It occurs to me that there are some characters in these pages I know better than others. Zosh, Jake, and Ernie are the mainstays that I’ve read plenty about and heard plenty of stories about in “modern times.” Well, Nat was also an important third to the Zosh and Emily, (that’s Babu!), show. It’s a…
Tag: Alzheimer’s
Throw Back Thursday: Cartography
I thought about the poem featured in this post the other day. I thought about it the last time I shared passages with her. I thought about how, even when she struggled to remember people she used to be very close with, all she could remember was where they lived. That, and that they were…
The Past and Present
I took a dare I made with myself yesterday and I shared a passage with Babu. The dare was to give it one more try, see if it is as bad as I think it is every time. I started with asking her if she remembered writing in a diary every day and she absolutely…
A Day in the Life, 2018, and a Month in 1940: Part Four
“Dobre popowoodnew!” as she crawls from the living room after her long nap. I say good afternoon in Polish slowly, and spell it (incorrectly) even slower. She doesn’t reply but keeps making slow progress towards the bathroom. “How are ya feeling?” I ask as cheerfully as possible but I already sense, and brace myself. She…
A Day in the Life, 2018, and a Month in 1940: Part Two
Babu rises and shines again right around 8:30. Ok, now we are back on track. As she takes about 25 minutes in the bathroom I get breakfast started. I should set my alarm in the morning a lot later because at this point I can do this in my sleep. When the door to the…
A Day in the Life, 2018, and a Month in 1940: Part One
There is some dream, some dream about…my garden. I keep walking, taking turns peering around corners, snooze and there’s more. More yard, more rose bushes. It’s both a marvelous snooze dream, like The Secret Garden! and an anxiety dream. There’s more. More work to do. I could have put the snooze cucumber plants here and…
All The Best Intentions…
For the last two days I have been working on a post that seems too big for one post and too big for only two or three days worth of processing and reflecting. It is about, well, mostly about, or maybe only a little bit about, “Jakey.” I have been processing something about “Jakey”…
May 1936
The excitement in March as run out and has left May full of just the usual. Who will dance with Babu at the innumerable dances and socials that she goes to this month? What demeanor will Drobey be in when she sees him and will walking right by upset him? Will or won’t Jaime continue…
Sharing The Start of 1936
It felt so good to sit down with Babu again and share these journals. She read January 1936 and I asked her what jumped out to her. She said she thinks she really liked going to Bay Path College. That put a smile on my face. I shared with her that I loved reading about…
Babu Update (and a bit of an update on me;)
Happy December everyone! I have been away from the blog and the entire transcribing project for a while, but it has never been far from my mind, for two reasons. I’ll get to those later. First, Babu is fine. To elaborate further, she’s developed eczema over her whole body which we have a hard time…
How Many Children Do You Have?
Common themes stay common themes, repeated stories will repeat, but change is obdurate. Now the story is told in a new way, with a twist. Babu always, as you, constant readers, know, tells the story of how her mother could only have one child. (This might be an inappropriate time to snicker but I’m…
transcribingmemory 