September 20 – “Not what I anticipated”

 

 

We had rain again yesterday.  In fact it woke me up at 4 a.m.  Well, the thunder woke me up.  It wasn't hard to get back to sleep to the wonderful sound of the rain hitting the window.  It was still going at 6 when I got up for the day.

 

We made a quick trip to Houston to take Mom to get her hearing aids fixed and her ears cleaned out.  It took us awhile to get started, though.  As we were walking out the door Chris on a whim asked Mom if she had her hearing aids in her ears.  Mom checked and said, "No."  That led to a frantic search throughout the house to locate them.  Chris knew where one of them was, because it had stopped working earlier and she had put it away.  The whereabouts of other one, however, was a mystery. 

 

We split up and started looking.  We checked her purse.  We looked on her dresser.  We opened every drawer in her room.  We crawled around on the floor, peering under her bed and under the couch where she usually sits to watch TV.  We went through her bathroom.  And then we switched places and looked in the same places again.  Mom was ready to just buy a new one.  Chris insisted that it would show up eventually.  I was daydreaming about the many times we had to do something similar when Dad would hide things during his bout with Alzheimer's.  I finally found it, tucked away inside a pocket of one of the jackets Mom wears all the time.

 

We barely made our window of departure to get there on time.  Traffic was light, so we pulled into the parking garage with ten minutes to spare.  And as we left the car and headed toward the elevator, Chris and I both noticed a movement to our right.  There stood an older man next to his car's open rear door, facing away from us.  I'm really glad he was facing away from us.  I'm also really glad Mom never seemed to notice him.  Because all of a sudden he dropped his drawers, revealing his tighty whities.  Not what I anticipated seeing in the clinic's parking garage.  To his credit, he quickly reached into the back seat and pulled on some very nice slacks.  And it worked out fine.  Chris controlled herself admirably.  Oh, and Mom got all taken care of.  Her hearing aids should be ready next week.

 

Proverbs 26:14 says, "As a door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed."

 

Father, please let the hearing aids give Mom some relief from the frustrations of not hearing.  I know how tough it is for me, and her hearing loss is much worse than mine.  Amen.