The Duties of a Daughter

 This is my parents and I in 1987 at my cousin Sue's wedding.  Sue and Tod just celebrated their 25th anniversary.  My how time flies.  There have been more weddings, babies, graduations and funerals since that day.   And my parents have both been diagnosed with dementia and been uprooted from the home they lived in for 56 years.   There has been anger, tears, and subsequent broken relationships.  There has been reluctant relocation, first on their part, and then last year, on mine.  But we have also come to a place of  acceptance and even forgiveness, even though some relationships remain broken.  But that is also part of the acceptance.

For the last year my parents have resided at Turning Brook, a wonderful assisted living facility in Alpena.  My mom seems  glad to be "home" again, not in Oscoda, but close to Spruce where she grew up.   My dad is just glad to be where there is coffee, dessert, and my mother.  They are very accessible to friends and family, and they seem to have settled in nicely, even though my mother still refuses to admit that.  

As my friends who are caring for their parents will tell you it is quite an awakening when you go from child of your parents to the parent of your parents.  Besides all the legal mess that comes with being power of attorney and putting names on bank accounts, there is also the unsettledness that comes with trying to rearrange the order of how things have been your entire life.  Suddenly you are telling your parents what to do, instead of the other way around.  Especially when it comes to telling your mother she can no longer live in her home, and your dad he can no longer drive.  I have been told I ruined my mother's life and my dad was going to turn me into the police.  But, I am happy to tell you that most of that misery is behind us now.  My mom's dementia has advanced to the point where she has forgotten that she didn't like me for so long and seems to be quite fond of me and glad to see me on my regular visits to see her and my dad.  Besides a few outbursts about the previously mentioned,  my dad has never really been mad.  I don't think he has ever really been mad at anyone in his life.  I have become proficient at meeting my parents needs, taking them to doctors' appointments and making my dad get a hair cut.  Of course I have Turning Brook to thank for making all of these things possible.  My parents live in a lovely little apartment where their meds are brought to them, their home is cleaned, their laundry is done and their meals are prepared and served to them three times a day.  But there is one little daughterly duty that they do not perform, and it is the one that I dislike the most.  The dreaded Lottery Ticket Detail.

My dad has been a gambler his whole life.  He has been buying lottery tickets for as long as I can remember.  As his dementia progressed, his obsession grew.  Until he lived with me for a while, I never knew how big it was.  When they entered the world of assisted living my dad was able to give up the tobacco that he chewed for almost his entire life.  He had to give up so much because of his disease, that I decided that I wasn't going to take away the one thing that he loved so much.  So eventually we came to an arrangement of ten scratch off tickets a day.  Yes, I know.  For all of you math wizards out there, that is twenty dollars a day, one hundred and seventy dollars a week, and a total that I don't want to think about a year.  I know.  But it is my dad's money.  He worked long and hard for it, and if he wants to spend it on lottery tickets, then we will spend it on lottery tickets.  End of story.  But not really.

In order for my dad to have those ten tickets someone has to buy them.  That would be me.  When we lived in Kalamazoo and saw my parents on almost a daily basis, we would stop and buy them at the corner gas station when we went to visit.  Then, when we became experienced, we started buying them in bulk.  We have even bought the whole roll, which is two hundred tickets, which yes, is four hundred dollars.  

And they have to be Cash Words.  For those of you unfamiliar with this ticket, you scratch off letters and then try to match them on a crossword puzzle.  The more words you are able to scratch off, the more money you make.  It has always been interesting to me that my dad was able to do the somewhat involved Cash Words when his dementia didn't allow him to remember anything about his past.   Why he loves this particular ticket so much I don't know.  Any other selection or variation on the two dollar variety confuses him.  He has  remained steadfast in his loyalty to the Cash Word ever since I have been buying them for him.

 Now that we don't see him everyday, my mom has become the keeper of the tickets.  She has a cashbox with a lock that she puts the them in, and every morning she gives him his allotment.  He puts them in his back pocket.  He will take them out, scratch a letter or two and then put them back.  This way they can last him most of the day.  Because once he gets his daily ration there will be no more.  Well, unless my mom gets lazy and doesn't lock them up.  If he finds them, and he will find them, he will scratch them all.   One time he found a whole week's worth.  And he scratched every last one.  Of course there was no more until my next visit.  But I know he would do it again in a heart beat if she slipped up again.

And of course, like every professional lottery ticket scratcher, he has a dedicated scratching nail.  Yep, his right thumb nail is purposely not clipped because he uses it to reveal his letters.  I have asked him to use a coin but he refuses.  I have threatened him with not getting anymore tickets if he doesn't at least trim it.  And he will.  He will very reluctantly snip off little bit by little bit until I get impatient and tell him to forget it.  I have pretty much given up that battle.

So I buy lottery tickets two hundred dollars at a time.  That is a ten day supply.  Maybe a little more since the Ticket Nazi, aka my mom,  has been trying to get him down to six tickets a day.  I don't know why she is now trying to control his habit, since this has obviously been going on for years.  But, she is the designated ticket doler-outer, so I don't interfere.   Purchasing that many tickets at once always causes questions and comments.   I go into the gas station or convenience store I have selected and lurk around the coffee station, persevering over the size and variety of my brew until no one is up at the counter.   Then I walk up and say to the clerk "I would like one hundred of your two dollar cash words please."  I say it clearly and loudly enough for just the clerk to hear.  But no matter how clearly or loudly I say it, the clerk always replies in a booming voice for everyone in the entire store to hear, "ONE HUNDRED?  DID YOU SAY ONE HUNDRED? Then  I reply, "yes, I said one hundred." as I lay my twenty dollar bills on the counter.   Then comes the process of  counting them out. They will start with "one, two, three, four, five" and get louder with every ticket that passes through their hands, as increasing amounts of people appear out of nowhere and form a line behind me.  Then, the clerk,  just to be sure they have gotten the right amount, will go through the painful count again, and at times, again.  I feel everyone's eyes boring into the back of my head because I am now seriously holding up the line.  By this time everyone is wondering why I am buying that many tickets.  Then the comments start.  "Wow, I wish I had that much money" and "you must be feeling lucky."  I have realized that saying "these are for my dad and he has dementia and can only do the Cash Words" is useless because by this time everyone in line is convinced that they are looking at a woman with a serious gambling problem.  

 When I go and visit my parents, as soon as I walk in the door, my dad will present me with the winning tickets from the previous week's allotment, even before he says hello.  He looks at the winners as his own personal accomplishment.  He will whisper in my ear "go turn these in and buy yourself something nice."  I tell him, I will even though I take them back and use the money to buy more.   Up until recently, the ones he gave me were all winners.   So I would take them to the places I bought them from and turn them back in.  I have learned to go on off hours when they aren't busy because turning them in is almost as involved as purchasing them.  And of course people again appear out of nowhere as I stand there, while the clerk scans each one, enters some code, and waits the full two or three seconds for the machine to verify how much each ticket has won.  Multiply this process by forty or fifty, and it is quite time consuming. I have stepped aside while the clerk waits on the people paying for their gas and cigarettes and  I know what they are secretly thinking to themselves.   They can't wait to tell their wife or husband or who ever that that woman with the gambling problem was at the gas station again claiming that she was doing lottery business for "her dad" as they do they air quote thing.

Of course, over the last year I have learned where to go to make my purchase and subsequent redemption.  I know who is fast and who isn't when it comes to turning them in.  There is a guy at the Marathon in Alpena who moves with the speed of light, and will zip through the tickets in no time flat.  Tammy at Nedo's in Mikado is not only quick, but can chat while she does it.  She is always glad to see me, and I appreciate her more than she knows.   Especially now that my dad isn't as good at telling winners from losers, so I feel like I have to check all his tickets.  

The ticket says that you can win thirty five thousand dollars.  We have yet to win that, even though at times I feel like we have purchased every Cash Word in town.   The most he has won is a hundred dollars, but that seems to be enough for him.  Many people have told me I should just not buy them anymore, what a waste of money, and on and on.  My dad used to be proud of many things.   How well he played baseball, how hard he worked, how honest he was, and what a great wife and daughter he had.   But basically he remembers none of his previous life.  So if he is proud of a winning (or a non winning) lottery ticket, then I am certainly not ever going to take that from him.  As the daughter of Joe Mosley, I have to endure a reputation as someone who belongs at Gamblers Anonymous.  I even had a clerk once turn a ticket over and point out the number you are supposed to call if you are spending more than you can afford.  Then she pursed her lips, shook her head slightly, sighed, and continued to enable my imagined habit by completing the transaction.  

I am lucky.  Except for the dementia, my dad is very healthy.  He demands little: chocolate, coffee and lottery tickets. He has weathered the changes in his life like a champ.  When I walk into his apartment and he comes up to me and says "you didn't buy me any tickets did you?" I can't help but smile.  Then as always, I tell him, "why yes, I did."  He grins, gives me a big hug and says "boy, I sure am a nut on those things."  And then I say, "I know Dad, I know."

Oscoda Elementary

Oscoda Elementary,

we love it as you can see.

Learning here is so much fun.

We are Friends with everyone.

We like our classes everyday.

At recess we love to play.

We learn to play the flute-a-phone.

Our art projects we take home.

Mrs Ridings

1973 (or so)

Mrs. Ridings wrote that song and we sang it at a school appreciation assembly when I was in the 3rd grade.  I vividly remember standing on the risers on the stage in the gym belting it out.  Occasionally, like now, the words still run through my head.  

I attended Oscoda Elementary from second grade to forth.  My memories are many, not only because I went to school there, but because my mom was a third grade teacher and my dad a custodian.   It was a regular family affair.

This was my moms room.  I don't know how many years she taught in there but it was many.  That was where I went after school to wait for her to get done for the day so we could go home.  I can still see her desk, he lesson plan book opened up on it and my favorite place, her large closet.  Inside she had a never ending supply of chalk and construction paper.  I can still smell the dust from the chalk board and hear the desks scrapping across the floor as the custodian moved them aside to sweep under them with his big, dusty broom.  

This was Mrs. Ridings room.  Her windows used to be full of Geraniums.  (I love geraniums,  I think thats why)  She was my moms best friend.  They rode together every morning.  Her daughter, Lisa, was my best friend and she would be waiting in her mothers room after school for her dad to pick them up after he left the high school where he taught.  Lisa and I got into a lot of mischief some days after school.  One day, while our mothers were in a teachers meeting we decided to climb out Mrs. Ridings windows.  It is hard to tell front the pictures, but it is a long way to the ground.  Especially when you are nine years old.  I remember  Lisa was hanging on to the window sill for dear life and I was inside yelling for her to let go because her mother was coming.  Fortunately, a teacher, who's identity I don't recall, came by and helped Lisa to the ground.   He properly admonished the both of us for trying such a stunt and told us to never do it again.  We never did.

This is where I spent the third grade in Mrs. Kruttlin's class. We spent a lot of time studying the pioneers.We would knit while she read "The Little House on the Prairie" to us.  One time I made the mistake of talking out loud to Sherry Crooks while she was reading. I was promptly sent out in the hallway for my transgression. As I was serving my time,  Mrs. Ridings came out of her room and saw me standing there.  There was no punishment I could have endured that would have been worse then the look of disappointment that she gave me as she walked by me to go into the office.  You can be sure I never, ever spoke a word again while Mrs. Kruttlin was reading aloud.  Steve Lecureux tried it once.  He got slapped on the knuckles with a ruler.

 This was the entry my dad used when we went to work.  Not just every kid in the school got to use it, but I did, because of my connections.  It lead to the bowels of the school where the great, big, Hogwarts like, furnace was.  It was dark and dank and you had to pass it to get to another place that not every kid got to go to....the teachers lounge.   And in the teachers lounge was one of those pop machines that you put your money in, opened up a silver lid and inside were ice, cold, bottles of Orange Crush.  On a good day my dad would give Lisa and I money to buy one and we would share it.  We could also collect all the sticky pop bottle caps from the little box that would catch them under the opener.  We were going to make things out of them, I don't remember what.  But we were sure it was going to make us rich.

This is the door that lead to the gymnasium.   It had as shiny, wooden floor and bleachers that got pulled out when we had an assembly.  You had to be in the higher grades to sit in those.  It had a stage with heavy velvet curtains and a locker room with little lockers in it.  That was another place I had special passage to with my dad, as they were only used when Oscoda Elementary was the high school. That gym is where I bumped heads with Matt Jack during some game.   I got a terrible headache and remember laying down in the corner of the playground because my head hurt so bad.   I then went in from recess and threw up all over the floor of my second grade classroom.  I was so embarrassed that my mother had a terrible time convincing me to go back to school. In retrospect, I am sure I must have had a concussion.  After that, for what seemed like forever, every time  Jeff Rutter would walk up to the teacher he would stop, look at me, and then cut a wide birth around the spot where I had vomited as if it were still there.

I must have raced out theses doors a hundred times going to recess or out to play with Lisa after school.   Straight through those doors and down the hall was my mothers classroom.  I would try go by there on my way to recess as inconspicuously as possible.  If she saw me, especially after lunch, and my face was dirty I would have to endure the spit wash.  She would grab the back of my collar, drag me inside the door of her room and then proceed to spit upon the kleenex that she kept wadded inside her sleeve.   She would then wash my face,  give me a little shove and send me on my way.   Nothing is worse than enduring the spit wash while your friends are rushing by on their way outside to play.  (except maybe vomiting all over the floor of your second grade classroom).  Occasionally she would grab her large, dull, teachers scissors from the drawer of her desk and chop a stray patch of hair from my bangs that she had trimmed the night before. I certainly did suffer a lot of indignities.  

As I was walking around taking these photos the other day I stopped and looked into the windows of the front door.  The school has been closed for many years and used for many different things.  But the old, black speckled staircase was still there.  The same one I was going up when I dropped the ceramic model of the ear and its one thousand parts and broke it.  My mother had in trusted me to return it safely to the storage room.  She told me not to run, but I did and tripped and broke it on the stairs.  Up to the right was the office where Mr. London, the principle had his office. Mrs. Shirley Smith, who just recently passed away, sat and actually typed on a real typewriter.  It is too bad that someone can't use that  building for something but I am sure that with the structure being so old the cost would be huge.

Although still standing, the building is falling apart bit by bit. The playground is now a parking lot and grass is growing in all of the sidewalk cracks.  But, I wonder, if I were able to go inside if I could still hear the sounds of kids laughing, lockers slamming and bells ringing?  If I made my way down the hall, would I still feel the urge to quicken my steps as I passed my mother's class room? If I continued on to the gym, would I still be able to hear a bunch of third graders, standing on risers on that old stage singing "Oscoda Elementary, we love it as you can see?"

Burt's Flowers

When I was in high school, Burt was my volleyball coach.  She was loved by all her athletes and they fondly called her Burt, short for Burton, which was her maiden name. (I'm pretty sure that is correct. Burt, please forgive me if I am wrong).  She married another one of my favorite people, Steve Hennigar, my softball coach. So even though she then became Linda Hennigar, she will always be Burt to me and everyone else who was lucky enough to have her as a coach and teacher.

Anyway, now that I am back in Oscoda, I live on Loud Drive, just down a ways from Burt and Mr. Hennigar's house. Their home is on Van Ettan Lake and is surrounded by all the beautiful flowers that Burt has grown over the winter, from seed, in her green house.

Last week after returning from the farmers market, where I was working on polishing my skills in the manual mode on my camera,  I stopped at their house and asked if I could photograph her flowers. She graciously agreed.   

I love to photograph flowers. I have ever since I started playing around with my camera several years ago. My old neighbor Tammy had beautiful Bee Balm, and a photo that I took of it remains one of my favorites to this day.

 Burt had just finished watering her gardens and the sun was shining.

 The colors were vibrant.

 I especially love these, and you can't tell how big they are by the pictures, but they were huge and beautiful.  

 I love the drops of water on this white flower (that I don't know the name of).

Morning Glories are always a favorite of mine.  Love the blue and yellow.  Kind of U of M like (but that's not why I love them, Mr. Hennigar.....you saw me with the big green "S" on my T shirt).

These next two are my favorite of the bunch.  Maybe because they're pink or maybe because one of their dogs was watching me intently trying to figure out why a complete stranger was lying on the ground in front of them taking pictures.

Thank you Burt and Mr. Hennigar for allowing me to practice my picture taking, and enjoy your beautiful yard at the same time.

Acceptance Through Fishing

This summer we bought a camper.  A 1995 5th wheel.  Matt wanted to camp.  His kids thought it would be fun.  I really didn't want to camp, but thought I had better give it a try because my wonderful husband is always game for what ever crazy things I think I want to do.

So we took our trailer out to Alcona Park. It's a beautiful county campground in Glennie.  And I discovered that I like to camp, a lot.  The park is on the Alcona pond which is fed from the AuSable River.

We have enjoyed some beautiful wild life.

In fact we love it so much, we decided that we would just leave the camper there.  It is about a half hour from home. It's kind of like having a cabin without having the upkeep and taxes.  

Matt loves to fish as much as he loves to camp, and since I was trying out this camping thing, I decided that I should try the fishing thing too.  So, we went out in our little fishing boat one evening, and Matt taught me how to cast using spinner bait.  The water was calm and the sun was starting to set. It was just him and me in the little boat, shooting the breeze as he cast like a pro, and I cast like I had never done it before. And then, I felt a tug on my line! Low and behold, I had caught a fish!

It was just a little Bass, and we threw him back, but I was thrilled.  It was like being at a slot machine and it starts dinging. You feel the tug at your line as you are reeling it in.  Then there is the moment that you realize that it is a fish and not a big old weed.  Of course I started screaming "what do I do now?" as my calm, experienced husband told me to keep him in the water as he scooped the little guy up in a net.  We took pictures of my first catch and then threw him back.  

After that I loved to fish.  I find something very relaxing in the repetitiveness.  And you never know what that next cast is going to bring. Just when I am sure I am on the verge of catching the biggest fish in the lake, Matt decides to move the boat.  I have to stop fishing, hold on to my pole, as he navigates the boat into the next, perfect, not too shallow, not too weedy spot.  I sit, waiting impatiently, to cast out my lure again.  There were a few that got away because I had not learned to properly set the hook when I got a bite.  But again, with Matt as the patient teacher, I learned to do that too and Tuesday night my efforts to become a better fisher person were rewarded with a pretty good sized Pike.

I still have no desire to keep them, or eat them, for that matter. I just like to catch them. I love to be on the water. I love spending time with my best friend.  And I love that we love the same things and can enjoy them together. I love that we live in a place where people come on vacation and wished they lived here.  And I love all the beautiful things I have seen just by being on the water on a peaceful summer evening.

Fishing has helped me come to terms with moving away from my life in Kalamazoo, and realize how much beauty surrounds me here, "Up North".  Thanks Matt, for opening my eyes to all of this.  But please don't think that this means that I have any plans to take up hunting.