Hygiene -Sad Scent

Lost between two women, somewhere in the shopping day, it was time to stop by my friends parents house and say hello.
If a candy bar wrapper has special messages inside for you, ‘to escape your world’ after reading them and eating the chocolate, this was the time to test it out.
It is to assume the purpose of ‘escaping your world’ so that one can see and assess themselves better by stepping out of the norm. With some intent to reflect back on the qualities left behind. As if those qualities could be changed somehow upon the return.
What if no amount of candy wrappers changed the individuals repose? All the wise words packaged to make things pretty and perfect that just didn’t work were piled up in one place to rot.
Hard words for hard thoughts, and a great deal of embarrassment for my friend whose parents couldn’t seem to clean their home. The pungent lingering of the usual kitchen trash turned ripe would be a phase in the day of any homemaker living in a warm climate. Which this was – a warm summer day, with an air conditioned house that just plain reeked of the very, very bad stuff of life.
Nancy had told me, that she had tried to get a housekeeper in for her mother. But her mother wouldn’t have a stranger in her home. So adamant were her parents about not hiring a cleaning woman, that Nancy saw her comments to clean up the living space much like a teenagers revenge.
“You tell me to clean up. So I am gonna leave it a mess.”
Yet, that was far from the case. Her mother had the burden of seriously over-weight self, and more alone with her husband, a recovering triple by-pass patient newly returned home from hospital.
Mother is the caregiver, round the clock, with no car, dependant on her gay son and his partner living a mile away for transportation. Nancy tells me that the reverse mortgage was being spent before the bi-pass surgery at the Casino, gambling. The van from the Casino picks them up, takes them to the casino for as long as they like and then drops them off at the door to this home.
Nancy looks at me in disgust, “Hey, mom! We’re leaving.” And escorts me out the door towards the car.
It’s a thing, the sad scent, no one speaks of when it’s their own parents to any stranger. Yet in the company of the oldest of friends no topic is off limits. Who else will hear each other out about our thoughts and feelings on the subject of ‘house-a-tosis’.
“What are we gonna be like when we get old?” she warped the words with melancholy memories of when this wasn’t the way it is. “They need to be in assisted living.”
“What got you this time?” I asked with an open deck and a few of the cards to listen to the distressed adult-child in the game of ‘Go Fish’.
It’s the self-respect, the environment not of the planet, or the world, or the country or the state, or even this urban city they live in. It’s their own environment, that was tragically upsetting Nancy.
Topics rolled out her mouth, as licensed beautician, she knows the rules of proper sanitation. She knew chemicals and stench. She knew rot. She lived on her own ranch. And it wasn’t pretty to hear her speak of how much, how long and how helpless she felt about the stench.

“It’s somewhere in the rot of just plain trash and urine.” She paused to know, “and my brother won’t help her take out the trash, but she could take out the trash. It’s the urine, I can’t understand how they live with that stench of urine. It like a foreign language of scent. They could fix it, but I don’t’ think they can smell it. They are living in it all day and all night, and can’t even smell it now.”
Exasperated and demanding, “Clean it up, wash it out, and she won’t and he won’t care to tell her to clean him up, wash the clothes right away. No the pissy laundry sits in the hamper to reek. I would put gloves on to touch any of their clothes to put them in the wash. I would. I would have to put on plastic gloves and an apron just to move them from where they are to the wash. And you know, they would still have a stink in them after they were even dried. I would just bag them and throw them out. It was never like this before. It only got worse since he came home from the hospital and she’s caretaking him all day and night with no rest for herself. And now she stinks, too! I can’t do anything about it. I spoken to her about getting in some help, but it has gone too far. They just can’t be in that house by themselves. I won’t go back there for another few months. Even if I took them out of the house, they would smell. I just can’t see them. I’ll call her once a week on the phone, but I just can not go there again. And my brother, he won’t help, he and his partner can’t do anything. Or won’t do anything. They need to be in assisted living, and no one will listen to me.”
The statement inside the candy wrapper most definitely wasn’t working now. ‘Escape your world’ the given command of advertising and the images we should seek. As the daughter, the child who couldn’t bring themselves to recover from this worsening condition of their parents accepted living condition. Turning to authorities wouldn’t hurt, but right now it wasn’t going to help Nancy cope with helplessness. Turning away for this moment was coping. Turning on the acknowledgment of her own helplessness to help them created a burden, a tinged photograph to a clear life of her own. A chip on lense, a scratch on the mirror that couldn’t be rubbed out.

Shoes - Snow Shoes

Somewhere in the 40’s, 50’s, or early sixties, there was a mom who got divorced with children. We, maybe you or me is the product that former union, with a single mother as head of the household – which was not socially acceptable. The mom had one of two professions; nurse or teacher. The mom worked full-time, and the kids ran wild. There was trouble to be had in those days and single moms were taken to task for it. The mom had enough or not enough money to feed, clothe, and heat the house. Usually it was less money, and if there was money, the mom bought her kids stuff like bikes, skateboards and more skis, with poles, warm clothes, and boots.
The mom just didn’t manage to get the new furnace, the new stove, the kitchen sink she needed and wanted in her home. It never came to pass. Now that the mom’s retirement kicked in along with social security, the mom still has the same house, now paid for in full. The stove was replaced but not the water heater, or the TV which was still on rabbit ears antennae, the floor furnace is original, and the fireplace seemed to work quite well, accept for the ash toting routing. Energy star appliances escaped the radar in this house.
The twenty-first century common luxuries such as cable TV, forced air heat, a non-leaking roof, dead bolt locks, a double well kitchen sink and tile over linoleum floors never seemed to have reached this mom’s house.
Still, on a winters day, this mom is splitting wood in the back yard for the fireplace. Same boots as twenty-five years ago, since they never seem to wear out. The wood basket is slightly worse for wear, but it will do these days. And no one ever got this mom an answering machine with a ring loud enough for her to hear, or buttons large enough for dialing the telephone that she could see. So she rarely answered the telephone, rarely put on the other pair of glasses for dialing the telephone numbers to her adult children, and just re-adjusted the rabbit ears to watch the world events on the five p.m. news not CNN or MSNBC.
When the kids came to visit in their new cars with all the bells and whistles. Making calls back to their homes on their cell phones. Taking notes on their PDA’s or connected their laptops in bakery coffee shop down the street did they ever think to speak to their mother about cable TV, a dishwasher, let alone central heat or air.
One day on a visit, they missed their cable news program. And they really put up a stink about it, that their mom didn’t have it. And so the story goes, the mom put up a fight for a moment and then told them, you buy it for me, and then I’ll have it.
By the next Christmas visit, there was cable TV, cordless telephones in three rooms, a new furnace, and not one of adult children had a newer car than before. The mom even got a new washer-dryer and very nice pair of winter boots.
I guess, all you have to do, is inconvenience them and they wake up.