Citrus, Chocolate, Lotion, Socks, and the Nursing Home

Photo: Wikipedia

I decided to take small tangelos to the nursing home this week. Last week I took small tubes of hand lotion and small Ziploc bags of Lindt chocolate balls for the non-diabetic residents who either don’t have families or whose families are either too far away to make the trip or never come to see them, they’ve abandoned them to the care of the state of Virginia and its employees who are mostly foreign and do not understand how people can discard their loved ones into a nursing home, a dreadful but necessary place for those who need round the clock care or who truly do not have any family left. The alternative would probably be that they would join the homeless in the streets.

As a foreign born American, two residents affected me most profoundly – a German lady (I shall call her Helga) who has such severe diabetes, her right leg had been partially amputated twice. I speak German and I can communicate with her every time I go. A spark of joy lights up in her eyes when we talk in German. Helga has no other relatives in the U.S.

The second resident is an Italian lady whom I call Maria. She does not speak English much and has advanced dementia but is otherwise calm. Because she is toothless, I have a hard time understanding what she says. The nursing home did not provide her with dentures, they just puree her food. I asked her many times if she has family and what part of Italy she is from. She always responds, I am from Italy, all over, and I have no children. She cannot remember her hometown anymore or her name.

Maria resides in the Arcadia section of the nursing home, a place really far from the mythological Arcadia which was a paradise of sorts; most residents in this Arcadia are locked up since they are ambulatory and might otherwise try to walk away from the nursing home. But Maria is wheelchair bound and has more freedom. She would never remember the elevator passcode but she could sneak into the elevator with a careless visitor. They do wear ankle or wrist bracelets just in case they get lost.

One man managed to escape last week and I witnessed him trying to cross a busy highway intersection with no pedestrian crossing. Three nurses were chasing him with a wheelchair in tow, trying to bring him back.

Obviously the nursing staff is too busy and not very attentive to their patients’ whereabouts and needs, the ratio of care to the number of patients is appalling. My own mother had escaped their care but she did not make it too far, her granddaughter found her, all dressed up to go into town, waiting on a bench outside for an imaginary ride.

Why give tangelos you ask? Fragrant citrus fruits, especially oranges, bring back memories of my childhood under tyrannical socialist society, a nursing home of sorts for able-bodied people from which we could not escape if we wanted to – we were locked up within the borders of our country which served as a prison to keep us in, away from the rest of the free world that lived so much better than we did.

Once a year, usually at Christmas, the dictator would order more food in the stores and exotic fruits would be brought in, bananas and oranges. I loved the oranges wrapped in thin tissue, printed with unrecognizable words from a faraway country, Israel; the fragrant fruit was filling the house with intoxicating citrus perfume. It was such a treat, we placed a few oranges in the Christmas tree, in small paper baskets decorated with colorful crepe paper. Chocolate candy and butter cookies were dangling from colorful threads as well.

Last year I gave everybody socks – a small but such useful gift!  Socks were so hard to find in the communist stores, we had to learn to knit to make our own if we wanted our feet to be warm in wintertime.

I took hand lotion too every year – it is painful to have dry and cracked hands. I know all too well – commies were not producing anything so frivolous as hand lotion. The elites were able to buy Nivea from their own stores but we did not have such imported luxuries.

One patient asked me if I worked in the mall – why else would I bring such stuff to them as lotion, chocolate, oranges, and socks? I must have some overstock in my private warehouse. I just smiled and walked on.

Christmas, the Season of Faith, Family, and Charity

Caroling in Romania, 1841 Photo: Wikipedia

Christmas was my Dad bringing home proudly a scraggly fir with sparse branches - fragrant with the smell of winter, tiny icicles hanging from the branches, miniature crystal daggers, melting on my mom’s well-scrubbed parquet floor. I never knew nor asked how he could afford it from his $70 a month salary that barely covered the communist subsidized rent, utilities, and food. No matter how bare the branches of my Christmas tree were, it was magical to me.

We decorated it together with home-made paper baskets filled with hard candy, raisins, and small butter cookies, crepe paper garlands, small pretzels, an orange wrapped in fine tissue paper coming all the way from Israel, a few apples dangling from a string, and 12 red and green 3-inch candles clipped carefully away from overhanging branches that could catch on fire.

Mom’s hand-stitched table cloth made a convenient tree skirt. Two metal bars forged by hand helped Dad nail the tree to the floor at the foot of the couch where I slept in the living room that doubled as my bedroom.

I fell asleep and woke up every morning setting my eyes on the scented tree. It lasted two enchanted weeks before the dried needles fell all over the floor.

Christmas was lighting one of the 12 candles for a few minutes every night, careful not to set the tree on fire, basking in the soft glow while Daddy’s twinkly eyes were beaming with pride that he made his family happy once more. We were rich with love and God’s blessings.

Christmas was standing in shorter lines for freshly baked bread, butter, milk, cooking oil, flour, sugar, and the small pork roast mom always baked in the gas oven. Grandpa’s homemade smoked sausages with pretzels toasted on the stove top were always on the menu. Grandpa used to joke that life was so spectacularly good, even the dogs ran around with pretzels on their tails. Pretzels were sold by big bags, hard and stale, but toasting them on the stove made them taste just baked.

Christmas was Daddy opening the ceremonial bottle of red wine freshly brewed that year by cousin Mircea from Grandma Elizabeta’s vineyard grapes.

Christmas were the village carolers in hand-sewn folk costumes coming door to door, trudging through 3 ft. of snow, pulling a plough decorated with a real fir tree, singing traditional songs and snapping their whips in spite of the Communist Party moratorium, forbidding the observance of such religious traditions.

Christmas was sneaking at midnight to the village Orthodox Church with aunt Leana, the singing deacon, lighting candles and praying, surrounding the building when the crowd overflowed its tiny confines into the yard and the cemetery. The cold chilled us to the bone but the inside eventually warmed from our bodies, the candles, and the excitement of prayers and closeness to God.

Christmas was eating with my Mom and Dad, feeling full, happy, and loved in our tiny apartment, sometimes sharing meals with family members who had traveled far to be with us. The spare wool comforter aunt Nicuta had woven, a blanket, and set of sheets painstakingly hand washed would make cozy beds on the floor for the tired traveler – no fire place to light up, just the coils of steam heat which the government generously made sufficiently hot during Christmas to make up for the cold misery during the winter.

Christmas was peering in the shop windows at the glass ornaments we could not afford but I wished I had. They were made in Poland, whimsical fairy tale characters, no religious symbols of any kind, they were “verboten.”

Every Christmas I longed to have the same doll in the window at Omnia department store, dressed with miniature detailed  clothes, real curly hair, blue eyes, and eyelashes. I never asked my Dad because Mom said it cost three months of his salary. I still had my raggedy cloth doll aunt Stella, the village seamstress, had made for me when I was two years old. When my first child was born, Dad mailed her a large doll similar to the one I had longed for. The doll was so big, it stayed in a corner untouched. My spoiled children had too many other toys to play with and never appreciated the sacrifice their Granddad had made in sending such a gift of love.

On Saint Nicholas Day, December 6, I would put my boots outside the door, hoping that they would be filled with candy in the morning and not coals. Grandpa had a wicked sense of humor – he would sometimes fill one boot with switches and another with candy and a chocolate bar. Chocolate was always in short supply and hard to find.

Grandpa never bought a blue spruce - we cut a fir tree from the woods. We were careful not to cut down a tree that had bird nests in it. We decorated it with garlands made from shiny and multi-colored construction paper. We cut strips, glued them in an interlocking pattern and voila, we had our garland. For ornaments we used walnuts and shriveled apples from his cellar, tied with Grandma’s red knitting wool.

The warm adobe style fireplace built from mud bricks mixed with straw cast a dancing glow on the tree decked with  tokens of food, something our heathen Roman ancestors did during the celebration of Saturnalia. On December 17, the polytheistic Romans celebrated Saturnus, the god of seed and sowing, for an entire week. As Christians, we celebrated the birth of Christ and the religious traditions in our Orthodox faith, in spite of the communist regime forcing the transformation of Christmas into a secular holiday.

On Christmas Eve, after we ate Grandma’s traditional Christmas supper, roasted pork, sarmale (stuffed cabbage rolls with ground meat and rice), and mamaliga (corn mush with butter cooked in a cast iron pot), we went to the midnight service at the Orthodox Church not far from her house. Sometimes it was a sloshy trek and other times it was icy and slippery. If we got lucky, a heavy snow would turn our walk into a winter wonderland with dancing snowflakes shining in the weak street lights. We had to bundle up well – the church was not heated and we circled it three times during the procession with burning candles in our hands. I always wore my flannel pajamas under many layers of warm clothes. To this day, pajamas are my favorite garment – cozy and comfortable, keeping my body warm.

When my children were born, Christmas became a tradition of toys and happiness seen through squeals of innocence and twinkly eyes when unwrapping a favorite game, book, toy, stuffed animal, or bike. I taught my children to be charitable and to share with other children who were less fortunate than we.

I decorate my Douglas fir with beautiful lights and shiny ornaments now. My heart fills with loving and longing memories of glowing Christmases past and of family members lost who made our Christian traditions so special.

I hope and pray that American Christmas traditions will be passed on to future generations to light up the season of faith, family, and charity.

 

Blessings

Photo:  Ileana Johnson 2015

Tonight, the much awaited Snowmageddon 2017 came in the form of a wicked icy slush. Nobody must have heard of March snows – March roars in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Some grocery stores were emptied of milk and bread – the global warmists were afraid they would starve. I rushed to come home from the nursing home for fear that I might get stuck for six hours in an inch of snow as it happened two years ago on the Occoquan River Bridge.

The changing pressure is wreaking havoc inside my painful knees but I must stay mobile to see mom and to help my hubby recover from chemo. Today was a good day, she was happy, in less pain, and recognized me.

As always, I bring candy bars and chocolate to mom’s neighbors who are not diabetic. When I first got off the elevator I encountered the retired sailor with a proud tattoo on his wrist. He is always smiling and watching those who come and go on the keyed elevator. We always chat a bit and sometimes I bring him a couple of pieces of wrapped chocolate.

Mimi and I adopted Lakshmi across the hall from mom’s room. We have no idea what she says, she chatters in her Indian dialect that only her family and personal physician understand. Her room has no decorations at all; as soon as her family puts pictures on the walls, she takes them down. She refuses to wear any other outfit except one favorite dress. When the staff bathes her, they dress her in clean clothes but she changes quickly back into her favorite dress. I take her chocolate every time. We only truly communicate when she greets me with “Namaste.”

Last week Mimi ordered pizza for mom. Lakshmi and Maria came into the room and everybody ate pizza and watched TV – Lakshmi does not have a TV in her room. She is highly mobile and often checks in on mom  to make sure she has not fallen. Mom can barely stand now.

One day mom was eating breakfast in her chair and Lakshmi came in and made her bed. It seemed to give her joy to do that so we let her. It is almost comical to watch them huddled in the hallway, talking to each other in their respective languages, not one understanding what the other said, yet they nod and smile as if they have just shared a funny story.

It is so lonely for these residents, most of them don’t have any family visiting them at all or visit them infrequently. I cannot imagine not going to see my mom two or three times a week. Americans are a funny bunch, they talk about how much they miss their families, especially after they died, yet while the loved ones are still alive, they never take the time to go see them, to tell them in person how much they missed them. As a European who grew up with a very large extended family, I find that odd.

During Bingo days, Mimi and I take hand lotion bottles for prizes and bags of Lindt chocolate as a treat. The social worker makes sure those who are diabetic only get sugar free treats.

Mimi bought a large birthday cake for everyone on Mardi Gras. It was not a King cake, nobody at our local grocery store even heard of Mardi Gras much less bake such a special treat. But the residents were so happy!

I hope and pray that God continues to keep me mobile so I can bring a little joy to a few of the residents in mom’s nursing home, especially those who are immobile and trapped in their rooms. Mobility is a blessing that most of us don’t appreciate until we lose it in the twilight of our years.

A Freak Start to an Amazing Trip

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

The plane was rocked violently on the tarmac at Dulles by a freak storm. The ten passengers and crew that had managed to board were wide-eyed, praying that the shaking of the Boeing 767 would stop soon and the boarding would resume. My husband was still in the terminal with the rest of the passengers. Lightning and wind gusts were so intense that boarding had been temporarily suspended.

The seven and a half hour flight to Zurich finally took off two and a half hours late amid scary dark clouds and soul-rattling sudden altitude drops. Fortunately, as we reached a cruising altitude of 39,000 feet, everything calmed down and we settled into a routine of getting up, stretching, bathroom trips, and watching movies for seven and half hours. I can’t sleep on planes; all my limbs go numb rather quickly.

Once we arrived in Switzerland, we were greeted by a huge, modern, and empty airport unlike any airport in the U.S. Bored, with no Wi-Fi or book to read, I started looking for interesting things around me. I was not disappointed. The vending machines were selling Cannabis Ice Tea for 3 Swiss francs a large can.

I bought a Swiss Army knife which would prove quite useful in the next two weeks and a couple of magnets for cousin Dragu which set me back almost $50 because the dollar was so weak against the Swiss franc and the credit card company had to get their lion’s share of exchange charges for generously allowing me to do business with them.  

A huge chocolate bar was calling my name. Who goes to or passes through Switzerland without buying the biggest chunk of chocolate one can find, an act of sheer visual greed since nobody can bite into the gargantuan bar without the help of a good knife.

We finally arrived in Bucharest the next day, almost 21 hours after we started our half way around the globe trek. But the entire flight time was only nine hours and 10 minutes. The Otopeni Airport seemed shinier – the international terminal had been completed since I was there three years ago.

We were elated that our luggage had made it and all suitcases arrived with us. A shower and clean clothes would become a reality soon. We headed to the Avis counter to claim our mid-sized car, a black, sporty, and spotless Ford Mondeo running on Diesel. We would find out soon enough that both gasoline and Diesel cost over $6 per gallon but the nice bonus was that attendants pumped the gas, a service that is lost in most states today. On the bright side, three years ago, Diesel was over $10 a gallon, and bio Diesel was $11 per gallon, so $6 seemed like a bargain.

For Romanian roads and the few designated parking spots, this Ford Mondeo was quite a large car, but it was just big enough to accommodate our luggage in the trunk, out of sight of potential thieves.

To mitigate for the lack of legal parking, intrepid Romanians double- and triple-park on sidewalks everywhere. I’ve never had to dodge traffic and cars on sidewalks in the U.S. but in Europe, it is common. Because many drivers carelessly blocked the exit of private garages, some owners posted signs that they would slash tires of anyone who obstructed their car exit and they meant it.

The engine purred nicely but it shut off every time we stopped in traffic. This feature paid homage to the environmentalist wackos who want to save the planet from a non-existent anthropogenic global warming, while endangering the lives of drivers who must press the accelerator hard before the engine roars again to life and the car can move. The sport transmission feature certainly helped when climbing the Carpathian Mountains and when managing hair pin curves.

The drive to Ploiesti flashed before my eyes long-ago forgotten memories of places, names, bridges, creeks, and fruit and vegetable stands lining up the main highway. Beautiful potted plants were decorating the fruit-laden trays. The May cherries were ripening just in time. The road was better paved and traffic police was seldom in sight. The GPS kept alerting us of electronic speed traps instead. James would tell us in a punctilious and robotic British accent to slow down. But nobody minds the speed limit as traffic rules are just laughable suggestions that no drivers take seriously.

We arrived at Ana’s house in the town of Ploiesti 50 km later, after getting lost numerous times, with the GPS telling us to go on non-existent roads, dead-ends, and closed roundabouts. With few traffic lights, we were in roundabout hell until we managed to learn the secret yield system, the meaning of hand gestures, and verbal cursing clues. The whole town was a construction site as the city planners had decided to dig up at the same time all the tram tracks and replace them with newer, more modern ones, paid for with EU funds.

Light rail, trams, trolleys, and buses are certainly encouraged and imposed in most towns by the lack of parking for individual vehicles. And pay garages are not adequate in size. Any way elitists can remove people from their cars and put them into public transportation like sardines, money is no object, while they personally jet around the world to locales ordinary humans can only dream of. Their private planes, yachts, and huge homes apparently can leave a huge carbon footprint – do as they say not as they do.

The town was dustier, dirtier, and more polluted than I remembered it. We drove by Brazi Refinery were my Dad used to work, now called Petrom. It was surrounded by green fields and the air appeared much cleaner than the air in town.

Ana’s three-story villa was even cozier; her daughter had made some wonderful changes to the décor. Our room was slightly hot so we opened the windows to the city noise and smells, loud gypsy music piped from speakers across the street, the trolley buses running all night, the incessant barking of dogs, and the cock-a-doodle of a time-confused and pesky rooster.

We slept fitfully that night but were glad to be horizontal, even on a mattress whose coils were stabbing us in the back every time we moved. But the price was right; our accommodations were free and came with unconditional love of my Romanian family and Ana’s spectacular cooking.

A huge herd of stray dogs, at least thirty “maidanezi” as the Romanians call them, were having a major street fight right below our window around 3 a.m.  I was home again, welcomed by the warm embrace of my family but missing tranquility and our home in Virginia.

To Be Continued