Thoughts from the Jambu Tree

Thoughts from the Jambu Tree (or how to maintain sanity in 2017)

There’s not often you get a distinctly bad year. In recent history some stand out. 1845 saw the start of the Irish potato famine. 1914 and 1939 brought years of war.  1918 was the flu pandemic, 1859 the Chinese famine, 1981 the African drought, 1995 the North Korean famine and floods, 2004 the South Asian tsunami.  2016 was a particularly bad year. I think most people would agree. Perhaps not in the scale of the above so far, but certainly the signs are there. In politics we had Brexit and Donald Trump. Celebrities died in droves  – David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Terry Wogan, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Gene Wilder, Jean Alexander, Ronnie Corbett, Carrie Fisher and her mum and George Michael to name a few.  Terrorists were getting more impactful in the West – the Nice attack, the Istanbul airport attack, the Brussels attack. Natural disasters were making the news – Hurricane Matthew, the Zika virus. The refugee crisis was getting worse every month.  2016 is never going to go down in history as a cheery year. Too many omens point to it continuing.

By December 2016 I had had a number of reactions to this (1) go into hiding – a caravan in the wilds of Scotland with a small dog, an electric heater, lots of good fiction, quality DVDs and a supply of cider  – still a very strong pull; (2) buy a gun or lots of drugs, lock the door, curl into a small ball and end it all – another statistic for 2017; (3) go with the flow, believe Brexit will bring prosperity (especially for Scotland), nod when Sean Spicer, Trump’s White House press secretary, states Hitler did not use chemical weapons, cheer when the US boasts about firing missiles at Syria and dropping the biggest non-nuclear bomb on Afghanistan – that would require a complete brain transplant; (4) embrace the day when the Orwellian 1984 is complete, the Ministry of Truth and Love take over and Newspeak is the new norm – not that far off ; or (5) search for, identify, note down and focus on the things that still make life worth living – even if it may not be for very long. 

For those of you who know me, I am not a renowned optimist. I am, being Scottish, a realist. A cynic and pessimist by default.  Before I resign myself to the caravan in the wilds with the small dog, I have to have a go at number 5. Is it possible to change from a negative pessimist to a positive optimist? Or at least move the dial more from one to the other.  The question often is, “Are you cup half full or cup half empty?’ Being a realist and interested in the concept of and capacity for change (be it personal, institutional, national or global), I claim to be neither. I would rather see myself as the person with the jug of water next to the cup.

When I was about 19 I used to say ‘amazing’ all the time. Everything was ‘amazing’. The park was ‘amazing’, the food was ‘amazing’, the outfit was ‘amazing’, the joke was ‘amazing’. Everything was just ‘amazing’. And I meant it. I was constantly amazed by everything and this was when I was pickling gherkins in a factory in Lubeck in Germany wearing huge blue mechanic style overalls and ginormous green wellies and at one point had the worst ever toothache so there was nothing inherently amazing about my average day! I just had a positive outlook.

Where did that go? How did I become a person who, despite living in one of the most beautiful countries in the world, can only see the black side to everything? What happened? From an external point of view, I have not suffered great hardships, I have my health. I am working, I have a lovely apartment and house. There is no logical reason for me not to be upbeat and if not see everything as amazing, at least see some potential in it. Now you can blame the outside world, you can blame people around you, or you can just accept that you do, as an individual, actually have some power and responsibility to change.

I started this blog in 2012 when I first brought my mum, who has Alzheimer’s, out to Sri Lanka to live with me. It helped me to come to terms with the changes in her and in our relationship and helped me to cope. She is still with me, oblivious to the challenges and complexities in today’s world. She has enough of her own. Her comments though are often hilarious, sound and perceptive, although unconsciously so.  She is still with me and will be drawn on for commentary relevant or not in future blogs. I would like this blog now to help me do (5) and explore  being the person who can fill the cup.

Whose reality is it anyway?

My mum used to be one of the most practical, down to earth people I knew. She now lives in a completely different world to the rest of us. This manifests itself in many different ways. At a very basic everyday level she is completely baffled as to the whereabouts of toilets. She will ask quietly, “Is there a toilet I can use here?” This happens in both the flat and the house we have been living in for two years now.  Once pointed in the right direction, she is fine.  That is her reality. 

The TV and the DVD merge in her world in rather bizarre ways.  She has no clue about their differences.  Despite carrying around the DVD South Pacific in her bag everywhere, when I ask her if she wants to watch it, she will invariably say, “Oh, is it on the TV now?” The sailors in HMS Pinafore, which she watches on DVD as she loves the music of Gilbert and Sullivan, reappear a day later when she spots a tanker out at sea in Galle and remarks, “Oh that’ll be where the men sing and dance at night.”  

If characters on TV can be transferred to the real world, it also works the other way round.  The sprawling mansion and grounds of the family house in the series Revenge becomes the Fortress. “There’s that place we go,” she exclaims when she sees it on TV.  When Wimbledon was on last summer, there was a clip of the Queen at a previous event shown repeatedly throughout the week of tennis.  This was proof to my mum that the Queen was in attendance throughout the tournament.  She always remarks on how well my Aunt Margaret (in reality someone who looks like her)  looks  in the audience of one of the Viennese Andre Rieu concert’s  even though part of her knows she passed away a while back.  

Then there’s confusion of place and time. The outskirts of Colombo are pretty consistently Motherwell and Wishaw. She often wants to get on a bus and go and see Flora in Edinburgh.  All high apartment blocks are the JAIC Hilton which I went up one day for a work meeting. This obviously impressed her as she comments on them all by asking me if I was up that one.  Then there’s the neon sign that you can see from my apartment window in the evening. It says “Pearl Hotel”. She remarks, “Oh that’s that garage over there.” This confuses me because I’m not aware she has ever lived anywhere where you could see a garage from the window and certainly not one called the Pearl Hotel.  Then there’s the ‘tennis courts’ in Galle Fort. Every time we are in Galle Fort she will remark on how we are about to see the tennis courts where people play. She is right in that they do look like they have been tennis courts at some point in their history but never have I seen anyone actually playing there. 

Then there’s the things she sees but I just don’t. In the morning we look out over the balcony in Colombo and I see a few buildings, the sea and the some birds soaring over the trees. My mum sees a classroom of children on a rooftop being taught, she presumes, by (these days) two men in black. There was only one for a time but now there seems to be two. She worries about the kids when it rains. The only thing I can see that could remotely be interpreted in this way is a rooftop with a couple of large black water tanks and the tops of some smaller ones.  When we are down south just off the highway and facing the sea just before turning left for Unawatuna, she invariably sees three boats on the horizon regardless of how many boats there actually are. These are three rock formations to the right. This prompted me when she first came over to get her eyes tested but even with the right glasses she still sees the three rocks as boats.

Then there’s her possessiveness, her insecurity and paranoia. A napkin in a restaurant belongs to her, not the restaurant. We now have quite a collection.  Her bag is a constant source of worry as are her watch and glasses. They must never be left anywhere unsafe. This translates into anywhere that is not on her body or in her bag. Everyone (even when nobody is anywhere near) wants to steal her bag, glasses and watch. They must be protected at all costs and hidden frequently.  Even when she is going for a shower every morning, the glasses and watch must be placed hidden on her bed side cabinet just in case someone steals them. I have given up telling her there is no one else in the apartment apart from us. Then of course she does not remember where she put them and then they do become lost (or stolen in her reality).  

It’s a bit of a steep learning curve. You need to know which reality you are in to keep up with her. Otherwise you could get dreadfully confused.

Lost and Found

When I was growing up I don’t remember hiding things. The only time I remember things being hidden was at Christmas when mum (and dad when he was there) would hide the Christmas presents somewhere in the house.  Either because I spent a long time sharing a room with my mum or because I was naturally curious, I would invariably be the one to find the presents long before Christmas. I don’t ever remember believing in Santa though I guess I must have done at some point.  I never really got the point of leaving sherry and shortbread out for him on Christmas Eve.  My brothers would sometimes take to hiding things from each other, but I don’t remember doing it at all.

Now I live in a world of continually vanishing things which later turn up in the most unexpected places.  Why? I share an apartment with a toddler and an octagenerian with dementia.  The toddler is less problematic than the octagenerian. This is because he is fairly predictable.  Although saying that as he gets bigger his range of possible targets expands.  I’ve given up having an apartment with everything in its place. I did try for a while but I surrender to the endless energy and tenacity of the toddler.  Now all low tables are bare, reachable shelves are empty, plant pots are up high, the dining room table has nothing near the edge, the bin is on the kitchen top, my car keys and sunglasses no longer live on the chair by the door, and the plungers are no longer on the floor but on a shelf in the bathroom. When I can’t find something, I look up high for it. This works only if the little person has been the cause of the item’s disappearance.

The octagenerian is more difficult to predict.  Things vanish either due to her ‘packing’ mania or because she is ‘tidying up’. Some things are easy to find though. Her green cloth bag (that goes everywhere with her) ends up with the strangest of contents.  The cloth bag is the first place to look for a missing item.  Packs of cards, TV remotes, nighties, socks, t-shirts, slippers, pens, wrapped up pieces of cake, hotel napkins, tissues, money, keys, letters and cards all end up in the bag. If the item is not in the bag then the drawers in her room are the second most likely hiding place. Scissors, packs of cards, shoes, cakes, coasters, toothbrushes, all end up hidden in the bottom of the drawers.  Sometimes though it takes ages to find things. Shamalee and myself will search high and low for something that was there an hour or so before.  It might turn up under the mattress (which is pretty difficult to move), under the cushions on the couch, in the bin, or in a kitchen drawer or it might never turn up at all.

The result of all this is that you need to have safe places for essential items that neither the toddler nor the octagenerian can reach or see.  One pack of cards has disappeared completely; the other now lives on top of the bookshelf. Remotes move hiding place frequently. Keys live with the cards.  Another result is that you always need to check out what is in the green bag. You never know what you might find! This is difficult to do though as she is never without it and rummaging through it in front of her would be a definite 'no no'.  

These days I can usually take the knowledge of the missing items in my stride. But sometimes when you’ve had a crappy day the last thing you need is to discover you can’t find the TV remote when you come in.  Asking her produces no satisfactory response. She will claim no knowledge of the item – which is true in her world as her short term memory barely functions.  Then begins the usual frustrating search round the apartment for the missing item – sometimes found; sometimes not.

The Pond

We moved a lot when I was growing up. But we were always near to water, whether it was the River Calder in Tannochside, the River Clyde in Bothwell or the loch at Strathclyde Park. Me and the boys went to one of the many primary schools we attended in Tannochside where my mum was also a teacher.  We stayed in a scheme across from the River Calder. I remember being sent out to play with the other kids in the neighbourhood and ending up down at the river’s edge playing on the rope swing, scrambling across a tree trunk which had fallen across the river and become a challenging bridge, or chasing after each other in the mud on the banks of the river.  I can’t imagine kids these days being allowed to do the things we did.

I had a Cindy doll complete with wardrobe and boyfriend who instead of getting all dressed up in outfits to go out with the boyfriend, turned her wardrobe into a jeep and went shooting down the river bank getting caked in mud in the process. She enjoyed all sorts of adventures!  My mum coped with all the mud and the eternal washing of mucky kids, dolls and clothes (this was pre automatic washing machines), and was ready with refreshments (diluting orange and sausage rolls) before chucking us out of doors and back to the river. My memories of those days are all sunny and warm though the mud and the geography would suggest otherwise.

These days my main stretches of water are the sea and the pond. The pond provides a mini stage for all sorts of drama and stunning beauty.  It is right next to the porch in the house down south so provides a natural television when you are sitting have your meals. It is small but teeming with all sorts of wildlife and attractive to all sorts of other wildlife.  It’s one of the best birthday presents I’ve ever had.

Like the regular appearance of the monkeys, mum takes the pond drama in her stride.  We’ve had a baby mongoose who got into the garden, was chased by the three dogs and was so traumatised that it panicked, ran straight into the pond and drowned.  We have a water snake who during times of drought adopts the pond as its home and freaks out everyone in the vicinity.  Mum watches oblivious to danger.  Then we have the sneaky birds. The kingfisher who sits on the gate or the tree overlooking the pond then swoops down in a flash of blue and scoops up an innocent fish and swallows it. A wading bird appeared one day. We sat and watched while the bird stood on the side of the pond, seemingly mesmerised by the water, gracefully stretched out its neck into the pond and picked out a fish. It then flew onto the wall and swallowed it whole.  Mum was put on lookout to scare that one away; to no avail. She forgot the instruction and just sat and watched as one fish after another got eaten.  

Then there’s the frogs! They were the bane of my life for over a year.  I tried all sorts to keep them out of the house. The living room window was covered by mesh half way. I watched as one frog lept over the mesh. I put the mesh higher; the frog climbed up the mesh and then over.  When the mesh went higher still they came in the front or back doors.  I had to install cupboards in the kitchen as I kept finding them in the back on the shelves with the pots behind the curtains. These days there is one that has taken to sleeping behind the trunk that the TV sits on. Mum watches TV and tells me of ‘the thing’ that is crossing the floor. She can’t always remember the word ‘frog’.  Nothing bothers her though – which is just as well.

She loves the beautiful water lilies in the pond. She watches them opening and closing. She anticipates the emergence of others.  She is perplexed when they are not there at the end of the day.  It’s not exactly the River Calder or Clyde or any of the Scottish lochs but it does have its own drama and charm and you don’t have to go anywhere to appreciate it.

 

Locks

Mum is a bit paranoid about doors.  She doesn’t like doors left open at night so she is not too happy down south when the outside door is left open in the evening to allow the cool area to circulate. There are three dogs (one looks like a scary alsation who of course isn’t) so if a stranger was to come into the garden and up the path, you would certainly know about it.

 

Towards the end of her stay in her own house in Scotland she had an extremely complicated way of locking the front door at night which involved numerous elastic bands and 4 separate locks (it was so complicated I worried about being able to get out quickly in a fire when I stayed there – especially when I was on crutches!)  This was because of ‘the boys’. She had a thing about ‘the boys’ breaking into her house, stealing from her and using her shower. (‘The boys’ was the term she used to use for my brothers when they were small but these boys were not my brothers).  

She would get herself into a state because she had to cook for ‘the boys’. She frequently called the local police to report ‘the boys’ banging on her door or wandering around the house. The police would dutifully come out, visit, check the premises and declare there to be no boys in the neighbourhood.  One time the police arrived and she had the gas rings on the cooker all on because she was cooking for ‘the boys’.  Consequently social work came and did something to the cooker so that she couldn’t operate it. The police must have got a bit fed up of being called out. This figment of her imagination was one of the symptoms of her Alzheimer’s.

The outside door in the apartment in Colombo needs to be locked (and the key hidden) to prevent mum’s escape if she is in one of those moods. The internal doors though definitely do not need to be locked. The problem with them is that if mum locks them there is no guarantee she can unlock them so in the flat Shamalee has stuffed most of the locks with wads of paper to prevent the locks working.  Unfortunately mum’s bedroom door slammed the other day because the balcony door in the bedroom was open and there was a gale blowing.  After this, the handle turned on the door but the snib did not react. It just stayed put.

This happened in the afternoon. By evening I had completely forgotten about it. I put mum to bed and went to watch some comedy on the TV. She got up to check I was still in the apartment and then went back to bed. I pulled the door to and instead of it being a bit stiff and stopping before it shut, like it usually did, it just pulled shut. Then of course I tried to open it. And then I remembered what had happened in the afternoon.  The handle just turned and nothing happened. 

I didn’t want to make a big deal of it as if she had realised she was locked in a room and I couldn’t open the door, she could have panicked.  Luckily I have a very understanding and practical landlord. He answered the phone on his road home from work and he must have heard the panic in my voice. He said he would go home, get his toolbox and come right over. By the time he came over an hour later I was a nervous wreck and mum was fast asleep. I had managed to remove two screws from the top of the handle but couldn’t budge the one at the bottom.  He and his helper managed to get the handle off easily. But they still couldn’t open the door. He fiddled about inside the lock and pulled out lots of little bits of it – it was all smashed inside – eventually the door opened.  Mum woke up to find me and two strange men in her bedroom taking the lock and handle off the door. She asked what we were doing, I told her, and she went back to sleep.  She now has neither lock nor handle on that door.

Strangely, when we came south that weekend and I went to give her a shower, I pushed her bedroom door shut – it is usually very stiff to close. It shut too and locked and I couldn’t get it open from the inside. Luckily someone was in the house and could get it opened from the outside.

I’m now waiting to lock her in the car as these things do tend to happen in threes.

Motorways

I’ve always associated motorway driving with holidays. Probably because the first holidays me and my brothers had, involved long car journeys on the motorway. I remember clearly being in the boot of our Volkswagen Beetle with the boys facing out of the back window, scoring points for all the white lights and red lights we could spot on the cars behind us and in the opposite carriageway.  Jam donuts were also memorable. In those days jam donuts had not hit Scotland and the good thing about travelling through England was the jam donuts in the motorway services. The bacon, eggs, sausages and beans for breakfast were another favourite (in my pre veg only days of course).

So I was quite delighted when the first expressway opened in Sri Lanka and doubly so because it reduced my journey south every weekend by an hour.  In fact that’s not quite true. My initial reaction to the expressway was one of horror: I imagined mass pile ups caused by 4x4s being driven by idiots. So I waited a good month before trying it out. The horror was never realised because (1) it is a toll road so not used by many and (2) most vehicles are not allowed on it. Once I had experienced it though I never looked back. The only time I have not been on it since it opened was when a landslide closed it.

The expressway is like nothing else in Sri Lanka. If you didn’t know better you would imagine yourself in Malaysia or Singapore. It’s a toll road but worth every rupee.  It is very quiet – no motorbikes (except police), bicycles, tractor engines, bullock carts, tuk tuks, or cows. Although being Sri Lanka, it is impossible to stop dogs sleeping in the middle of it and snakes and lizards from crossing. After a while the services opened half way down the expressway. These are signalled by a sign depicting the services it has and hasn’t got. Half have been crossed off. I live in the hope that petrol will be available there but so far no. The only available things are lots of parking, very large and clean toilets, good coffee and food outlets (one does a mean apple pie), a small Food City supermarket and small Laksala’s just in case you want to pick up a craft elephant mid way. 

My mum and me are on this expressway twice a week between Colombo and Unawatuna. She feels she is in China when she is on it. I am not sure why – the only thing I can think of is that at some point early on in her stay here I mentioned the fact that the road had been build partly by Chinese.  She says there is “too much green stuff” by which she means trees and paddy fields,  and not enough houses on either side. She worries about how the people in the houses manage to do their shopping. She likes the clean straight road and the lack of traffic on it. What there are lots of, is police, either on motorbikes or in cars or standing at the side of the road with speed guns.  The ratio of police to other travellers on the road is very high.

The other week, we got more than half way just passed the services when mum declared she needed to go to the toilet.  I therefore put my foot down in an attempt to get to our exit quickly and therefore get to the nearest toilet quickly. Normally I keep to the speed limit. This time I didn’t. I noticed a police car on the opposite side of the road and reduced my speed but it was too late - he had got me. When I pulled off at the exit the police asked for my license and proceeded to fine me. I explained quite frantically that the only reason I was speeding was so that mum could get to a toilet and could he possibly help in directing us to one preferably before the whole fining drama and before we had a little accident. He must have seen the growing panic in my eyes so he told his superior and soon we had a little crowd of police all listening in to the problem.  The superior, Mr S K, was a very pleasant chap and took charge of the situation. He said she could use the toilet in the police building across the road. So the key to the toilet was found. Unfortunately it was upstairs so the little crowd watched as mum walked across the road and I helped her to climb the stairs. The toilets were immaculate. Obviously not that many ladies had ever been in the building. The deed done we then climbed back down the stairs where I received my fine. 

Mr K was most apologetic about having to fine me. He explained that the speed gun was computerised and his building had cameras. So there was nothing to be done. Mum was quite amused at the episode. She liked all the lovely young men who had come to her rescue by providing her with an immaculate toilet.

The baby

 

I’ve never really been one for babies. They always strike me as far too wobbly and breakable. They are noisy, make a mess and need to be constantly watched.  If someone offers me a baby to hold I’m likely to go in the opposite direction. My mother though never had that problem. There’s two years between me and my younger brother and ten months between him and my youngest brother. This means that at some point she had three children under 5 for quite a while. She managed fine. Even when she started teacher training college when I was about 5. Since then she worked as a primary teacher until she took early retirement at 55. She juggled kindergarten, primary, a divorce and we all turned out fine.

I never really thought I’d be happy to have a baby around every day. However with the arrival of Erin, I’ve learnt the value of babies. Another carer who I was reading the other day said that she could never understand why old people’s homes and creches were not near each other. Old people and babies get on fine.  One’s with Alzheimer’s even more so.  My mum and Erin, who is now 11 months, are a case in point.

 I remember when it struck me that my mum’s carer must be pregnant. She was getting bigger and bigger and I could no longer really ignore it. For some reason she avoided telling me. But eventually I had to ask.  When it was confirmed, I was dreading the day when she wouldn’t be working for me anymore because of the baby. However that’s not what happened. She left on the Friday, on the Saturday morning she had the baby, then she had about 6 weeks off and was back at work, baby in tow. And he is a charmer. One of the happiest babies I’ve come across.  The only time he’s not smiling is when he’s sleeping.

So Erin arrives in the morning with his mum and stays with her all day. I come home at lunchtime and there’s the baby in the middle of the living room floor and my mum on the couch involved in some engrossing activity with him. He wriggles, he wobbles about, he watches the fan, he responds to my mum, he smiles when she talks to him. We’ve gone through the sitting up stage, the crawling all over the place stage and we are currently in the standing but very wobbly and often falling forwards or backwards stage.  Mum has been mesmerised by them all.  And then there’s Baby TV. Now that’s a new one for me. Would never have dreamt such a thing existed. It’s quite hypnotic and puts me to sleep, but has a very pleasant effect on the baby and my mum.

Mum worries about him too. Our living room has had to be rearranged. Mum thought the baby could pull the stools down on top of himself so they had to go. She was probably right. Things are being moved higher and higher up. Potential tunnels are being blocked. These days he can fairly move around the living room. Mum follows on hands and knees to make sure he doesn’t bump his head on things he has a habit of going under.  They  make quite a sight.   This is the woman who usually has trouble getting herself out of a seat.  Both me and Shamalee used to get into a panic about her being able to get back up again off the floor. But she manages, slowly and carefully. Shamalee filmed the whole thing with her phone. Proof that when there’s a will there is flexibility and strength.