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.

WAITING (Nursing Home Life, part 7)

I have never been much good at waiting, but when it is necessary, I prefer to wait for good things—Christmas, tooth fairy, the arrival of spring. Being a person of privilege and a hope lady too, I find I’ve had little experience figuring out what you can do while you wait for bad things to happen. The experience I have comes from way back. There was this one time, the Saturday morning of the May long weekend, back in 1973. David and I set out for a drive on the highway in his mother’s white Mustang. The sunny sparkling day was perfect. I was still a teen-ager then with my boyfriend by my side. The weekend stretched before us with the promise of my mother’s cooking waiting for our arrival. Nothing could go wrong. But then something did. David saw that the car ahead of us had come to a complete stop. “Hold on,’ he cried, taking the car out of gear and slamming on the brakes. We skidded, and we skidded, and then we stopped, just short of the car in front. We had cheated disaster. It was a tremendous relief. But then it wasn’t. From behind us came the squeal of brakes and a growing vision of blue that filled the rear view mirror. From inside David’s mother’s mustang came a mind-numbing realization. Without warning we had been plunged into limbo. We were in great danger, and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it except wait for as long as it would take for a bad thing to happen. Reason tells me that we only waited a few seconds to be catapulted from behind into the back of the stationary car in front. Memory tells me otherwise. How many years did I age while we sat there filling our heads with that terrible screeching? Was it an hour, a day, a lifetime? And what did I do while I waited? Did I utter words of undying love to David? Did I write a book, compose a song, plan my career, strike a bargain with God? Memory tells me I did none of these things. I simply waited, and waited, and waited, feeling powerless. In that circumstance, there was nothing else that could have been done. These days I find myself here at Laurier House with David, healthy and able, loved and fed. It wouldn’t be bad at all were it not for the fact that together we are once again waiting indefinitely for a bad thing to happen. This time the waiting is much longer. The very length of it gets to me. With more time to spend, it becomes more difficult to sink into the comforting anesthesia of powerlessness. “Do something!” says a nagging voice from deep within. “Do whatever it is that you can do.” Some mornings when I rise, sleepy-eyed, contemplating the stretching of the endless day, I stand by David’s bed, dripping thickened water into his mouth, trying to conjure a picture of the woman I hope to be. She’s my hero and I am hoping that having the picture will help me be more like her. The woman I hope to be is serene. She has long ago accepted the inevitability of her husband’s death and the unstoppable decline towards it. She does not strain to control that which is beyond her control. The woman I hope to be is vigilant. She reads the latest research. She studies her situation and notices improvements need to be made. She keeps records and asks questions. The woman I hope to be is gracious. She is not the sort who, losing her temper, would snap at an irritating inexperienced care-giver: “Would you just be quiet so we can hear what David is trying to tell us!” The woman I hope to be is creative. She has the smarts to figure out how to get things done. Just suppose he wants to watch The Good Wife on Netflix. Suppose his hands are too rigid to operate the remote. If blindness renders her unable to read the screen, and his speech is so slurred that she can’t tell whether he is telling her to press Up, Down or Okay. She will find some way around that. The woman I hope to be has a sense of humour. Once she has figured a way of getting The Good Wife on the screen, she will linger with him, listening to the voices of those cut-throat glamorous women, wondering which of them she would need to copy in order to be a good wife. The woman I hope to be sleeps more peacefully, exercises more vigorously, plays more music, eats more healthily, laughs more heartily appreciates more gratefully, gives more generously. She reads better books, phones lonely people, delights in the antics of her grandchildren and listens patiently to the troubles of others. She writes and writes and writes until finally she gets something that can be published on her blog. Doing all of this leaves her barely enough time to contemplate the difficulties involved in waiting for a bad thing to happen. The woman I hope to be occasionally shows up to help me out. When she’s here, I do better.