Taking my Mom out to Coeur d’Alene

We went to the Spokane River in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. It is only about 40 minutes away from Spokane and on such a beautiful day, it felt a shame to waste the opportunity to be outside and to connect with the fabulous fall colors here. The temperature was perfect. It was a completely clear day and looking at the weather app on my phone it was going to get cloudy on Monday and then rain on Tuesday, so this was the day to give it all a try.

We had also decided to try to do the cruise of the lake on the boats right there but we did not know that they had changed everything including where the boats were to be picked up. In our rush to get there we realized that we had parked in the wrong spot and that to get there we were going to have to go down a lot of stairs, then up stairs to a crazy walking bridge and then again down the stairs to get to the boat. This was going to be too much for my mother to handle. So we reluctantly gave it up.
Dealing with an aging parent makes me realize how challenging our society is for those with dishabilles and walking. While there might have been some other way to get to the boat, I am pretty sure this was the only way that we saw that was available and this would not work for anyone aging or struggling to walk or in a wheelchair.
Regardless, it was a lovely day. I got my sister back to her house and my mom to hers and it seemed my mother was tired, so I left her to rest and then tackled the next thing that was needed. And that was to put tags on all her clothing with a permanent marker for identification.
My mother being the sewing person, wanted to sew tags into the clothing that did not have any. But I knew this was a game in futility because regardless of if she had 3 sewing machines or not, she just cannot navigate any of them. So I went to JoAnn’s Fabrics and got those iron-on patches that we could cut to size and then put into her clothing. Then I went back to my sister’s house and made small pound cakes for the Memory Unit. The chocolate chip, pecan, coconut cookies were a big hit, so I was inspired to continue that trend.
So with all the goodies in hand, and some cute socks for the holiday season from JoAnn’s, I drove back to the Memory Unit to pick up mom to take her for dinner and then offer up my pound cakes.
Everything went swimmingly and the staff were so appreciative of the gesture. I get to mom’s room and hand her a small pound cake and the socks and explain that we are going to do the tags this way after dinner. She was thrilled because she had been trying to do them all by hand saying that her machine was not working again. What is clear is that she cannot thread the machine properly and as I am not a sewing person, I am clueless as to what that way might be.
We leave and she said that she wanted to go to a Mexican food restaurant that used to be close by but was no longer there. I had done some research online and thought I knew what it was. But she insisted that we go to the old place because they had a note on the door and the address of where it had moved to.
Learning that argueing only makes things worse, I drove over to the old place only to discover that the “Mexican Restaurant” was an Applebee’s. I asked her if this was what she wanted and she said yes. I explained that this place was a mixture of food and was she still okay with it. She said yes again. So I plug the information into my phone and off we go. Twenty minutes later, we are there and we get the two options on the menu that are Mexican food to share, a chicken taco appetizer and a chicken quesadilla appetizer.
Happy as a lark, she snarfs it all down and it is good to see her happy and eating a full meal.
Then we went back to her room, and I did some of the tags for her. While there are more to do, it was a great start. I am about two-thirds done.
I get back to my sister’s house and I have trouble sleeping. Not a surprise after 12 hours of sleep the previous night, but I laid there thinking about the passage of time and how certain things like the current conflict in Israel have been areas of conflict for over 4000 years. It is almost as if the rage and anger of the blood of so many people over the centuries festers in the soil and does not allow peace to stick for very long.
I see the pattern of how tenaciously mankind holds onto pain and suffering. How the mind will never let the old hurts of other wars and other conflicts go. I realize that this is what we need to learn most in this world.
We need to learn to stop harming each other. We need to learn another way to address conflicts other than this insane, expensive, and costly method to deal with situations.
What is clear is that this pattern is deeply engrained in the brain and we are very far from being able to understand it or control it even now.
But it is an incentive to me to break out of this terrible herd mentality even more.
I cannot control the paths and choices of others. I cannot even completely understand why they make those choices. I can only stay as kind, loving, and compassionate as they make certain choices and know that my path does not have to be theirs. I can understand what is happening and be so grateful that I am in this place and time. I can be grateful for all my ancestors that sought a better life and found it after much sacrifice and pain. I can be a voice that calls to those souls that are ready to do something other than war. And I know that more and more want peace. I know that we have as a people the capacity to choose a very different course but that to get the majority there we have a long way to go, we have much work to do, we have foundations that need to be made and we need education to be aimed towards the greater good and in understanding each other.
Wishing everyone a day filled with hope … in a world that is still in such pain.

~Suzanne Wagner~