MountainMornings

The Great Grandparents are snug in the Florida Keys, entertaining their friends and exploring new territory. The rest is us, otoh, are either getting or recovering from some illness.

Luckily, the Love Bug and her baby brother were vaccinated for measles. It seems that this rotten disease is making a comeback primarily because of parents who believe vaccines are a bad thing. Science trumps rumor and speculation every time. It’s one thing to think your child should not be vaccinated, but quite another to put the rest of the population at risk.

Adults who were born in the 70s and 80s may not have had a measles booster, sooo beware of kids with red morbilliform rashes (the Bride taught me that word). Ms Bug has some patches of red from the sun, and unfortunately a fever with a barking, seal-like cough.

She must have inherited Bob’s lovely lungs! Yes, the Bride had croup as a baby; now she’s sitting in the shower at night with her baby girl.

Who rallied today to see Hugh and Buffett, the brothers manatee! Our first overcast day, so we all landed at the Aquarium! My fav was a calico crab and the Bug loved watching a dolphin named Moonshine. It was a perfect morning.

And about the mumps – well that has to do with medical school and the Groom. And that’s a whole other story I’ll save for later. For now we’ll head over to the ice cream store for a snack.

Florida is starting to grow on me!

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I’m in transit again. And I spent one hour on a plane sitting next to a woman with Alzheimer’s recently. How did I know?

She kept repeating over and over again to anyone listening “This is the first time I’ve flown alone.” She’d been a widow for “…seven or eight years.” At first I thought she was a nervous flyer.

She was fooling around with the seat belt, trying to connect the wrong parts. So I fastened it for her. Then I thought oh, she must have cataracts. This is how it starts I guess, we make excuses for our loved ones as they age, we make accommodations.

Then she told me her children worry about her. What else is new? I know that day is coming, when the tables will turn and the Bride and the Rocker will wonder if I’m OK, did I lose my car again in a parking lot? Am I trying to dial the microwave like it’s a phone?

But then she wanted to know if I was going to Atlanta too. That whole plane was going to Atlanta, so the light bulb went off in my head. Aha, so this is what it’s like.

A friend of mine in MA tried to explain it to me when her mother developed Alzheimer’s. She forgot how to get into her bed. That night I made a mental note, this is how you do it, and I willed my mind to remember. Because it was part of my muscle memory, my head just didn’t compute those movements.

My seat mate on Delta told me her son had arranged to have someone meet her at the gate in Atlanta so she could make her connection to visit her daughter in Jackson, MS. As she was talking, her hands were trying to catch the dust bunnies in the air.

And she’s been losing weight, the doctors did all the tests and they couldn’t figure it out. I thought to myself, I know why. She forgets to eat!

It occurred to me then, Ada would never forget to eat. We sometimes can’t find our keys, and maybe my reading glasses might end up in the kitchen. But I’m making a pact with Ada, we’ll remind each other to eat.

I didn’t read “Still Alice.” But I’d like to see the movie. Julianne Moore inhabits this dreadful disease, this incremental loss of ourselves. I know the Flapper didn’t develop dementia, and it’s not in my family.

Still, how does one know when it’s no longer you?

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My first day in FL the fire alarms started screeching. This was a test, only a test; still it was tortuous. Why? Because it lasted for an hour and a half and you never knew when the red lights would start flashing and that sound, that high-pitched-fox-dying noise that would wake the hard-of-hearing elderly population in FL would start. Every three minutes or every two, sometimes five minutes.

And so we escaped our cute condo on the beach to drive inland in search of the VA. Not Virginia, the Veteran’s Hospital. Grandpa Hudson had some major feedback happening in his hearing aids, the problem was of course that he couldn’t hear it. But when Grandma Ada said she didn’t hear anything, I was ferklempt.

Could the terrible fire alarms have left a ringing in MY ears. Was I going messhuga?

Luckily the lower pitched noise I was hearing stopped after Hudson’s appointment at the audiology clinic!

This chilly 65 degree morning, Ada and I were talking over coffee on the terrace. We talked about Hasidim since I’m reading the book “The Marrying of Chani Kaufman” by Eve Harris. We talked about her social calendar, which was booking up rapidly. And we talked about life in general, what makes us get up in the morning.

Then the leaf blowers started up, the garbage truck arrived, and some guy with a generator was gearing up to power wash the windows. We packed it in, we couldn’t think, let alone talk with all the noise.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the weather down here, also I’m feeling young among all the snow birds. But the noise and the cleanliness could kill you. ps. It’s supposed to get down into the 30s tonight, just so ya know.

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