Polished Off

The problems of aging are many and one is the problem of perception. Things are not always viewed with flexibility and adaptation, but are structured by the past.

I usually just wear clear fingernail polish. This is one step above the example set by my mother who never wore polish. Last week, I took off my old polish and then neglected to replace it. On the way to Busybody’s I looked down and observed my hands and thought, “Oh, well. No one will notice.” We had been there about twenty minutes when Joy came over and whispered, “Gigi, if we get through in time this afternoon, I will polish your nails for you.” Good. A four year old noticed. Either she has much more time in her schedule, is more perceptive OR every adult I have encountered has noticed but been too polite to comment.

When my Mom was just entering the shadows of Alzheimer’s, but still able to walk around and attempt some limited tasks, she needed a full-time caregiver but resisted much of the help offered her. Through the week, I would pop in and out to check on her (and the caregiver) and deliver stuff, but Sundays were our days together. I would do many of the things that she refused to have the caregiver perform. Her nails seemed to always need care. I couldn’t stand that little –sometimes-bigger—line of grime that she wouldn’t submit to letting the caregiver remove. On Sunday afternoons, we would sit with a pan of warm, sudsy water on one our laps and chitchat until her nails were Mom clean again. Even from me, however, she balked at any attempt at manicuring, and it was a real challenge to keep her looking cared for.

One Sunday, I thought it would be fun, because the quest of life is for the good, the true, the beautiful and the fun, to take Mom out for a real manicure. She was always mistrustful of leaving the house because I might be tricking her into doing something she had specifically instructed me not to do, but then again, we might be going out for ice cream or pie or boxed candy (from a candy store) and so she went with me, but made it as difficult as possible. At least, I thought it was as difficult as possible until we reached the nail salon, and then I encountered what as difficult as possible really was.

She didn’t want to extend her hands to the manicurist but would turn towards me and grab my dress with both hands and, being far too ladylike to raise her voice, would entreat me with the most pathetic of looks to pleeeaaassseee, get her out of there. The manicurist had to firmly hold one hand while I held the other while she took off a snippet of nail. Mom then forgot being a lady and yelled, “ouch, ouch, ouch.” “Did you feel that?” “Well, no, but I thought I was going to”, she explained to me—the manicurist was either invisible to her or so far beneath her contempt that she would not talk to her. “Well, just wait until you do feel it, please don’t yell about “going to’”, I requested. My request went unheeded. As the snippets came off the second hand (it had to be snippets because Mom was jerking her hands so spasmodically, that the poor girl was afraid to do more) I said, “ Just dry her hands and slap on one coat of polish, we’re leaving” with a glare at the misbehaving mother. As I outrageously tipped the frazzled manicurist, Mom found her inside stage whisper and instructed me, “Don’t give her money for trying to hurt me.” The door had barely shut behind us when she burst out crying with huge crocodile tears running down her cheeks. I was truly fearful that someone would make a 9-1-1 call for elderly abuse while I was trying to get her back into the car.

I clicked her seatbelt with finality thinking I might leave her in for there for the rest of my Sunday visit, tried to cool off as I went around the car and got into my seat and turned to her and said, “What was that all about?” She was too absorbed with her sobbing to tell me. Her little, stooped shoulders heaved with the utter sorrow of her plight and I was helpless to be with her in it or to remove her from the immediacy of the situation. I had cooled down: There was ice around my heart and my hands were ice. THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN!

Finally, she said, “I don’t want to die this soon.” I tried to keep my voice normal, “Why do you think you are going to die soon?” She said, “Well, aren’t you trying to make my hands look nice for when they’re folded?” Ohhhhhhhh, I exhaled that as an eight-syllable word. All her opposition to basic hygiene had really been, to her, her fight for life.

Last week, we didn’t finish playing restaurant, or school or talent show in time for Joy to polish my fingernails, but tomorrow when I get there, we are going to spend a blissful few minutes letting her tend to me while I can still refrain from grimacing, grabbing and downright yelling. I may, however, sneak into the bathroom and remove the polish that goes onto other areas than my nails. Grandmas, you know what I’m talkin’ about!


Posted by The Editor for Gigi.

Armpits, the windows to your body, or something like that

I have a confession. I haven't used deodorant in over two years. Why, you might wonder, or maybe you are clicking away right now...? Or maybe you can't click away now, so read on... Actually, after Samantha was born, I got on a natural kick to eliminate chemicals from our house. Have you ever tried to do this? Some Google internet research indicated personal care products are some of the worst offenders to our endocrine systems. I worry, a lot. About my health, my husband's health, my children's health and all the toxins and contamination in our food sources. So usually, I just do the best I can--buy organic when it's available, minimize junk food, take vitamins, and exercise and rest.

But, about two years ago, I eliminated shampoo and deodorant. Have you heard of no-poo? Check out this popular post. It worked well, I just haven't converted the rest of the house, yet.

As for the deo, I cringe when I think of the years and years and gobs and gobs of the commercial stuff applied usually on freshly-shaved armpits. Busy Body and I were both on spirit squads in high school and one of the many mortifying things that could happen to us in our sweater uniforms was to stink like B.O. So we kept our lady speed stick baby powder scented deodorant: in the glove compartment and slathered away at will...there is aluminum in it, you know. And, they say, aluminum has been linked to Alzheimer's and I really don't want to go there, ever.

So, I switched to something else, applied sparingly, and never after shaving.
It is (embarrassingly) called "Stinky No More" and is available here. It works pretty good, even in the worst of the Southeast Texas summers with high humidity. Interestingly enough, it works better when I don't consume too much sugar. On weeks where I drink a lot of sugary sodas or eat lots of desserts, it doesn't work so good (translation: big stink). But, your underarm glands are there for a reason--to eliminate things your body doesn't need. So, it really isn't a bad thing after all, just a signal to me to curtail the sugar and then I smell sweet again. And now, you've probably read more than you ever care to about my 'pits, but if you're still reading, give your own 'pits some thought, if you haven't already.

Posted by The Editor.

A late postscript: Which 7 cities have the worst B.O.? Find out here.

The Grandma Chronicles

Grandma is Gigi's mother, The Editor's & Busy Body's maternal grandmother. Gigi lived within 10 miles of her house her whole life, except when she went off to college for a few years.

I miss her all the time. Not in a crying, sentimental way; but in the way you miss something you never thought you’d have to learn to live without. On holidays, I miss her most: This is one story about her at this Christmas season.

My mom was a high-maintenance person. I don’t know if she planned to demand so much of my time and attention or if it just happened that way. She had a soft voice with a touch of the south in her speech and she cajoled more than demanded. And so it was that I was at her house one afternoon to take her somewhere to do something. She had combed her hair, but it wasn’t smoothed down in the back. I was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, willing her to hurry up, and realized she was only combing what she could see in the mirror. She hadn’t turned on the light and it aggravated me that she wasn’t ready to go and it was probably her fault because she couldn’t see what she was doing. I took the comb from her and started to comb the places she had missed.

She was given to saying things that were out of context and made sense only after I searched through my memory bank to figure out what she was saying. She came up with one of those phrases, “Honey, don’t forget me.” Oh, forevermore. I am here. I am ready to do what you need to do, want to do, have a whim to do. Please don’t guilt trip me with some of that mother talk. And so I said something impatient like, Don’t be silly. How could I forget you, you’re my mother.

The semi-darkness of the bathroom was a symbol that I didn’t recognize or chose to ignore: A sign of the darkness that was about to overtake her life, and also, mine. All the signs were there, I guess I wanted to ignore them. I would rather have been impatient and aggravated than have to come to the realization of what was happening. Now, in retrospect, I think she knew. I don’t think she meant that I shouldn’t forget her, but that she didn’t want to forget me; although that’s exactly what happened.

I wish I had said something profound to her that day, something that would have conveyed to her the depth of my feelings for her. I wish I had hugged her and said, “Oh, mom, you are unforgettable.”

Although we eventually had to have a full-time caregiver for her, she still needed more time and attention than we could provide, and someone told me about a day care at the senior center. They would send a van to pick her up and bring her home. There were activities and special entertainments and outings and a hot lunch. It sounded ideal to me: She didn’t want to go. It turned into a battle of determined wills.

Her favorite admonition to me all my life was to be a lady.
When I was in my forties, she even decoupaged the above plaque for me about the value of being ladylike. She was sincere in her role modeling and so I sincerely tried to meet her expectations.

She remained lucid in whatever subject she wanted to be lucid in, and she reminded me –often—that she had never gone out looking tacky and I better not do that to her now. She had always worn skirts and when she went out somewhere she wore “stockings”. But trying to put panty hose on a flailing, resisting mother as she stiffened her legs and rotated her ankles was impossibility. Trying to get her out of the house “bare-legged” was more impossible. I had an aversion to knee-highs because they were unbecoming, certainly not ladylike, with skirts.

Victoria’s Secret had beautiful thigh-highs with lacy, filmy tops. Their target market was not to those in their eighties, but I thought they might work. She loved them. She valued them. She wanted to wear them. So every day she was dressed up in the dresses she had been saving for “special occasions”, her long string of faux pearls were wrapped around her neck and her thigh highs were smoothed and a beautiful pair of slippers put on the feet that had become so twisted that hard shoes no longer fit, and she was off for the senior center where, because of the way she insisted she be dressed or the imperiousness with which she bossed everyone around, they called her the Duchess--and she never corrected them.

We each had won our battle or so I thought.

Until one morning, when the caregiver was given some time off and I was “on duty”, she decided it was payback time for some of my early years shenanigans—at least I think that’s why she acted so willfully. I couldn’t please her with anything, and then she informed me (selective lucidity) that she could dress herself. I laid her clothes on the bed and said, fine, I will go and have the cup of coffee that I missed while I was trying to help you. I clicked the bedroom door shut (knowing that no matter what her mental or physical state, I would not get away with slamming it) and waited a sufficient amount of time to prove my point—that she needed me.

Opening the bedroom door, I gasped. Mom, my mom, had managed to put on those thigh highs perfectly: The thigh highs and nothing else. In her diaper and thigh highs, she was the embodiment of justified indignation. I said the first thing that popped into my head, you cannot go to school looking like that, it isn’t ladylike, (a direct quote from her to me on countless numbers of my school mornings.)

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I was struck by their ridiculousness. I started to laugh and the laughter built and built. She sat down on the side of the bed with her arms crossed and defiantly tried to stare me down. I laughed louder. I sat down beside her and put my arm around her and we rocked from side to side, but I was the only one laughing.

Alzheimer’s doesn’t have a sense of humor—at least, not to the one suffering its terrorist take-over. "Oh, mom, you are so unforgettable."

Posted by The Editor for Gigi