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I really do love colour

15 Jan

On 8 October 2021 I posted:

I love colour.

I mentioned the other day to The Captain that I thought that deep teal blue might work on the wall in the bedroom.

So he painted. Then we bought fabric. And lampshades.

And now our bedroom looks different. Hurrah!

I still love these colours. But I don’t know if we’ll carry them through to our new home… yes, everything is seen through the prism of how we will live in our new home.

It’s interesting that for a long time I couldn’t imagine Mum and Dad’s house looking any different to how it always did. But over the last couple of years we’ve removed many bits of furniture and of art, and to be honest the place looked pretty shonky when we first moved in, piles of books everywhere, groupings of furniture, depending if it was for throwing out, for taking to a charity shop or for someone in the family. And so many boxes and boxes and boxes of dusty old books. Books which in my heart of hearts I know I will never ever read, but which seem so very familiar as they have always been on the shelves. Many are German and are inscribed to Dad, in the 1930s

Now, when I walk in the door, I can see the potential more than I can see what it used to be. And this feels deliciously hopeful and exciting. The Captain and I will be creating our own new home in this space. There might be aspects of Mum’s life woven in there, in the way her genes are part of my DNA, but the house will, eventually, be so very different.

In further evidence of my love of colour, but also of experimenting, I see that a few days after I posted the pic of the new colour palette for our bedroom I posted about a latest project:

Yesterday I used about a year’s supply of discarded (but saved) onion skins to dye a white shirt. I am now the owner of a shirt that looks like it’s been dipped in builder’s tea. And then you’ve dribbled more stronger tea here and there.

And because I love experimenting, I threw another shirt into the dye vat as soon as this one was out.

I threw both shirts out – they were hideous. I’ve stopped saving onion skins for the moment and have decided that home-dying is not my thing, not for now anyway. I’ll no doubt come back to it some day. When we were packing up to move house, I discovered a box of dye materials: natural madder, indigo dye, weld, all purchased during that first lockdown year, before I realised how Mum’s mind was blurring and how all our lives would change. Perhaps I should have thrown the whole box out, but it’s here with me in our new home, waiting for a day when colour is the thing that will nourish me. No idea where it is though, we have two rooms piled high with boxes, most with enigmatic labels like ‘Office Last Bits’ or ‘Craft and books’. But which craft? And which books? And where will I put them when I find out?

I hope 2024 is treating you well. It’s not being the best of starts to a year so far, but I’m taking the view that it can only get better from here on in. Let’s see, eh?

***

Thank you for reading this.

Mostly I blog about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, so if that might be your thing, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.

Finally, if it’s not too much to ask (I know, it is, apologies) I would really appreciate it if you could make a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.

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It’s all about the detail

8 Jun

On 28 August 2021 I wrote

Hello Gorgeous!

It’s all about the detail, and I love the detail of adding a hangie uppie loop and a 2021 tag to this bathrobe. And a Hello Gorgeous label, obvs.

Labels by @kylieandthemachine
Pattern by @munaandbroad
Fabric from @dalston.mill.fabrics

I may have loved the hangie uppie tag on this bathrobe, and the fabric. But the love hasn’t extended to wearing it all the time. And I know the reason why, and what I could do about it. So that’s on the list in my head of Things I Will Get Round To One Day.

I had somehow ordered a shorter length of fabric than I needed, and only noticed when it came to cutting it out. As a result, the robe is shorter than I want… What I should do, is use a matching / clashing fabric to add an 8″ or so border along the hemline. It would immediately turn this into something that I’d wear OFTEN. One day.

I have a lot of these One Day projects, that swill about in my head and will get done eventually. I also have a lot of reasons (ok, excuses) as to why they have not been done already.

Today, I’m determined to get through a great long list of rather boring work tasks before I allow myself to do anything else. I’m feeling pretty positive that I do, at least, have all the tasks now written down in one comprehensive list. I just wish it didn’t look quite so impossibly long though.

***

Mostly on this blog I write about trying to care for Mum as she developed dementia, which nearly broke me on a number of occasions. Gentle meditative stitching the Fisherman’s Smock probably saved me, giving me a focus and forcing me to carve out time when I could let everything go and just concentrate on those tiny stitches.

And if you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.

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Another 100 Days

5 Jun

Regular readers may remember that I’ve participated in the 100DaysProject for the past few years.

In 2020 I created a large crochet blanket, with #100SquaresOfColour. And Mum drew a painting each day, until Day 83 when she JUST STOPPED. You can see an online exhibition of her Not Quite 100 Days here.

In 2021 I started embroidering meaningful designs on Mum’s old fisherman’s smock with #TakingSmockOfTheSituation. This continues to be a work in progress – I never reached Day 100, but when I do, I will keep going further. There is so much more to embroider, but I will only return to it when my head is in the right space to enjoy it.

In 2022 I again embroidered, this time adapting other people’s designs, with #100DayStitchUp

This year I’m both pushing myself into uncharted territory and falling back on familiar ground. For 100 Days (starting 1 June 2023) I am knitting colourwork with Shetland wool (one of my favourite crafts), but I am making up my own design, which I have never tried before. You can follow along on Instagram via #100DaysPlayingWithColour if you want. I’ll also occasionally post on here. Probably.

The colour palette I’m starting with is inspired by Carrick Shore, which is the place I go to (physically if I can, or in my mind if not) when I need rejuvenating. Carrick is balm to my soul.

Last year I used an image of Carrick Shore with words to create a collage. The poem Everything is going to be all right by Derek Mahon spoke to me at the time, though I know I could hardly say it out loud, without breaking at the line ‘There will be dying, there will be dying,…’. I imagine there will be more days to come when I cannot recite these words without breaking a wee bit.

***

Mostly on this blog I write about trying to care for Mum as she developed dementia, which nearly broke me on a number of occasions. Gentle meditative stitching the Fisherman’s Smock probably saved me, giving me a focus and forcing me to carve out time when I could let everything go and just concentrate on those tiny stitches. I would really appreciate it if you could make a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.

And if you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might imagine.

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Starting anew again

21 Feb

10 June 2021, day 10 of the 100 Day Project embroidering Mum’s well-worn smock I posted the following words:

I’m sitting here quietly over a cup of coffee with Mum, while I organise the next bit of embroidery.

This is a picture she did last summer before she stopped drawing or painting. She took part in the 100 days project, doing a painting a day .. but just stopped at about day 83. And could not be persuaded to do any more. With hindsight I wonder if her brain was already deteriorating?

It was around Christmas when she said a few things that sent me down the rabbit hole researching early stages of dementia. The Alzheimer Scotland website was hugely helpful. Nowadays Mum won’t draw any more, but she enjoys looking at her pictures from last year. I’ll enjoy transforming them into embroidery.

That all seems so long ago now, and I find it hard to really recall what a vibrant and creative person Mum was before dementia. Everyone’s dementia is different, but from what I know, it seems like it has developed quite quickly with Mum. It felt as though she was desperately trying to keep it at bay for a while (we’ll never actually know how long, or know how she was during that long year of 2020 when we were hardly able to spend any time with her), and during this period it was exhausting for her. She would sleep a lot in the afternoons, and went to bed really early at night. But then, once she accepted that she had dementia, perhaps as soon as she had the diagnosis, it was like the flood gates opened and she changed almost daily. Each day felt like a huge loss to me, like bits of Mum were disappearing. It took me many months to get to a point where each day I could accept her for who she was that day, without being sad about what was already gone, and what else we might lose.

Back in early 2021 when I first was minding her, we established a daily routine which started with me peeping out the window to see when she drew back the sitting room curtains to indicate she was up and awake, and finished with her heading off to bed at about 9pm. I spent most of my working hours across the road, at my laptop, and all mealtimes with her, with lunch being The Main Meal of the Day. Initially Mum could still manage making lunch (though often it involved something I had batch cooked at the weekend. But by early February, it was clear she was struggling with this seemingly simple task she had done every day of her life for about 70 years. She has a Rayburn, which can be such a forgiving way to cook – but it was more often that I’d come through for lunch to find a pan of VERY salty over cooked cabbage, and the fish pie (or whatever) still in the fridge.

Making lunch, even if it is just heating up pre-prepared dishes, consists of several discrete tasks, such as:

  • put plates in the bottom oven to warm up
  • take the pie (or whatever) out of the fridge and put it in the top of the top oven where it’s hottest
  • get the cabbage out of the fridge
  • cut the cabbage up
  • find a pan
  • put some water in the pan
  • put a pinch of salt into the pan
  • put the cut up cabbage into the pan
  • put the pan on the hot plate on the Rayburn
  • replace the rest of the cabbage in the fridge
  • keep an eye on the cabbage so it doesn’t overcook.

It became clear that Mum could only manage one task at a time. And once that task was complete, there was no guarantee that the next task would happen. There was a disconnect in pulling things together, and an inability to work through a number of connected tasks to make up a whole. I just wanted to protect her and look after her, so I told her not to worry, and gradually it was accepted that I would make lunch each day. We tried some other options. I desperately wanted Mum still to have some agency, so she could feel like she was still managing and independent – we discussed lunch plans over breakfast and I wrote a simple list for her; I would nip through at coffee time to ‘check in’ and see how things were going. But essentially, Mum no longer had the capacity to prepare lunch independently.

She LOVED her food still though. It was one of the few pleasures she could still enjoy in life, and so I strived to make her meals as delicious and nutritious as possible. I developed techniques that allowed me to maximise my time at work, and still produce a tasty two (or sometimes three) course meal each lunch time. I considered writing a cookbook for carers, or at least sharing my tips on this blog. But none of that happened. Life happened. And that was fine.

Do get in touch if you have anything to share, about getting old, about caring for others, about embroidery. Really about anything.

And I’d be very grateful if you would consider making a donation to Alzheimer Scotland. It might be the lifeline that someone else needs when they are trying to make sense of a world that seems to have developed a glitch.

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Biscuits That Make You Go Ooooh!

14 Feb

On the 9th day of my 100 day embroidery project I wrote the following:

With a few online internal meetings today, I’ve been able to make good progress with embellishing the smock so here I give you my pair of swooping swallows.

Not bad, eh?

My brother and I are looking after Mum together now, after months and months of each of us doing it on our own and then going home for a bit while the other minds Mum. It’s only now, sharing our caring, that I realise how much of the strain is down to the isolation.

When not working for my employer, or caring for Mum, or stitching I can generally be found cooking.. and our new favourite are my Biscuits That Make You Go Ooooh. They are sesame and saffron shortbread. Mum loves them. So today’s bonus is a dish of toasted sesame seeds, and then Those Biscuits.

I’ll spare you the picture of the toasted sesame seeds, because you really don’t need to see them.

But those biscuits! They really do make people go ooooh! I think it’s the surprise of the sesame-ness of them. And then that beguiling hint of saffron. Anyway, they are super-tasty. And even now, seven months later, and with Mum’s memory so patchy, she will delight in saying ooooh if she opens the biscuit tin and finds these biscuits.

I guess you want the recipe don’t you? They are Saffron and Sesame Biscuits by Sabrina Ghayour, from her Simply book, which you really should buy because there are so many VERY good recipes in it. And these are ridiculously simple.

I’ve been reflecting a lot recently on how it was last year, what I was up to a year ago, what I didn’t know then that we know now. January 2021 was without doubt the hardest, cruellest month. The weather didn’t help, but that was not the problem. I knew I would be minding Mum on my own for a while, as we’d gone back into lockdown and really we shouldn’t be mixing households, or swapping them about more than was necessary. I had thought a lot about self care, and had put various strategies in place, but even so, it was lonely and (with hindsight) anxiety-making being with Mum, and realising that she probably had the early stages of dementia.

But don’t feel sorry for me, please. We had lovely times together, and I am forever grateful and aware of the privilege of being able to temporarily move my life and live in the house next door to her, in the town where I grew up, and to feel supported by a community (despite us all being locked down and apart from one another) and being nurtured by the Galloway countryside.

I got support from many sources, including from from Alzheimer Scotland, who provide a 24 hour helpline. Please help them keep that helpline free for anyone who needs it. You can donate here: Alzheimer Scotland, and I can tell you that you are an absolute star for supporting all of us who have feared the worst when faced with the prospect of someone we love having dementia.

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London pigeons

10 Feb

I originally posted this on 8 June 2021, on the 8th day of my 100 day embroidery project.

Again slow progress on this wee swallow today… I did a wee bit before breakfast and then some more while sitting with Mum at teatime. Today was the first time she really showed much interest in this since I started actually stitching. She clearly thinks it’s slightly mad. Which it is. I’m ok with that.

Your bonus pic today is one of Mum with her wee sister Astri. And some pigeons. If we’re lucky, Astri will tell us where this is.

We established that it was most probably Trafalgar Square in London. And those are London pigeons. In the last few years one of Mum’s pleasures was feeding the birds on her patio. She had a pair of cooing collared doves that came to visit her regularly, and also a pair of wood pigeons, which are infinitely more glamorous than your London pigeons. And back when we were small, we were adopted by a pigeon one summer. It was a homing pigeon that decided our home was better than wherever it was meant to be … I remember it perching on top of the budgie cage, and poo-ing onto the budgies, which amused me at the time. We named it Cuckoo Not Our Pigeon. And one day it wasn’t our pigeon any more, it flew off to wherever it called home.

Did I mention that one of Mum’s superpowers is catching birds?

One of my early memories is of her with a wee blackbird in her hand (look away now if you don’t want to read about its demise)…. I think it was hurt, possibly by the cat. Anyway, Mum turned her back to us, and with a quick scrick of its neck, the bird was dead. I was hugely impressed with this ability at the time.

But generally Mum didn’t kill birds she caught, or not in my lifetime (though one of the legends of her childhood was that she killed a sparrow with her bow and arrow, and cooked it over a fire).

She caught birds that came down the chimney and got stuck in the woodburner, birds that fluttered against the inside of the conservatory windows, birds that flew into rooms and couldn’t find a way out again….

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You shall go to the ball!

6 Feb

So, I realise I am posting progress slightly out of order… you’ve already seen day 7 and here, now, is Day 6. It’s really not much different is it?

On the day, I recorded the following:

Gentle stitching restored me this afternoon after another non stop day.

As I was stitching I was thinking how frightening it must be not to be able to remember what’s happened that day. But I also wished that each evening I could wipe most of that day’s memories… this is not how I want to remember Mum.

So, here you have a picture of Mum in her younger days, off to some ball or a party. Or possibly a wedding. I’ll never know

7 months on from writing that, I don’t recall the precise nature of that day – but I do remember having a real long-lasting sadness that my own memories of Mum as she had been, an independent, assertive, funny, kind, clever woman, those memories were beginning to be overwhelmed by my current experience of her. I wasn’t just sad, I was also angry. But perhaps I was angry at all manner of things, not just that others might have their memories of Mum intact, while I saw her at her most vulnerable, in ways she would have found humiliating in her previous existence.

I also recognise that it is an enormous privilege to care for a parent, to see them in all their vulnerability, and just to still have them in your life at this grand old age.

On many occasions over the last year I have reflected how much Mum continues to teach us, even when she’s not aware that this is what she is doing. Without a doubt she has taught me to appreciate the small things, the details, the delights close to home.

A couple of years ago, when Mum could no longer get out and about, when her world felt (to me) diminished, she continued to find joy in what was immediately around her: she fed the birds every day (and when she forgot, the wood pigeon would peck on her window and demand food); she tended her garden, and when she could no longer manage it, she enjoyed having a gardener; she loved propagating new plants, and regularly rotated the plant on the Chinese carved chest (a lovely sunny spot) so it was something beautiful and in flower. My social media tells me that a year ago her clivia was flowering – I have a feeling that this was grown from a seed that she brought back from South Africa in her pocket some years ago.

Finally, if you can, please consider making a small donation to my fundraiser for Alzheimer Scotland. I will be enormously grateful. It won’t stop Mum’s dementia progressing, and it won’t stop someone else from finding out that someone they love has dementia – but your donation will mean that no-one needs go through this on their own. Because it’s lonely, and frightening – and that’s just for those who love someone with dementia. I still cannot imagine how distressing and exhausting it must be for Mum.

Thank you.

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Posies of flowers

5 Feb

This stitching is from the 7th day of my 100 days embroidery project. It was early June, and this is what I wrote when I posted this pic.

This wee swallow hasn’t changed much since yesterday, but that’s part of the point of this project I think. It just takes its own time and gives me time to unwind, to think, to lose myself in the slow stitching.

Mum was brought the most beautiful bouquet of flowers this morning by a friend who knows she has dementia. Mum loved the flowers but, somewhat amusingly, immediately sent her out to forage in the garden for more blooms to augment them.

Mum was so good at always having a wee posy of flowers from the garden in the house. After I’d left home, whenever I came back to stay there was always always a mini vase of flowers on my bedside table. I’ve only just remembered this… so tomorrow I must remember to put a mini vase of flowers on her bedside table.

Looking through and finding all these pictures of flowers from Mum’s garden reminds me of a moment a few weeks earlier. In addition to Mum’s dementia, she had also become increasingly frail. She required a walking frame to get around – she had one with 4 wheels which she called her Dancing Partner, and this helped her get about the house safely. But she hardly ever ventured outside any more. One evening I mentioned that as I had walked across to her house that evening, I had been overwhelmed by the smell of the honeysuckle which grew over the gable of her house, by her bedroom window. She missed such pleasures.

I took her secateurs and picked a small bunch of sweet sweet honeysuckle. When I came back in and placed the flowers in her hand, she seemed not to know what to do with them… so I held them up to her face so she could breathe in their smell. Her face immediately relaxed, and broke into the widest of smiles. That perfect, pure joy!

It felt that there were relatively few pleasures left in Mum’s life – she no longer painted, or drew; she couldn’t garden any more; she struggled to read; and because of Covid she had spent the last 18 months in social isolation. But she still loved her food, and she adored flowers from her garden. I can’t tell you how good it felt to find something that genuinely gave Mum joy at that point. I think, perhaps, we were all seeking some joy.

Knowing that someone you love has dementia, or might have dementia, is frightening. You fear the worst. And actually you don’t really know how it will impact your lives, though you are pretty sure that it won’t be good.

There is help and advice out there, including from Alzheimer Scotland, who provide a 24 hour helpline. Please help them keep that helpline free for anyone who needs it. You can donate here: Alzheimer Scotland, and I can tell you that you are an absolute star for supporting all of us who have feared the worst when faced with the prospect of someone we love having dementia.

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A superb 70s hat

3 Feb

And here we are at Day 5 of 100 of the embroidery project. This is what I reflected on at the time:

I haven’t got much stitching done today… I really haven’t stopped long enough to focus on it all day.

But since we never get just one swallow here is the second one. And I’ve learned so much by doing the first one, so I’m tweaking how I do this one. Well no two birds are exactly alike are they?

As a wee bonus, you get mum and dad dressed up to go to some fancy shmancy do. We’ll never know now what it was, but I hope wherever they were they appreciated that hat. It was sort of autumnal colours, in the way that many things were in the 70s. Or was that just in our house?

One of the first really obvious symptom of mum’s dementia was that she never knew what time of day it was, even if she had checked a few minutes before (and she did check with us frequently). At most meals she thought it must be breakfast time – I guess if you lose your short term memory, and have no recollection of the rest of the day you probably think there has been no day yet, so if it’s a mealtime, it must be breakfast!

We bought her a dementia clock, which helped a bit, except that she was determined to position it on a bookshelf in the passage way between her bedroom and the rest of the house, a place she only walked through either when she was going for a pee in the night, or when she got up in the morning. So, for the rest of the day she still didn’t know what day of the week it was, or whether it was morning, noon or night. We bought a second clock, and she used it a bit more. She was definitely aware of this being an issue, and later, when she had an appointment with the doctor and she knew they were going to ask her some memory questions, she deliberately checked the clock just before he called, so she would know the day of the week.

But the thing that initially helped the most, was a simple pencil and paper solution. We wrote the day of the week, and the mealtime on pieces of paper and positioned them at her place at the dining room table. She would sit down at her chair, which had always been her chair, with her back to the Rayburn and she would read the label, usually with some delight. She still has not lost her appetite and has always enjoyed good food.

I say initially.

The final picture in this series (below) wasn’t needed at first. Mum would go to bed (generally at about 8pm), and then wouldn’t get up again till breakfast time, or if she did, it was only for a pee and then back to bed. But in the late Spring, she started waking at night, and believing it was day time. She always seemed her most vulnerable during these nocturnal moments. Somehow it felt as though she didn’t have the energy or the capacity to pretend that she was ok, and she was often tearful and upset, realising that something was wrong, usually believing that she was a stupid old woman. I had hoped that on these occasions the ‘This is Bedtime’ message might convince her that it was still the middle of the night (that and the fact that it was pitch dark outside and I was in my pyjamas)… but she suspected that someone (possibly the pixies) had come in and changed the labels just to confuse her. I so wish I had never joked about the pixies putting them out so they were always right!

Thank you to all who have already donated to Alzheimer Scotland, you rock my world! And if you want to donate again, or for the first time, then today is a good day to do just that. Thank you all, I REALLY appreciate your support.

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Fly little swallow, fly

31 Jan

On day 4 of my 100 days embroidery project I wrote the following:

Fly little swallow, fly.

I love the slow, methodical process of embroidery. I mean it’s really just paint by numbers for Elizabethan ladies isn’t it?

Anyway, my first swallow on this project is complete. I might mix it up a bit and do something else next instead of another swallow, what do you think?

I’m actually feeling quite proud of this. When I first thought of embellishing this smock, mum suggested swallows around the yoke. I loved the idea, and decided i would do it without once considering whether or not i actually could do it. And then I kept thinking what other motifs I could add… and in my head it all grew like topsy. And it was only then, as I was about to start that I remembered I haven’t embroidered anything for about 30 years. And I was never very good. I was overwhelmed.

But.. I’m also determined to create something remarkable, inspired by Mum and by memories.

Her short term memories slip away before they have time to lodge in her brain these days. But she still has stories of long ago. And oh such stories!

Dementia is confusing.. for the person with dementia and those around them. My wish is that nobody with dementia should go through it alone. Click on this link to make this true. Please.

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