introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- all my friends are delightfully mad waiting for the kitchen - twenty seventh of march, "don't worry 'bout me baby, i'll wear the thorny crown."~jude its week two of this strange new grind. it all has its good days and bad days. not a day goes by when i enter that yellow door into the kitchen of the nursing care center that i don't think of my aunt's seemingly sage advice that, perhaps, was only meant to keep my spirits lifted when, by some chance, i found myself discouraged and failing. but i'm not failing. and i suppose i'd like to think that maybe...just perhaps i am one of the special ones that can cut work in this atmosphere. i mean...its not like i'm a certified nurses assistant, here, folks. its just cooking. actually. its even less than that. its just doing dishes and running huge stainless steel meal carts through an ever-changing maze of my community's aged and, in many cases, dying....through narrow salmon and flower wallpapered hallways to various wings of the structure. its sorting pink mugs from teal ones and grey ones. its pouring mass quantities of steaming hot coffee. its thickening a few to pudding consistency. its...neccessary. its....fufilling, if not selfishly that. i come home exhausted. i go to bed before the eleven o'clock news. i wake with the light at seven or eight. and, after just a week or so, i have made a few aged friends that i look forward to seeing every morning. there is john. he is in a wheelchair and is losing most of his memory. he waits for me at the hallway door and greets me when i bring the morning snacks. i ask him how he's feeling. he calls me sweetie. he invited me camping with him. he said it wouldn't cost a thing. i want to get him some books with pictures of the woods. or maybe bring him some pictures if i go camping this summer. he was sick yesterday and i didn't see him too much. he was out in his chair at the nurses station this morning, asleep. he needs to get better because i need for him to be there. i need to feel welcome. there is rose. she is a bigger woman and somewhat infamous. she has been known to be culprit to sneaking juices and ginger ales from the drink carts and so, i have to take the drink carts for her wing out a little later. but she's nice and when she wheels to the back hallway and asks for the ginger ale, i love getting one for her. there's lillian. she's one of the only ones that i've actually seen walking about on her own. she wears these flowered house dresses like my great-grandmother wore when i was really little. she reminds me a lot of my grandmother. she seems to be in the middle stages of losing her memory and orientation with the world....but she knows when there is too much white flour in her biscuits and if the sauce on her salisbury steak is any good. and i like her. i like her because she doesn't put up with any shit. when she has been cheated out of a packet of sugar with her coffee, she knows it and she comes looking. now that i know that she is allowed one, i like to get it for her. because i like to ask lillian how she is. and ask her how her food tastes. because it matters to me. i have befriended quite a few other women whose names i have not yet learned. they all seem to be in some stage of mental impairment but i can see a little bit of wonder in those sometimes glassy eyes of theirs. they all have blue eyes. and i love them. when i first started a week ago, i clung to the kitchen workers...but i'm not doing that now. in fact, i'm distancing myself from that a bit, i think. there is so much gossip and yelling and all i want to do is do my work and see my old friends....because they make my day a lot easier. happier. worthwhile. what is bothering me, though, is the ominous worry that they won't be there forever. i hate how a certain table of elite women look at my friends and stare and make fun of them and say horrible things to them. they are some lucky older women with families that come to see them regularly. i hate how my ladies dim and sometimes cry because they don't know where they are and they're scared or, as one of them sometimes says, is worried that they will miss the boat. i am scared that they will die and i won't get a chance to know anything more of them than smiles and hellos and the high-fives that have become a daily custom in the late afternoons. i regret not knowing my own families old better...not asking more questions....not reading journals. i like my job. i like my old people. yeah, i'm tired as hell these days, but i'm getting adjusted. i've got this full feeling that swells up inside of me every morning when i see them. and that makes all the difference for me. and i guess thats just all that matters. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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