hear anyway, and let it go. She won't remember it if I don't bring it up. Hell, she won't remember it if I DO bring it up. She can't help it.

But this would be why I let the kids call her Darth Nana.

�

previous - next

�