You know those moments before you tell somebody something...
Shall I do it now?
Or now?
What about now?
While they are still eating?
When they have finished that drink?
When they come back from the toilet?
When shall I tell them??????
Like the moment you break up with a lover, tell someone you are sick, tell someone you are angry with them...
I told Okaasan at 7.25 pm. After the haircut, after she'd walked home by herself, after a nice a deux dinner, after some shared beer....
"There was a special reason you had a nice haircut and perm today! Dear Son has a lovely surprise for you! Look! Here is his letter!!!"
And I gave it to her.
She read it. I waffled on brightly about how nice it will be to visit Kawagoe etc, how exciting, how nice to see her brother and his wife etc..
Her response? Muted. Not negative (thank goodness), but strangely muted. I might have suggested opening the window for some fresh air.....
We talked about it for a while. Well, I talked and she responded...mutely.
Yes, Kawagoe is where you were born - it isn't where your house is.
Brother's wife's name??? No idea
Yokohama - maybe Chinese food?
Wednesday morning we are going to the airport.
Look I circled the days on the kitchen calendar!
She read the letter several times. She did understand. But her reaction was massively muted.
I guess she needs a long time to process this new information and think about what it means.
There was a news report recently about how changes in sense of humor can signal dementia, with inappropriate laughter at bad news or events etc. I think too many emotional responses are off-balance: lack of empathy "Oh Paris? many people died? Oh, yes" to this muted response to news about a trip to see hometown and family.
After dinner I came upstairs to watch Richard Gere movies and a program about person-centered care for dementia sufferers, and Okaasan sat in front of yet another ice skate program (Japanese TV is full of them) and read her letter.
She kept ON reading the letter...when I was in the bathroom before sleeping I could see her still reading the letter.
So. We'll see how she feels about this trip as today plays out. I have work, but am home to catch cats for pet hell late afternoon, and then home again after an evening class.
Will she get in a panic about the clothes required for the trip? Or get annoyed that a visit to her house isn't included?
Wait and see. :-)
Showing posts with label trip away from home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trip away from home. Show all posts
Monday, 16 November 2015
Wednesday, 20 June 2012
Hair-um scare-um
Took Okaasan to the hair salon yesterday.
Reminded her about an hour before Lift Off, and then kept reappearing in the kitchen to keep the thought in mind...and at 9.30 am Okaasan and Me trotted out, companionably and went to catch the subway downtown.
We get quite a few looks in public, the old Japanese lady and foreign family member isn't so common - so people are having a furtive gawk and trying to work out the relationship.
Old Lady and Slave?
It is just as well I take her, I am not at all sure she really knows where the salon is. Everytime we get off the subway train she turns to head to the same exit - the routine of her trips downtown. But, in fact, for the hair salon it is best to use a different exit and a hidden elevator.
Got her to the salon on time, made sure she had enough money for a post-cut lunch downtown, paid the salon in advance on my credit card and left them to it...went off to work.
By chance Yujiro got spotted by Okaasan about 2-3 hours later - as he was working with the bike taxi, she stopped him and asked him where she should have lunch...so he directed her to a restaurant.
I kind of wonder how good she is at making a decision (like where to have lunch) which is OUT of her routine downtown.
Anyway. Hair cut looks great. All trimmed and permed and tidy.
This is the hair salon that a student introduced to us. Obviously the hair stylist mentions this woman every time, as in "Mrs. O came in recently"...and every single time Okaasan comes home and says to me: "and you've just been there Amanda, haven't you?"...I guess she has never met Mrs. O, so the purely verbal information isn't quite sticking. Funny that :-)
So.
Ready for the great Folk Dance class debut on Friday.
I so, so SO hope this class will be a success.
Reminded her about an hour before Lift Off, and then kept reappearing in the kitchen to keep the thought in mind...and at 9.30 am Okaasan and Me trotted out, companionably and went to catch the subway downtown.
We get quite a few looks in public, the old Japanese lady and foreign family member isn't so common - so people are having a furtive gawk and trying to work out the relationship.
Old Lady and Slave?
It is just as well I take her, I am not at all sure she really knows where the salon is. Everytime we get off the subway train she turns to head to the same exit - the routine of her trips downtown. But, in fact, for the hair salon it is best to use a different exit and a hidden elevator.
Got her to the salon on time, made sure she had enough money for a post-cut lunch downtown, paid the salon in advance on my credit card and left them to it...went off to work.
By chance Yujiro got spotted by Okaasan about 2-3 hours later - as he was working with the bike taxi, she stopped him and asked him where she should have lunch...so he directed her to a restaurant.
I kind of wonder how good she is at making a decision (like where to have lunch) which is OUT of her routine downtown.
Anyway. Hair cut looks great. All trimmed and permed and tidy.
This is the hair salon that a student introduced to us. Obviously the hair stylist mentions this woman every time, as in "Mrs. O came in recently"...and every single time Okaasan comes home and says to me: "and you've just been there Amanda, haven't you?"...I guess she has never met Mrs. O, so the purely verbal information isn't quite sticking. Funny that :-)
So.
Ready for the great Folk Dance class debut on Friday.
I so, so SO hope this class will be a success.
Sunday, 26 September 2010
She's GONE!!!!!
OKaasan has Left the Building.
We are wonderfully, deliciously, estatically HOME ALONE for the first time in almost 2 years!
It's so good.
Last night we sat across the table from eachother (I usually sit next to Yujiro, both of us across from O), and we ate cheese fondue, and drank wine and played pop music. And after eating we sat back and chatted about things. It was so good to just sit and relax, sit and make eye contact with eachother and sit and chat.
We confessed that when O is there we are both trying to get away from the table as soon as possible, she eats slower than us and forgets what she still has in front of her anyway. We both tend to start clearing the table, putting leftovers in fridge boxes, de-tabbing beer cans etc - all displacement activiities so that we don't have to sit and sit and sit there....usually I escape with laundry or cats or fake phone calls to England and Yujiro washes dishes with Okaasan hovering around the kitchen with Japanese-tea-in-the-making-bits.
Dinners with Okaasan are very boring. Family duty.
But last night we relaxed. I didn't eat too much cheese fondue in case my digestion system went into shock, and I drank a small glass of wine.
Normal life ;-)) until Monday afternoon......
Well, as normal as you can be with a 6 cm gash on your tummy....
it kind of limits the running naked round the house and wild sex games.
But late September in Sapporo it's probably best to put on a sensible sweater, some more socks and forget about running naked anyway...
Yujiro got Okaasan off to Tokyo safely.
She somehow managed to pack a a small suitcase, with constant reopening and checking to make sure she had everything. She made piles of clothes all over the room as if going for an expedition, and was constantly asking: Why am I staying in a hotel? Where is Hiroyuki? Where is the wedding?
But apparantly in the past week she had done some preparation for the wedding by taking clothes to the dry cleaners. But...no haircut. She went off to Tokyo looking wild and straggly.
I really think I'll just have to take this haircut topic in hand and book her an appointment somewhere. She seems to have lost the ability to make the decision to do it, make an appointment and go along to it. Of course in her talk on the topic: There IS no good hairsalon in Sapporo. It's only the 5th biggest city in Japan...
Anyway. Off she went. I stood at the door and waved her out. Reclaimed my home. Yujiro took her to the airprt and arranged for the stewardesses to treat Okaasan as an Accompanied Person, so there was less chance of her getting lost.
And then we settled into our Weekend Alone.
I stayed in my pajamas all day. Watched TV, ate chocolate (still at 54 kg!), protected my stitches from the cats with a cushion and drifted.
Yujiro got several phone calls from his brother about Okaasan: yes she arrived in Tokyo, yes she was ok...and then later in the evening: Does she have a coat? We can't find her coat and she doesn't know if she came with a coat!
Ha HA! NOW Older Brother - and other family members - are realizing How Okaasan Is. Realizing What We Do. Finally. Most of them probably haven't actually spent any time with her for about 3 years...so the difference in her mental abilty will be noticable: the constant checking questions, the confusions and the not-quite-connecting-to-it-all.
Yujiro already primed Older Brother that he must make sure Okaasan goes to the toilet regularly and he must control the amount of alcohol she has access to.
We can both imagine how she will be at a day-long wedding party in a strange hotel with crowds of people. It'll be confusing with her. And I fear she will have toilet accidents and lose things. And drink too much. I hope Older Brother and other family members look after her.
NOW they are gonna work for 2 days!
And we are going to relax.
We are wonderfully, deliciously, estatically HOME ALONE for the first time in almost 2 years!
It's so good.
Last night we sat across the table from eachother (I usually sit next to Yujiro, both of us across from O), and we ate cheese fondue, and drank wine and played pop music. And after eating we sat back and chatted about things. It was so good to just sit and relax, sit and make eye contact with eachother and sit and chat.
We confessed that when O is there we are both trying to get away from the table as soon as possible, she eats slower than us and forgets what she still has in front of her anyway. We both tend to start clearing the table, putting leftovers in fridge boxes, de-tabbing beer cans etc - all displacement activiities so that we don't have to sit and sit and sit there....usually I escape with laundry or cats or fake phone calls to England and Yujiro washes dishes with Okaasan hovering around the kitchen with Japanese-tea-in-the-making-bits.
Dinners with Okaasan are very boring. Family duty.
But last night we relaxed. I didn't eat too much cheese fondue in case my digestion system went into shock, and I drank a small glass of wine.
Normal life ;-)) until Monday afternoon......
Well, as normal as you can be with a 6 cm gash on your tummy....
it kind of limits the running naked round the house and wild sex games.
But late September in Sapporo it's probably best to put on a sensible sweater, some more socks and forget about running naked anyway...
Yujiro got Okaasan off to Tokyo safely.
She somehow managed to pack a a small suitcase, with constant reopening and checking to make sure she had everything. She made piles of clothes all over the room as if going for an expedition, and was constantly asking: Why am I staying in a hotel? Where is Hiroyuki? Where is the wedding?
But apparantly in the past week she had done some preparation for the wedding by taking clothes to the dry cleaners. But...no haircut. She went off to Tokyo looking wild and straggly.
I really think I'll just have to take this haircut topic in hand and book her an appointment somewhere. She seems to have lost the ability to make the decision to do it, make an appointment and go along to it. Of course in her talk on the topic: There IS no good hairsalon in Sapporo. It's only the 5th biggest city in Japan...
Anyway. Off she went. I stood at the door and waved her out. Reclaimed my home. Yujiro took her to the airprt and arranged for the stewardesses to treat Okaasan as an Accompanied Person, so there was less chance of her getting lost.
And then we settled into our Weekend Alone.
I stayed in my pajamas all day. Watched TV, ate chocolate (still at 54 kg!), protected my stitches from the cats with a cushion and drifted.
Yujiro got several phone calls from his brother about Okaasan: yes she arrived in Tokyo, yes she was ok...and then later in the evening: Does she have a coat? We can't find her coat and she doesn't know if she came with a coat!
Ha HA! NOW Older Brother - and other family members - are realizing How Okaasan Is. Realizing What We Do. Finally. Most of them probably haven't actually spent any time with her for about 3 years...so the difference in her mental abilty will be noticable: the constant checking questions, the confusions and the not-quite-connecting-to-it-all.
Yujiro already primed Older Brother that he must make sure Okaasan goes to the toilet regularly and he must control the amount of alcohol she has access to.
We can both imagine how she will be at a day-long wedding party in a strange hotel with crowds of people. It'll be confusing with her. And I fear she will have toilet accidents and lose things. And drink too much. I hope Older Brother and other family members look after her.
NOW they are gonna work for 2 days!
And we are going to relax.
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