Making a list and falling down twice

The weekend my column about fear of falling appeared in the East edition of the Dallas Morning News, my dad fell twice in three days. I spent last night compiling and annotating a list of my father's falls and other incidents over the past two years. Very sad to see the evidence of an average one fall per month, even though most injuries were minor.

The weekend ahead will be difficult as my siblings and I meet with Dad to convince him the time for assisted living has arrived. Dad is frail, depressed, cantankerous, and penny-pinching. He's also a sentimental fool and very funny storyteller. I'm calling up all my memories of that outstanding, ethical, hilarious, inspiring character to form my arguments for assisted living.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Stir fry, bright eye

Dad picked up his new eyeglasses today. He hasn't been comfortable reading for way too long, despite his cataract surgeries last spring. The eye doctor told him it might take two weeks to adjust to the prescription.

I'm so excited that Dad read the stir fry basics from the Lincoln Journal Star Food section to me over the phone. The information was interesting to him and perhaps useful to me. Best of all, he was enjoying reading again!


© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Rolling cookie dough before dawn

First time I ever set my alarm for 5:45 so I could bake cookies, but it worked. The kitchen was cold, except for the preheating oven. The dough rolled easily without getting sticky.

Dad has requested cut-out sugar cookies like his mother used to make. He wants them thin and brown, the way we both prefer.

I'd hoped to make cookies for Dad when I was in Lincoln over Thanksgiving. Even if I had found Mom's cookie cutters, I could hear her warning the kitchen was too warm to roll cookies.

In December Mom would also be frustrated when the kitchen was too cold to bake houska or cardamon braid, our traditional Christmas breads. The yeast needs a warm winter day to rise -- a steamed kitchen.

Found my cookie cutter collection odd. The butterfly, hearts, squirrel, and roller skate cutters went for clay art projects long ago. The bell and other Christmas forms must have gotten too rusty.

Dad will be getting a package with a few reindeer, helicopters, brontosaurus, and one ghost (of Christmas past). There will be boots and pine trees, and several states of Texas. And there will be lots and lots of owl cookies. He should just pretend they are arctic snowy owls.

My grandma would arrive for the holiday on the Greyhound bus. She would climb down carrying two cardboard shirt boxes tied with string. One would be full of sugar cookies. The other would hold prune and apricot kolaches. I hope my little mailed tub of cookies gives Dad some taste memories.

Packing tape

I'm hearing a continuous loop of my mom enumerating her instructions for trip preparation. Fritzi seems quite nearby this week. The little gray-green bird has been in the playground shade tree at recess. A pair of hawks sat on the utility pole today. A slate gray junco has been calling attention to itself at my patio feeder. The birds all want to know the next plan for my dad.

Dad is still calling most of his own shots, but he's getting frail. We have to discuss options for assisted living this holiday visit.

Fritzi would have things more planned and organized. She would have a clear solution to Dad's living arrangements. There would be no doubt as to her opinion, but the birds just suggest she's on the premises while I must try to find my own preferences and negotiate an arrangement.

Thanks to new airline restrictions on baggage, I'm breaking Fritzi's first rule of travel:

Always, ALWAYS, take a spare pair of shoes.

Some of Mom's other travel rules follow.

Rule #2:

Have "a little something" in your purse in case you get too hungry. Fritzi's "little something" was usually a butterscotch candy or lemon drop.

Rule #3:

Take salty snacks in case you get queasy. Fritzi never traveled without saltines, Fritos, or pretzels.

Rule #4:

Cover the toilet seat with bathroom tissue before you sit down!

Rule #5:

Loading the car trunk is an an art form best not left to mere mortals.

Food pyramid topples in Red Willow County

A good story by Prairie Bluestem about her Grandma Violet cooking for farmhands in Gordon, Nebraska, unleashed a vivid childhood memory. My grandmother also cooked for farmhands when my mom was a little girl down by Marion, Nebraska. As far as I know, my mom kept her clothes on, although Genevieve's mom thought clothes should be optional in the hot kitchen.

I always found it difficult to reconcile the grandmother I knew with family stories of her cooking for the farm hands. To me, she lived with my granddad in an hotter-than-hell one-bedroom apartment in McCook, and never did more in the kitchen than set out a "Dutch lunch."

One Sixties summertime visit to McCook our family of five tried to sleep on the fold-out sofa and air mattresses in my grandparents' living room. The sweltering apartment was filled with the smell of overripe cantaloupe and very little sleep.

Last night while I was tossing and turning and worrying that I might have strep throat while hoping it was just a sinus infection, I kept thanking my lucky stars that I wasn't sofa-surfing with cantaloupe in McCook. Some things are worse than strep in August, but not many.

The next day, Grandmother set out the spread of pickled herring, pickled pigs feet, pickled miniature corn, sweet pickles, bread & butter pickles, watermelon pickles, cucumbers and onions in sour cream, sardines in olive oil, sardines in mustard, Club crackers, overripe cantaloupe, salami, summer sausage, cheddar, toothpicks, Fritos, chip dip, and 7-Up. Oh, and some chocolate mints and macaroons for dessert!