A Visit to Oma’s Care Home

Mom laid out her home decorating plans: first, a white lace curtain that would hang in between the two machine gun grey ones that were already there, preferably one with windmills and tulips embroidered on it; then a down comforter with an animal print on it for Oma’s bed, and a comfy chair for the corner. All I saw was no T.V. “No T.V.! What kinda ghetto place is this?” “Yah, you have to bring your own, if you want to watch T.V.,” Mom explained. I couldn’t imagine a life without a T.V. “I don’t need a T.V.,” Oma assured me. “I’ll give you my T.V.,” I insisted. “I don’t even watch T.V.” “What do you mean, you don’t watch T.V.?” I was sure Oma secretly wanted a T.V., but didn’t want us going to any fuss over it. I remembered Oma visiting us, and Mom asking her what she wanted for lunch, and Oma telling her it didn’t matter, she would have whatever Mom wanted to have. I would never leave it up to Mom to choose my lunch; one time she gave me a spaghetti sandwich.

“Time to take your pills Anne,” a nurse with a huge smile and teeth so perfect they were probably false, said to Oma. She put a tray with two small paper containers, like the ones they let you test frozen yogurt in, and a plastic cup of apple juice on Oma’s portable table. “What is that stuff?” I asked Mom. “It’s applesauce mixed with crunched up pills. Oma has trouble swallowing pills whole.” The color from the bits of pills popped out of the applesauce making it look like something that came out of a dog’s mouth, but I knew Oma had no choice, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Here, I can do that Juliett,” Mom said to the nurse. I found it strange, Mom feeding her Mom. It was like they were changing places in life. I tried fast-forwarding thirty years: me feeding Mom, and then another fifty years, my own kids feeding me. I had to stop there; everything was getting too weird, even for me. Mom squeezed the applesauce concoction onto a teaspoon and carefully guided it into Oma’s mouth. It was a bit tricky feeding Oma, because she shook. Her head wasn’t so bad, but sometimes her hands would wave up and down two to three inches, so you had to pick and choose your moments.

I wasn’t sure what to make of Mom and Oma: either Mom was copy-catting Oma, or Oma was copy-catting Mom. The main thing is they both had their mouth open and closed at the same time. The only thing I didn’t see Mom do was swallow. I would’ve taken a video of it to show them how funny they looked, but then I figured out it wasn’t that funny.

Oma also needed a shot every day, sometimes twice a day. She had diabetes and needed insulin to control her blood sugar level. I remember our doctor telling me to close my eyes and count to ten when he gave me a shot. Up until then Mom had to hold me tight in her lap and hope for the best. Mom took me out for lunch that day, because it was a big deal. That would be my worst nightmare, having a shot every day.

There was so much going on with Oma’s medicine that neither Oma nor Mom noticed somebody new entered the room. I don’t know if Oma had a blind spot, or she just didn’t want to, but it took her way too long to introduce us to Mabel. “Oh, Hi,” Oma said, glancing out the window. “Mabel is my roommate.” Mom went first, then I said Hi, but the funny thing was, Mabel, she didn’t say anything. “She doesn’t talk,” Oma explained. I tried to imagine having a room mate who didn’t talk. Then I realized people do it all the time: Mom jabbers on to Dad, and all he does is nod his head and scroll down on his phone, or Dad lectures me about trying hard at school and all I do is nod my head.

Oma and Mom didn’t seem to have any problem carrying on with Mabel there. It was as if Mabel wasn’t there. Which I would’ve done too, except I made contact with Mabel’s eyes: Mabel had small steely grey eyes that went through you like a bullet. It was like she knew I got in trouble at school on Friday for stomping on the juice box that exploded all over Lauren’s backpack, even before Mom found out. Mabel held a small paper flower in her hand. It looked like she’d cut it out and creased it herself to form a daisy. As she watched us, Mabel’s index finger and thumb were busy going up and down the creases of her daisy.

Mabel’s flower made me think of the fidget spinner I brought along just in case things got boring. I don’t know it you’ve ever used a fidget spinner before, but it’s kinda something you do, while you’re supposed to be doing something else, like your homework. It’s not the main event. I’m not gonna lie, I was having trouble figuring out what else to look at or do while I was spinning. I was afraid to look at Mabel again, in case she found out something else about me. Mom and Oma were too busy talking about the good old days on the farm to see what was going on.

“Lunch time,” Juliett announced, popping only her head into the room. “Thank you,” I blurted out. “I’ll push,” I said, wheeling Oma out before Mom even had a chance to grab her purse. I was glad to get out from under the microscope. I knew Oma could get around on her own, but I liked pushing her in her wheelchair. It gave me something to do other than walk beside her and think about what to say next.

Oma’s room was at the end of a long hallway. When we got to her doorway I turned left first. I’m not sure why; I guess I had Mom’s rule in my head, “Always look both ways before you cross the street.” There were some big doors, the type with the bar you pull down to open, and a bright red Exit sign at the top. Facing the door, sitting in a wheelchair was a lady. It was like she was waiting for someone to come through those doors and take her away, or maybe she was just staring at the door. I asked Mom if we should tell her the Way Out was down the hall, but Mom told me not to worry, and that one of the nurses would help her.

Oma waved to nearly every resident we passed by. I got the feeling it wasn’t often a resident would get two visitors, and one of the visitors was a young person like me. We almost made it to the nursing station, when one of the residents, a lady who looked too young to be there, came up to us with a broad grin and said to me, “I know you, you’re my grandson’s friend. Have you seen Geoffrey lately? Tell him to come and visit me, will you. I’m his Auntie Shirley.” “Sure,” I replied, and there she went.

I’d never seen so many people in wheelchairs before. It was like a parade. One after the other they came into the lunchroom, some managing on their own by using their arms, and others using their feet to propel their wheelchairs. Some came in wheelchairs that were half bed, half chair; they needed a nurse to push them in. Everyone seemed to have a spot. Oma’s was by the window. I wondered how she lucked out two times in a row. I asked Oma if she had connections, but she had no idea what I was talking about.

Each resident had a placemat and on top of each placemat was a baby blue terrycloth bib. At first I thought the bibs were napkins that looked a bit weird, but I was wrong. They were the same bib a baby would wear. It was as if someone said, “Go,” because all of the residents seemed to pick up their bibs at the same time and pull them over their heads. I glanced at each of the ladies at Oma’s table, and tried to imagine what they looked like as infants, maybe even wearing the same bib they had on now. It would’ve made a funny comic strip, only it was my grandmother, and eventually it would be my mother, and ultimately me. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for what they called in my Science book, “The Circle of Life.” It all seemed good when we were talking about mosquitos and fish, and I wanted to leave it at that.

Three or four ladies with hair nets were coming out of the kitchen pushing trolleys loaded up with trays of food. The three other ladies at Oma’s table were having what looked like a turkey dinner, but instead of turkey, sausages. Oma’s plate was different: instead of separate little piles of food, she had one gigantic mound of mush. As bad as it looked, I actually would’ve preferred hers to the wannabe turkey dinners. Mom always said I ate like a farmer. Oma’s dessert was different too: instead of mouth-watering apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream melting all over it, she had butterscotch pudding. It reminded me of Charlie, the kid in my grade two class who had a serious peanut allergy. His Mom didn’t want to take any chances, so every time we had a special event Charlie brought his own special cake. None of us knew what kind of cake it was, but one thing we were sure of, if we had a contest to see whose cake tasted the best, Charlie’s would come in dead last.

Oma seemed to be rushing through her lunch. My guess was she didn’t want to make us wait. While the other ladies were talking amongst each other and once-in-a-while taking a bite of food, Oma was shoveling food into her mouth one spoonful after the other; only coming up for air to answer a question that someone asked her. I noticed Oma’s spoon and fork looked different from everybody else’s: hers were big, heavy and coated in plastic. Her cup was a different shape too: short and fat rather than tall and skinny. I was surprised Oma didn’t need any help drinking. She managed to take a sip from her cup without ever lifting it off the table: all she did was lower her head to the cup and tip it into her mouth. I wondered if that action was genetic, because I remembered doing it myself when I was either too sick or too lazy to pick up my cup.

It was while Oma was eating her pudding that I realized my fidget spinner was not in my pocket. I must’ve left it in Oma’s room, I thought. Oma didn’t waste any time saying Good-bye to her friends: as soon as she finished eating, she pulled the bib over her head, and backed her wheelchair away from the table. We made our way down the long hallway to Oma’s room. The whole way down I was watching the lady at the end of the hall who was still sitting in front of the door waiting for it to open. She had her back to us, so I never did see her face, but her hair was white and it looked like it hadn’t been washed for a month. Mom asked one of the nurses about the lady in front of the Exit door, and she said, “Don’t worry about her; she’s waiting for her son to arrive.” “When is he coming?” Mom asked. “I think Sunday,” the nurse answered, and this was Friday. It seemed weird to me: if that was a kid sitting in front of the Exit door at school for hours and hours, the whole school would know about it. But here, at the Care Home, it was like, “Yah, so.”

I scanned Oma’s room as soon as I walked in the door, but no fidget spinner. I walked over to Oma’s nightstand, where I thought I left, to get a closer look, and found not my fidget spinner, but Mabel’s paper daisy.

I knew if I told Mom she would alert the nurses and they would track down Mabel and make her give me back my fidget spinner. I picked up the daisy Mabel left for me, and put it in my shirt pocket. I could see Mabel now, sitting in some chair, twirling my fidget spinner in her hand, as she watched the world go by. In the meantime, I took Mabel’s daisy home with me and put it in the back of my desk drawer. I think about Mabel and her bullet eyes that said more than most people could talk, every time I pull my drawer out all the way and see her gift to me.

by Coleman