Fraying routines

Dinner is finished.
It's time to stand up and check there is water in the electric kettle.
Then flick the switch down to start the water heating.
Walk to the dresser and get a tea cup and the green tea can. And a wooden spatula.

Put them on the table. Open the tea can. Put a spatula of tea in the cup. Close the tea can lid.
When the water boils - the click of the switch and the light off indicates - pick up the kettle from its holder and pour the water into the cup. Stir a little.
Sit and drink.

That's the routine. Okaasan's lunchtime and dinnertime routine. Without fail. After a meal, time for green tea.
She doesn't cook now. She hardly sets the table. Clears her dishes from the table sometimes, washes a dish sometimes, wipes down the kitchen counter...

But the tea making is her solo task.

We've noticed it is fraying a little. Usually she manages to do it all in order and complete the task. But sometimes ...recently more times...not.

Right from the start actually. From the decision to make tea - sometimes she finishes eating and we are busying around the kitchen (well, ok...trying to escape) she just sits. And sits. Doesn't actually make any move to get up and start the tea process. Just sits and watches us washing dishes, putting leftovers in a box, changing the trash bag.

If we say: "Okaasan, there's water for tea!" she starts in on the routine. But often not.

Then the whole kettle/tea/cup/spatula process gets all mixed up.
Cup with only hot water.
Tea into the dirty bowl which has traces of curry on it.
Tea and water BACK into the kettle.
Tea in cup placed slightly to one side and a second cup made straight away.
Tea and cup left forgotten on the table.

More and more we notice that the routine isn't going smoothly.

Winter afternoons

First snow here last weekend!
Felt a little early to have the swirling white stuff outside while we are still enjoying fall colors. 
My God, I'm English and I just wrote "fall", not "autumn". Have obviously been in Japan too long.

Okaasan isn't dealing with the changing season well.
Many days she fails to get out for a walk in good weather...leaving it till 5 or 5.30 pm, usually when one of us comes home bustling noisily into the kitchen - THEN she decides to go out for a walk.
Such a waste of good, sunny weather. By 5 pm here in October it's dark and cold. A few times I've tried telephoning her mid-afternoon and reminding her to go out. It sometimes works. But, if the TV catches her attention again then she settles down to slump and doze.

So we have an 85 year old tottering around the local streets at dusk as people are hurrying home. Not downtown, she only goes to the local supermarket. Buys yet another magazine to go with the identical one at home (or identical two!), and then home she comes.

But at least she is getting out and walking a few days a week. As the weather gets worse those chances get less and our responsibility to take her somewhere for a walk increases.

Only new thing we've noticed about her recently: green tea making. She is getting confused about that very, very familiar task. Something she has done all her life, probably as the girl child in her father's home business, as a young working office woman, as a wife, as a housewife. 70 years of tea making.
First put a few shakes of tea powder in the cup, then add hot, but not boiling water and whisk or stir it.

That order of doing things is getting mixed up.
The other night she poured hot water in a tea cup. Then picked up the teabox, took a spoonful...and put it in the water tumbler. Then started to pour more hot water into the glass. :-(

Ahh!!! Okaasan...no no...not a good idea! The glass might break, it will be hot for you to pick up...um...no.....

We rescued the situation and helped her get tea powder and water in the same place.

Other days she puts the water in first. Then the powder, so of course it doesn't dissolve, and the expensive tea ($40 a box) floats in balls round and round...then she drinks a bit of the hot water and leaves it all on the table....

So. A common action she has done all her life...losing the ability little by little.

Next week is November and our big trip to Okaasan's hometown is approaching.
About a week before I will take some of her better clothes for dry cleaning, and get her to the hair salon. And then tell her we are going....

And then the adventure will begin.