Checking In

On Friday I took off from work to take a quick trip up north to visit my Mom. Unfortunately, she's now in a nursing home since her health is such that my sister, Carol, cannot provide the level of care that she now needs, including oxygen 24 hours a day. She's at what I would consider the "better" nursing home in Massena (there are only two), and the place is pleasant enough (and does not smell bad) but it's still hard to see her among those who can no longer care for themselves. By the time I left on Friday night the natives were definitely getting restless with a lot of yelling and moaning all around. The girls on the floor were running around like crazy trying to manage all the patients, but you could tell it was getting a little hairy.

Of course, my mother was a little confused about why I was there since I'm not part of the context of her daily life, and I just suddenly appeared one afternoon. Still, we had a nice visit. I brought my iPad which I had loaded with old pictures so we spent some time looking at those, which she thoroughly enjoyed, even though, given her previous hobby of all things photographic, she could not figure out how the pictures got on the space-aged device, and what about the film? And how much did it cost to print them? It was pretty interesting trying to explain digital photography to her and I'm pretty sure she didn't get the gist of what I was saying.

I left yesterday morning, among a bit more confusion, with a promise to return soon.