Mum used to make us the thinnest of thin crepes, which we all (obviously) fought over. We only ever had them with a squeeze of lemon (which in the 60s and early 70s was always a squeeze from the plastic Jif Lemon, do you remember them? And what was the relationship between a Jif Lemon and Jif Cleaning products?)
Anyway, although I do love to share a recipe here, I’m not going to share the crepes recipe – there are plenty other places you can find them online, or in recipe books. But I’m going to share two other recipes for pancakes.
Mum’s sister Joyce made the best pancakes. I have such happy memories of sitting at the big farmhouse kitchen table at Marbrack, with my back to the Rayburn, where Aunt Joyce was turning out the most perfect fluffy pancakes. They were what you might call Drop Scones, or Scotch Pancakes, similar to American Pancakes. Once each pancake was cooked, she would pop it into a big bowl, lined with a clean tea towel, and then flip the tea towel over the top of them all to keep them warm. So good, warm with fresh butter.
We have Joyce’s pancake recipe in Mum’s recipe book.. the instructions aren’t today’s cookbook standard, but you can probably work it out, if you know what you’re looking for.
Aunt Joyce had compiled a collection of local recipes into a wee book to support Carsphairn Heritage Group in 1993; it was republished in 2017 after her death. It has a wonderful recipe for pancakes in it, though I doubt any of you will make it today. Do let me know if you do (click on the picture to see the whole recipe).
Whether you are sweet or savoury, crepes or fluffy, and whether or not you include very clean snow in your recipe, I hope you enjoy pancake day.
***
Most of my writing focuses on my relationship with Mum’s dementia since I first noticed there was something “not quite right” in January 2021. You can read about it here.
On 2 August 2021 I uploaded to my Insta twice in one day, to make up for the lack of posting in previous weeks. Here is what I wrote later that day:
An evening stitching on the terrace in the sunshine is definitely what I needed today. Each day I feel as though I’m sucking more oxygen of life back into my lungs again. I look up and see the world continues to turn as it always does.
Meanwhile, on the phone this evening Mum tells me something that’s annoyed her about her brother, Simon. He’s pretending to have been an engineer evidently. And then he comes and sits there on the edge of her bed after he got all that money from the co-op.
Mum has no brothers. I suspect Simon is another resident in the home, but possibly not. Possibly someone from years ago. Possibly an amalgam of real people and things she’s heard on the radio, or overheard in a conversation. Possibly all imagined. It matters not. Mum knows she can tell him to leave if she doesn’t want him in her room.
The leaves and the bud haven’t turned out how I wanted them to, or how I imagined them. I could rip them out and keep re-doing them till I got them ‘right’. But why? This project was never going to be about getting it right was it? We’re all just learning as we go, aren’t we?
Mum says much less these days.
Last time I visited her I was wrapped up in a big hand-knitted shawl, and was knitting another scarf, so I was all wrapped up as I sat with her. I told her that James and I are going to Ireland for a weekend soon, to see her big sister, Jennifer. Mum looked up at me, and slowly, so slowly, formed a response to this news. She said, “So many layers”.
Maybe she was commenting on my various shawls, maybe she was reflecting on family life.
So many layers.
***
Before you go, you should know that there are a number of tasty recipes on this blog too… this evening I’m intending on making the tasty Spicy Turmeric Chicken, which is oh so easy and will be a lovely worknight supper. But have a browse at the recipes, see if there’s anything you fancy making.
This series of posts starts here, with Taking Smock of the Situation, an embroidery project I started after I realised Mum might have dementia. There I was, embroidering her old fisherman’s smock with symbols relating to her life; meanwhile her memories were slipping away, like me at a party I don’t want to be at.
I’ve done a bit of embellishing of the petals, which is hardly see-able on this pic. It’s clearer in real life.
I need to do a wee bit more on the greenery and then I’ll start another design on this neverending 100 day project.
I’ve been gradually going through some of Mum’s things, and there are so many sketch books. What treasure! So today I give you a bonus of two rear ends from one of her books, and some wild horses.
Some of you will know that Mum took part in the #100DaysProjectScotland last year, with a small painting each day of something from her garden. Mostly it was flowers. She would create the picture, then photograph it and send it to me to upload on her Insta. You can see them there still – she’s @alixwolffe. But one day she just stopped. She just resolutely did not want to draw. Her eyesight was failing, she repeatedly told us she was blind. And she pretty much was, but also… also I think the dementia (although it was not noticeable to any of us yet) made it hard for her to draw as she had before, with such ease. Her brain maybe wasn’t allowing her hands to produce what she could see.
Anyway.. this weekend, Mum picked up the pen I offered her and sketched a horse. Then another. They are not the best horses she has ever sketched, but they are the most precious.
I love this picture of Mum tentatively drawing those horses. I wish I had kept them, but I left the picture in her room, and a few days later juice was spilt on it, and I threw it away, in the mistaken belief that there might be more.
The final picture, shows how much she had changed by the time she went into the care home, after 5 weeks in hospital. She was diminished. But when her broken wrist healed properly, she was again able to use her wheelie walking frame (she called it her ‘dancing partner’) to zoom about the home, stopping off in the various rooms and offices, always beetling about from here to there, and then wondering where she was, why and how she got there, and then how she was going to get back home. Luckily she still had the social skills to persuade a passing member of staff to give her a push back to her room if she was tired of walking.
I have been focusing again on Mum’s 100 Days Paintings just recently, as I have submitted them for an online exhibition in early March. It will accompany a physical exhibition at the Edinburgh College of Art of 2022 100 day projects.
I have submitted Mum’s paintings (2020) and my embroidery of The Smock (2021). Neither of us quite reached Day 100, but as I say, we are all a work in progress.
I’ll update you with further news, as I have it.
***
This series of posts starts here, with Taking Smock of the Situation, an embroidery project I started after I realised Mum might have dementia. There I was, embroidering her old fisherman’s smock with symbols relating to her life; meanwhile her memories were slipping away, like me at a party I don’t want to be at.
Before Mum’s dementia, this blog focused more on recipes, which you can find here. I’ve not been eating very healthily recently – too many big hearty meaty dishes, with mashed potatoes or pasta in a cheesy sauce – so I’m craving something a bit healthier, and think I might rustle up a Winter Salad, with lettuce, beetroot, blue cheese, pears and toasted walnuts. And a zingy dressing.
I know almost everyone else is on about day 62, but here I am posting day 32 of my fisherman smock project.
I started looking after Mum at the very beginning of this year. Within a week I knew something was wrong, and started reading up about early stages of dementia. She ticked every single box. But at that point it wasn’t immediately noticeable unless you knew her well…
She had a phone call with ‘that nice man’ from the Memory Clinic on 29th April and he diagnosed mixed dementia. It came as no surprise to me, but Mum was shocked. I reassured her that she was still the same person, still Mum, that Alzheimer’s was just a word, that we were going to keep making sure she was safe and happy. And that I loved her, whatever.
And all this is true.
Mum needs fulltime professional care now, and although she had always wanted to stay home till the day she died, she has settled into communal living well, not that it’s been terribly communal yet as she’s in covid isolation and not allowed out of her room.
When I saw her today she was annoyed that some of the young ones (the carers) don’t know the war has ended. She was also pleased we could play musical instruments because that saved us from the Nazis. Conversation is no longer straightforward or predictable, but that doesn’t seem to matter as much as I’d have thought. I can piece together some of the jigsaw pieces to make part of a picture. But not all of them. And that’s ok too. She knows I love her whatever.
I moved back home again last weekend, properly here to stay now, after living most of this year in Galloway. I’ll visit Mum at weekends, but not every weekend, and that feels ok too. I know she’s ok, she’s comfortable, she’s being looked after by a team of professionals who can do it so much better than I could.
All I need to do is love her. And she makes that so very easy.
I don’t often share images of Mum publicly, particularly more recent photos. But as I’m recalling the days before and after she got her diagnosis of dementia, I thought you might like to see these three pictures. The first two were taken in the week before her diagnosis, where she looks pretty relaxed. The third one, without a hat, was the day after her diagnosis. She seems so very lost to me. And she was always someone who could instill confidence in the most anxious of people.
As children, Mum told us we could all fly. If we really wanted to. And I have always believed this to be true. Mum told me, so it must be true. It astonished me when I learned (when I was MUCH older) that not everyone is brought up to believe they can fly.
I still can fly. If I really want to. Try it. You probably can too.
During those early months of 2021, when we all knew Mum’s world was unravelling, we talked about being able to fly one day. Mum looked sad, and said that just perhaps she wouldn’t be so good at it any more, perhaps her flying days were over. In my head she still flies, we fly together.
***
This series of posts starts here, with Taking Smock of the Situation, an embroidery project I started after I realised Mum might have dementia. There I was, embroidering her old fisherman’s smock with symbols relating to her life; meanwhile her memories were slipping away, like me at a party I don’t want to be at.
If you feel like a bit of cooking inspiration then you could check out my recipes here. I have some sad looking oranges in the fruit bowl so shall think about making the easy peasy and miraculous Orange and Almond Chocolatey Cake.
If ever a flower represented love to me it is the snowdrop.
All those years when I lived in London, some years losing track of the seasons, Mum posted a small cardboard box to me each January. Inside the box was a perfect bunch of snowdrops from the garden, with a couple of ivy leaves, wet kitchen roll around their stems and a plastic bag puffed up and protecting the delicate flowers from the ravages of the journey.
Snowdrops smell more sweetly than you can imagine.
I have many small vases, perfect for a few snowdrops, and it’s only as I write this that I begin to understand why I love those wee vases so much.
***
If cooking is your thing, perhaps for Valentines, or perhaps just because, then you could check out my recipes here. Alternatively you could look over on the right hand side (if you are looking at this on a desktop) at the ‘Cloud of SheWolffe-ness’ and click on the ‘Valentines Day Treat’ tag. It seems entirely random to me now, but I’m sure there are reasons why I thought some of these recipes could be considered ‘treats’ and also suitable for Valentines Day. I mean, I get why I included the wee Chocolate Hearts, but the others? Who knows? And really, let’s not think too hard about the sweet and salty nuts.
MisoCat is not overly impressed that Puck bagged her favourite spot first.
On 1 August 2021 I wrote:
It’s good to be home. One in an occasional series.
At the end of July 2021 I returned home to our wee home in the Valley, aware that I needed to get used to a new normal. There was a lot of talk of “new normal” in 2021 – we were still living through the Covid pandemic, and knew that at some point we would have to start living some kind of a normal life again. None of us really knew what normal might look like; I knew that my new normal would not have my mother in it for that much longer. But for how long?
I had become used to life in Gatehouse, and I’d liked living in my hometown again. But it was good to know that I was able to put down anchor and enjoy the calm waters for a while, I had been unmoored since the beginning of January. I had been thinking about Mum for about 55 minutes of every waking hour. And now that professional carers were looking after her, I could let go of most of those thoughts.
I allowed myself to think that this was only a temporary reprieve, that Mum would inevitably deteriorate further and that she would die .. we had lost so much of the Mum we loved already, but I could not bear to think of a time when I wouldn’t have her in my life at all. Of course we had no crystal ball, so we had no idea how long we had with her, and what sort of life she would continue to live. We were thinking in terms of months, not weeks. But months, not years.
So 18 months later it feels like a sort of surprise that she is still alive. I won’t call it a blessing, because I know that Mum would never have called it a blessing to live as she lives now, unable to read, unable to draw, unable to make much conversation, unable to remember moments of her life that have given her pleasure, unable to remember who has loved her, unable to remember how many sisters she has, unable to decide what she’ll eat each day, unable to make a pot of soup, unable to write, unable to know if she has ever been happy. And she has been. So happy.
Mum sleeps much these days. Generally she seems happy to see me when I visit, and not distressed when I leave. She knows who I am. And I remind her of the remarkable woman she is, though often she is less interested than I would imagine she would be. Generally she is content to snooze while I sit and knit next to her.
It’s good that I enjoy knitting. In so many ways.
***
If you want to catch up on how we got to this point, this series of posts starts here, with Taking Smock of the Situation, an embroidery project I started after I realised Mum might have dementia. There I was, embroidering her old fisherman’s smock with symbols relating to her life; meanwhile her memories were being thrown around like so many pieces of jigsaw in a big box.
If you feel like a bit of cooking inspiration then you could check out my recipes here. This weekend I have started making bread again, after months of popping the ingredients in a the bread machine. I have several bread recipes, but the easiest by far is this one for No Knead Bread – it takes very little of your time, and tastes DELICIOUS. And there is proper joy at making your own bread.
Sometimes holding on is precarious. Our fingertips go numb and we are so near the edge that even taking a single breath feels dangerous.
And sometimes holding on is just love.
I opened the post that morning and found this gift, from the artist. I had built up an Insta-friendship with Ruthie through our 100days projects and I’d bought some of her work, which I just adore. Finding this gift in the post was overwhelming, such a powerful message, and also such incredible kindness to give me that advice.
So, I kept holding on. We keep holding on.
And looking back, I see that a few days earlier I had messaged my friend Juliet to thank her.
SheWolffe: I thank you
Juliet: It was nothing
SheWolffe: You’ve held on to me some days. When I was quite unmoored.
Juliet: It is the very least I could do.
Juliet, who was 100 miles away, may say it’s the very least she could do, but we both know that it was so very much, and I will always, always, thank her for not letting me fall too far, for holding on.
And then a few days later, on 3 August 2021 I was back sitting on our glorious Terrace overlooking the Clyde Valley and I posted this pic and wrote this
Holding on
During this time, Mum was still in quarantine, after being in effective isolation for five weeks in hospital. She couldn’t read any more, and was utterly bored. She no longer got any pleasure from listening to an audio book, or the radio – her short term memory was smoosh, so she couldn’t follow a story from one sentence to the next. I wondered if she would be ‘better’ when she got out of quarantine, or if this was it? Was it too late?
We were all just holding on.
I hope that whatever is going on in your life, you are holding on. Holding on to beauty, to love, to joy. And holding on to those you love.
***
If you want to catch up on how we got to this point, this series of posts starts here, with Taking Smock of the Situation, an embroidery project I started after I realised Mum might have dementia. There I was, embroidering her old fisherman’s smock with symbols relating to her life; meanwhile her memories were being thrown around like so many pieces of jigsaw in a big box.
If you feel like a bit of cooking inspiration then you could check out my recipes here. Today I’m making a batch of Chinese Beef, and also Coconut Slice, neither of which feature in my recipes here, but probably should. Let me know if you’d like to see them. They are so very very tasty.
Days were already easier, more predictable, less stressful. And much less tiring. We could start planning things for the future. And we could just stop for awhile and enjoy Galloway.
We still went back and forth to Mum’s house all the time (it’s just across the yard from my brother’s house where we were staying), and one day I discovered a slow worm squirming about on her kitchen floor. I, of course, thought it was a snake initially and instinctively was a bit squirked by it. But I knew I had to be a big brave girl and get it outside, whatever it was.
And now, having done the most minimal research into slow worms and their habits, I discover that they are found throughout mainland UK, though more in Wales and South West England. And, as I anticipated, they prefer more humid conditions – Mum’s house was dry and warm and the poor thing had some fluff caught on its face, no doubt picked up from an expedition under the fridge. It looked somehow too dry.
Should you ever wish to capture an unhappy slow worm on your kitchen floor, my patented method is to slide a piece of stiff paper under it and sort of scoop it into a bowl. If you don’t have a piece of stiff paper, I guess a newspaper might do. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll work it out. The slow worm was released into the bank, not a money bank, a grassy bank with various shrubs which were mostly slightly overgrown .. it seemed like the sort of place a slow worm might be happy enough, or at least happier than in Mum’s kitchen.
Talking of wildlife, my cat MisoCat has been really needy the last few days and has taken to jumping back up on the desk, and playing with the keyboard, or nudging my fingers off the keyboard. This morning she wanted to just sit on it. I’m not going to get much work done if she behaves like this all day – usually it means she’s hungry, but it’s not that just now, so perhaps she just wants attention. When I was having a tidy up in here the other day I found a bag of ‘herbs’ which I’m pretty confident is catnip, and judging by her reaction it definitely is – she is rolling about in the dried leaves, then trying to catch them and lick them, then more crazy rolling. It’s keeping her off the keyboard for now, and I’m hoping that her catnip come down will encourage her to sleep for the rest of the day. She’s an old lady cat now, and we keep thinking she hasn’t got long left, but looking at her antics now, perhaps she’s not that old after all. We are all just as old as we feel, eh?
So, work out what your personal catnip is and have more of it – if it makes you squeak with delight, then you’re winning at life. I’ll probably write more about mine some other day.
And Mum. There’ll be more of a Mum update in future posts.
***
Finally, if you want to catch up on how we got to this point, this series of posts starts here, with Taking Smock of the Situation, an embroidery project I started after I realised Mum might have dementia. There I was, embroidering her old fisherman’s smock with symbols relating to her life; meanwhile her memories were being thrown around like so many pieces of jigsaw in a big box.
If you feel like a bit of cooking inspiration then you could check out my recipes here. I’ve been getting lots of carrots in my veg box lately, so have been making vats of carrot soup each week. I have a recipe for a carrot and lentil soup here, which I might update one day soon, as I’ve been experimenting with my pressure cooker (in a bid to use less energy) and honestly, it makes the best lentil soup!
Pimped up carrot soup
This blog started out as recipes, sometimes accompanied by wee stories, so I’ve got a back catalogue of tasty things to make. Do let me know if you’d like me to add more recipes in the future – I had an ambition to make a carers cookbook a couple of years ago… perhaps some day.
These black dogs and the brown river help protect you from that other black dog.
On 24 July 2021 I wrote:
I love it here.
The fairies leave out giant pink marshmallows in the fields for when you’re hungry.
Mum was safe. She had come home.
It might not have been the home she’d lived in for 30+ years, but all she knew was that it was home, and that she was being cared for. Not just looked after, but properly cared for, with real care.
And I was so relieved. Finally we could acknowledge how tired we were, how much we needed this, as much as Mum did too.
We now had the luxury of time.
And when I have time, I allow myself to think, some might say to overthink. I’d been thinking about Mum’s house, and I realised that it wasn’t so much her house, but the things in it which made it home. But also this part of the world. I felt that the hills and the coastline were the contours of my own body.
***
Finally, if you want to catch up on how we got to this point, this series of posts starts here, with Taking Smock of the Situation, an embroidery project I started after I realised Mum might have dementia. There I was, embroidering her old fisherman’s smock with symbols relating to her life; meanwhile her memories were being thrown around like so many pieces of jigsaw in a big box.
Not in the mood for this? That’s ok. But if you feel like a bit of cooking inspiration then you could check out my recipes here. You could try my Apricot Upside Down Cake, which was made with non-butter and I felt it necessary to give you my thoughts on such things. Several years after I first wrote that recipe I am much more relaxed about non-butter, and regularly use Stork to bake these days – butter is probably The Best, but Stork is perfectly good and much more affordable. This blog started out as recipes, sometimes accompanied by wee stories, so I’ve got a back catalogue of tasty things to make. Do let me know if you’d like me to add more recipes in the future – I had an ambition to make a carers cookbook a couple of years ago… perhaps some day.
A couple of days ago I was sitting at Mum’s dining room table and noticed there was a strange scrunching sound coming from over by the window.
It was the sound of hot toast crackling as it cools down.
It was the sound of light rain pitter pattering on an awning just a foot above your head.
But no. It wasn’t either of them.
It was actually the sound of wasps chewing, to make their nest. They had made a hole above the window and now were making a new home inside the wall.
The wasp man came within an hour of calling him, donned his PPE and zapped the wasp nest. I hid inside till the angry wasps had all flown away.
Then I waited a bit longer. I REALLY don’t like wasps.
This incident happened on Mum’s Escape Day. You’d think sorting a wasp infestation would be enough for one day. Or transferring Mum from her hospital ward to her new forever home. But we did both within the space of a few hours.
And as with everything back in that summer, the logistics took more than a wee bit of planning.
We didn’t want Mum arriving at her new home too distressed and confused. So, James drove to Stranraer to chaperone Mum in the ambulance on her journey back to Gatehouse. Then, later in the day I would give him a lift to Stranraer so he could pick up his car. And now, only 18 months later, I realise I have absolutely no recollection of that drive with James back to Stranraer to pick up his car when we must have talked about how we felt Mum had reacted to her new home, what we thought of it, how we thought she would settle in there. Knowing this happened, but having no memory of it helps me to comprehend dementia a wee bit – no matter how much I try to persuade my brain that it happened, it can’t conjure up those memories. Somewhere along the way my brain decided that this memory was not one of the important things to hold on to, so it has let it go… never to return.
Mum was in an unfamiliar place and in ‘isolation’ for 2 weeks
Anyway, while James was making that first trip to Stranraer and back that morning, I was packing the final bits and bobs of Mum’s belongings, and then (after an interlude when the wasps were zapped) meeting Sean and Robbie who came to pick up Mum’s belongings and take them to her new room. James and I had curated what we thought would be comfortably familiar things for Mum to have around her – though now we realise that perhaps we were curating comfortably familiar things for us? If Mum was still surrounded by such familiar objects, perhaps everything was still as it had always been? And it would be ok?
But of course nothing was as it had always been and everything had changed again.
But at least we had stopped her house being eaten up by wasps, and she was on her way to her new home.
I visited her today. She was in bed, and mostly snoozing, but awake for long enough to ask me how I managed to get in (to her room without her opening the door I think she meant) and also to tell me that she is not so good at membering these days, and that she doesn’t know why she is so tired.
Yesterday when I saw her I mentioned that I am going to Ireland next month and will see her big sister, Jennifer. Mum looked slightly bemused, and responded “So many layers”, this may have been in response to the fact that I was knitting a big jumper, and wearing another jumper and also a big knitted shawl. But perhaps not.
So many layers.
***
Finally, if you want to catch up on how we got to this point, this series of posts starts here, with Taking Smock of the Situation, an embroidery project I started after I realised Mum might have dementia. There I was, embroidering her old fisherman’s smock with symbols relating to her life; meanwhile her memories were being thrown around like so many pieces of jigsaw in a big box.
Not in the mood for this? That’s ok. But if you feel like a bit of cooking inspiration then you could check out my recipes here. I’ve just remembered that tasty winter salad that I made a few years ago, and now I’m craving all its healthy goodness. This blog started out as recipes, sometimes accompanied by wee stories, so I’ve got a back catalogue of tasty things to make. Do let me know if you’d like me to add more recipes in the future – I had an ambition to make a carers cookbook a couple of years ago… perhaps some day.
Shewolfinthevalley 