I Am Not Proud

I am not proud of myself today.

One of my best friends is making funeral arrangements for her mother, and I am arguing with mine.

I have been trying to hard to adjust to having Mom here and tying to adjust to her current mental status and our daily life. Today I just wasn’t able to adjust.

OK, I do not have a model home. I don’t mind if the floor isn’t swept but once a week. I don’t mind if things get a little dusty. In fact, since I have had children, I have learned to live with a lot of things I would not have put up with BK (before kids). The one place I have never been able to compromise is my kitchen sink, counters, cooking and eating utensils, dishes, pots and pans, etc. I have very strict standards when it comes to those areas. I am terrified of getting food poisoning in my own home.

The one area of my home that my mother is able to still feel useful is in my kitchen. She can load the dishwasher, wash the pots and pans, and unload the dishwasher. Unfortunately, she has good memory days and bad ones. On the bad ones it is hard for me to deal with her in my kitchen.

I have learned to deal with the knives, forks, and spoons being in the wrong drawers as to their pattern. I have learned to deal with the fact that she can’t remember that there are 5 drawers in the kitchen and sometimes puts everything in one drawer and I can’t get the drawer open. I have learned to be very careful reaching in the drawers because she puts my very sharp knives in there instead of my knife block. I have made lots of adjustments.

However, today Mom wanted to wash the pots and pans along with the Tupperware items after lunch. No problem. We have done that together ever since she moved in. I put the big pot in the sink and filled it with hot water and soap to start soaking while gathering everything else together. I told Mom to wash the pot first and then we would start on the plastic items. The pot was the dirtiest. I turned around to clean the stovetop and when I looked back at Mom she was washing the plastic stuff in the soapy water in the dirty pot. I explained to her that she couldn’t do that and why, moved the plastic stuff over, started her on the pot and went back to the stove. When I turned around again, she was once again washing the plastic in the dirty water. This happened three times. The last time I corrected her she accused me of not telling her what to do. Well, I am ashamed to say I started yelling. I wasn’t screaming, but I was yelling.

I have this irrational theory that if I yell she will understand. It is the same as yelling at a deaf person thinking that they will understand you if you yell.

As if I yelling at her wasn’t enough to make me feel like I was equal to the devil, when I came home from afternoon errands, I came home to find oven racks that look better than when I bought the oven. The youngest had burned some pizza cheese onto two of the racks and I had asked Mom if she wanted to use a SOS pad to try to clean the rack or if she wanted me to do it. She said she would do it while I was gone. It turns out that she spent almost 2 hours cleaning the racks. I couldn’t believe it. There were only a couple of places with stuck on cheese, but she cleaned every spot off of each rack. I felt horrible because if I had been here I would have never allowed her to stand on her feet that long, or work that hard.

No, I am not proud.