Things didn’t go as well as hoped after the surgery and my 80-year-old mother had a few complications in the hospital. My sisters and I were anxious but we did our best not to convey our uneasiness to our mother. We had a few sleepless nights.

My mother made it through the crisis but is still being monitored by her doctor. At the rehab center, she worked hard with the physical therapists and was walking relatively well when it was time to go home. She’s facing weeks of physical therapy.

I can’t tell you how many hugs and kisses I’ve given her over the past few weeks. And how often I’ve prayed.

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When she had the first operation last spring, her doctor told all of us that the condition of her knees probably meant another surgery in a year or so. Over the past few months, my mother nudged the doctor to look for alternatives. But they didn’t work. Meanwhile, she’s finding it increasingly difficult to walk.

 She has finally wrapped her mind around the notion that she’ll have to endure the surgery, several weeks in a rehabilitation center and then months of physical therapy. It is a long, painful process.

The other day we talked about it. “I’m not going to complain,” my mother said. “I’m not happy but I’m going to do my best.” Other people, she added, are having more serious troubles.

That’s the kind of role model my mother has been for my sisters and me. She’ll reach deep into her reservoir of determination and pull it up when she needs it. You go, Mom.

Related posts:

1. Hugs and kisses for my mother
2. Dealing with nursing home angst
3. My mom’s excellent shopping adventure

My Mom called me on the evening of my birthday a few days ago, around 8 o’clock. It was near the time I was born, she said, in a farmhouse in rural North Carolina. Then, for the first time in many years, she started telling me the story of how I was born. Of course, I’ve heard it before but it was a wonderful gift to hear my 80-year-old mother tell it again.

That evening, my father’s mother had arranged for a midwife to go to the house. My parents, in their early twenties, were taking a risk not going to the hospital because my mother had health challenges with her first child, who died during childbirth. But they couldn’t afford it. So, my Mom relied on the skill of a woman that she didn’t know. Thankfully, there were no problems.

You’re my oldest child, my mother told me, and I am grateful to be alive to wish you happy birthday. I am grateful, too.

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1. Celebrating my mother’s 80th birthday, Part 2
2. Celebrating my mother’s 80th birthday
3. A blossoming friendship with my mother

Like many aging adults, my 80-year-old mother is becoming a finicky eater in her golden years. Many seniors face a loss of appetite and more than 75 percent of them over the age of 80 experience a loss of taste and smell, according to studies. My mother isn’t having any problems right now with her diet, but my sisters and I want to ensure that she maintains good eating habits and proper nutrition.

Mom isn’t able to cook the way she did when she would easily pull together meals for a family of six, and quite frankly, she doesn’t need to or want to. Plus, she turned away years ago from the unhealthy cooking habits she learned while growing up, and now eats low-fat foods and lots of vegetables and fruits. Her favorite breakfast is oatmeal with fruit; she doesn’t eat much food with refined sugar.

My sister, Barbara, has been cooking up plenty of food on Sundays and delivering enough to our mother to last several days. My mother’s  sister lives two blocks away and drops by every week with a dish or two. My other sisters and I cook when we visit and my mother still prepares some simple meals for herself. But my sisters and I figured my mother also needs food on standby. So, we’re also trying bulk cooking.

On a recent weekend, I took to the kitchen in a flurry of dicing and slicing and sautéing. After I returned from the grocery store, I encouraged my Mom to go relax while I turned up the music and began cooking. By the time I finished, my Mom had become the head chef emeritus and I had to urge her to take it easy.

We prepared vegetable-beef stew. I did all the heavy lifting but my mom wanted to tinker with the seasonings and made the decisions about how long the stew would simmer and the order we added the ingredients. We had a good time.

I’ll be doing more bulk cooking for my mother when I visit during the Christmas holidays. But I’ve learned a lesson: as long as my mother is able, she wants to be involved in helping put together bulk dishes. Cooking in bulk becomes a production and involves kitchen artistry. My mother wants  to be a part of it, even in a limited way.

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3. Me & Grandma: Teaching my daughter to cook

Then, she asked all couples who had been married 50 years or more to stand. There were six, including my aunt and uncle, another aunt and uncle and family friends. The banquet room erupted into applause.

What an awe-inspiring testimony from these 12 people: they had made a commitment to marriage and kept it. Of course, they were married during an era when it was widely assumed that men and women walk down the aisle once. We all know that notion is aging along with the couples in that room, all in their 70s and 80s.

The reasons are plenty, including more unmarried couples living together and the increased job prospects for women. Still, the sight of those older people standing proudly to show off their accomplishment reminded me that I have not yet talked to my 15-year-old daughter about commitment.

I imagine that many parents don’t do that these days. We get stuck warning our kids about drugs, sex, the perils of the internet and staying away from bad people so we often say too little about our core values. What it means to commit to friendship, to marriage, to anything. What it means to be honorable. What it means to treat others with respect and dignity.

My daughter and I have talked some about such matters, but not enough. There are so many distractions–cell phones, texting, IPods, Face book, YouTube. Our lives are saturated with information and we often talk too much about the stuff that doesn’t really matter.

I’m planning to invite my daughter to tea. When she was about eight years old, I asked her one day, “What would you do for a perfect day?” She responded,” I would eat cakes, drink tea and read.” So I’ll create “a perfect afternoon”– tea, homemade sweets and conversation.

Then, I’ll do what parents do all the time. Give her money, for books.

(P.S. We will be having afternoon tea regularly.)

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1. Taking time for girl talk

We were exploring other possibilities, too, when Mom learned that we were planning a celebration in her honor. No way, she said.

Our mother doesn’t like for us to make a fuss over her. Of  course, we enjoy doing something special for her on significant occasions and over the years have sometimes rejected her protests. Our father, who passed away 25 years ago,  was more easygoing about such matters. He accepted and enjoyed the attention, though he, like our mother, also preferred not to be in the spotlight.

But celebrations are powerful experiences, a time to recognize some aspect of life’s journey. I can still recall the 25th anniversary party my sisters and I gave our parents on a warm day in June. It was 1976 and we enlisted the aid of an aunt and uncle to get them out of the house on that Saturday so that we could prepare for a backyard cookout. We asked family and friends to park on nearby streets so that our parents wouldn’t notice any cars when they came home. My mother and father were delighted when they walked into a crowd yelling “surprise!” I saw a tear roll down my father’s cheek. That memory is etched in my heart; it was the first time I saw my father cry.

Fast forward to 1990. My father had been dead for five years and my mother was turning 60. We gave her a surprise party. It was a joy to watch her blow out birthday candles surrounded by all of her grandchildren. She even took to the dance floor and did a little two-stepping when we played a few of her favorite Sam Cooke tunes.

So, what should we do about her 80th birthday, which arrives in November the weekend before Thanksgiving? Over the past two decades, we’ve gathered for small, intimate family dinners and invited my mother’s siblings, in-laws, nieces and nephews over for ice cream and cake when she turned 75. Is it unfair for my sisters and I to have another party for our mother when she says she doesn’t want us to do anything special?

Let me know what you think. I’ll keep you posted on what we decide to do.

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1. Celebrating my mother’s 80th birthday, Part 2
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Wow. My mother has not been in a grocery or clothing store in more than a year because it’s been difficult and painful for her to walk and stand. Even when we offered to pick up a few items for her, a pair of pants and a blouse, she declined. She never really talked about it but we figured it was hard for her to think about appearance when she was feeling so poorly and didn’t really go anywhere except doctor’s offices.

Since knee replacement surgery in March, she’s been stepping out. I was thrilled to take her shopping; she wanted to arrive just as the store opened so she could easily maneuver her walker, the kind with a built-in seat for rest breaks. My 15-year-old daughter went with us.

Mom found a couple pair of pants, two blouses and a nightgown. My daughter left us to look at the trendy clothes in the junior department. We were in and out of the store in a little over an hour.

“That must have felt good,” I said to my mother, “to be able to go shopping and find a couple outfits.” She turned to me as we were riding in the car and smiled. “It did,” she said. “It really did.”

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We were sitting in her bedroom, talking about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill –its impact on animals, the reaction of BP executives, the future impact on the environment. We chatted easily, grew passionate about our views, listened to each other. “I’m not going to eat anymore fish,” my mother said at one point. “There’s nothing anyone can say to convince me it’s safe anymore.”  I didn’t try to change her mind, but suggested that most of us now will pay closer attention to where the seafood we want to buy was caught.

Over dinner, we discussed my daughter’s summer plans, my mother’s hairstyle, her daily exercises to help improve her walking after knee replacement surgery a few months ago. Later, I helped her take care of a household matter. We laughed together.

When I was getting ready to leave, my mother told me, “I really enjoyed spending time with you today.” I agreed, realizing that we were connecting to each other as adults, not only as a parent and child.  

When I decided to move back to North Carolina nearly a year ago, a part of the reason was to be able to spend more time with my mother and help her as she is aging. There have been a few tensions but we have successfully worked them out without any lingering problems. We’ve learned to compromise. We hug each other a lot.

My mother still insists that I call her when I travel to let her know I’ve arrived safely. She offers advice about what’s going on in my life, but only if I ask for it. She respects me; I respect her. We don’t take each other for granted. We like to talk to each other. We’re friends.

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1. Hugs and kisses for my mother
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A few years ago, the husband of an elderly woman passed away, leaving her with a family of two adult sons, all of them living in the same city. For a while, she was able to stay in her home, but she kept forgetting to turn off the stove and to eat some of her meals. Her sons looked in on her occasionally, and finally put her in a nursing home in a town about 25 miles away.

The 80-something woman has  been in the facility for several years and has developed Alzheimer’s disease. Her elderly friends visit when they can. Her sons rarely stop by.

I started thinking about this situation after I recently visited one of my aunts, who has been having health challenges for more than a decade. She lives with a daughter, and on the Saturday afternoon that I dropped in, the house was full of folks – another daughter, and a son, his wife and two children. There was lots of laughter and family stories. My aunt, in her 70s, spoke proudly of her youngest grandson, a 15-month-old who had just discovered the joys of running.  Just about every time I visit, some of my aunt’s children or grandchildren are at the house.

I don’t know anything about the family dynamics of the other woman, her late husband and their two sons. But it breaks my heart that as an aging, sick woman she is being ignored by her children, for whatever reasons, and left to die. My mother was told of similar circumstances during the two weeks she stayed in a nursing home to get intensive physical therapy after knee replacement surgery. 

Unfortunately, that’s the story of many elderly in this country. If you can, volunteer a  bit of time every now and then at a nursing home in your community.

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Along  with other health challenges, Mom is suffering with knee problems and the surgery will be the first of two to help relieve pain and improve her walking. She’ll spend many hours a day in intensive physical therapy.

It’s unsettling to have to send my nearly 80-year-old mother to a nursing home, even if only for 14  days or so. As our parents age, it’s as if nursing homes take on the persona of the Big, Bad Wolf, lurking in our minds as the dreaded enemy, waiting for age and infirmity to send another prize.  I understand, intellectually, that nursing homes are necessary; most of us with elderly parents who have health problems recognize their place in our society. These days, many of the facilities offer not only quality care, but comfort and ambience. Still, that’s not enough to ease the angst.

The idea of my mother ‘s upcoming short-term stay- and one later this year- in a nursing home has stirred up the emotional turmoil surrounding the possibility that such a facility could be required for long-term care. Meanwhile, there has been a search for a high-quality place to take Mom for a little while, shopping  for new lounging clothes and arrangements for my sisters and I to visit often.

My mother and the doctors are optimistic that she’ll soon be moving around with greater ease, at home, enjoying the springtime flowers. I’m ignoring the Big, Bad Wolf.

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