BOREDOM AND THE TALE OF THE SALT FAIRY (Nursing Home Life part 8)

They were decorating pumpkins down in the dining room the first time I noticed it. It was just a few little crumbs on my kitchen counter beside the sink. “Could have come from anywhere,’ I thought. They were passing out Hallowe’en candy down in the dining room the second time I noticed it. It was just a few crumbs on my kitchen counter. “Maybe I didn’t clean them up properly last time,” I thought. “Could it be some toxic residue falling from the ceiling tiles?” I wondered, the third time I noticed it. So I licked a grain off my finger and waited to die. But all I tasted was table salt. “I must be spilling it when I salt David’s morning egg,” I concluded, the next time I noticed it. And from that time on, I made sure to salt David’s egg on the kitchen table. And yet, once in a while, there would still be grains on the counter. “Must be the salt fairy,” I decided the next time I found it. I looked up “salt fairy” on the Internet. The Internet did not disappoint. It provided a book of fairy tales about salt. These tales are much like other fairy tales in nature. Poor girls are turned to princesses because of salt. Tears turn to pearls because of salt. One of the tales tells of a mill that forever grinds salt because nobody knows how to make it stop. That particular mill has sunk to the bottom of the ocean, salting the waters forever. But if there could be one such mill, might there be two? “There must be a magic salt mill in here,” I concluded, “and maybe a fairy to turn it.” Since every fairy needs a tale, I set out to craft one. THE TALE OF THE SALT FAIRY By Wendy Edey Once upon a time there was a not-quite-old-enough-and-too-healthy woman who lived in a nursing home where she helped to take care of her husband. On certain days, at certain times, she was very, very bored. “I’m bored,” she whined. From far away in a distant land, a fairy god mother heard her wails and came down to help. “Read more books,” she suggested. For she had been a real mother before she became a fairy. “Boring,” said the woman. “Watch more TV then,” she suggested. It wasn’t her favourite option, but it would do. “Boring!” said the woman. Now she was at her wits end. “Play Bingo in the dining room,” she suggested. “Boring, boring, boring!!!” cried the woman. One day the fairy god mother got an idea. “I will create a mystery for this woman to ponder,” she whispered to herself. “That will keep her from being bored.” Fairy god mother set to work on a plan. Some mornings, not every morning, but just some mornings, she picked up her enchanted salt mill and sprinkled a few grains of salt on the kitchen counter. And the woman, now occupied by the process of wondering how the salt came to be there, stopped being bored and lived happily ever after. That should have been the end of it. Nothing ever happens in fairy tales once they’ve lived happily ever after. But every morning at 10:00, one of the nurses comes in to crush pills and feed them to David. One morning the nurse on duty brought a nurse in training. “Take the salt shaker off that shelf there and bang it down on the pills,” she said. “Then put the salt shaker exactly where you found it, in case Wendy is looking for it.” And even now, I don’t think she understands that when she bangs the salt shaker on the pills to crush them, a few grains leap in the air and escape through the top. And even though there is now a new theory to explain the few grains of salt on the kitchen counter, I’m sticking to my story about the salt fairy.