My affair with the elderly

When I was in highschool, my mom thought it would be a good idea for
me to volunteer. And why not volunteer at a nursing home? Because
there was one near our house and we could bike to it (always an
important pro in any decision). Also, my mother is wonderful at
catering to old people's wishes, genuinely taking interest when old
people tell stories about their children and grandchildren and looking
over lapses in memory and the stubbornness that comes with age's
reversal into childhood…At the age of 14, I was none of the above. In
fact, scared would be the best description for me– and not the kind of
scared that has a fascination to it, like when you're jumping into the
future. Scared like thinking if I never have to smell the halls of a
nursing home, maybe the nursing home will disappear. And if there
aren't nursing homes, maybe the old people will become sane and see
their children more and maybe their daily lives won't smell like pee
and pills. But my mother signed us up for a cooking hour every
Thursday where any resident at West Bend Nursing home could come and
cook with us. I do not remember what we baked, but I remember
"collecting" the residents before the hour and helping them back to
their rooms. My mom and the nurses would cajole the shriveled women
with purple-tinted hair into coming downstairs to the class. The hour
lasted forever. I could never understand the old people and tried to
push my mother in front of me whenever one of them would try to talk,
preferring the peace and quiet of doing the mixing and egg-breaking
and baking. Because let's face it, a bunch of old ladies in wheel
chairs are not going to be baking their own cakes.
And I remember excusing myself from the volunteer hours whenever I
could "Sorry mom, I have to work, I have to babysit, I have a big
chemistry project…"
I forgot about the old ladies sitting around the table in the nursing
home kitchen.
And then I was in pre-med in college and the idea of being a nurse's
aide seemed like a smart move – get some medical experience, work for
more than minimum wage, work off campus. So I took a course for a few
weeks in the summer before my junior year and got a job at a nearby
nursing that paid above minimum wage, but was within walking distance
of college. So every Thursday and alternating weekends I would walk
over the pipe and up the hill to the nursing home during the dawning
light. I would deliver plastic trays with thick maroon plastic bowls
to rooms and stir the sugar into the cereal before trying to talk a
bed-ridden patient to get his food down. I was never good at feeding
– never forceful enough. One morning I sat next to an old woman in a
faded nursing home gown, feeding spoonfuls of mush into her dry,
half-dead mouth, and cried silently. I cried for the injustice of
being old and unable to feed yourself, of being forced into an
institutional routine that is the nursing home, of wearing faded
hospital gowns to bed, of always smelling like body fluids, of never
having a visitor after spending 93 years interacting with people, of
having other people wash the drivel, among other bodily fluids, from
your wrinkly, dry skin.
And then I worked at the same nursing home a couple summers later,
the graveyard shift. And I had less of a sadness about the
elderly…asta este (this is the way it is) as my Romanian colleagues
say. I would check on them sleeping every couple hours, hang out with
the ones who couldn't sleep, wake them up in the morning.
And now I live in a town where almost everyone my age has left my
village to work in Italy or Spain or at the least, Bucharest. And my
host family's grandmother, Mamaitsa, lives across the courtyard. And
she recently bought eyedrops to put in her eyes twice a day. She
comes to my host families kitchen with her eyedrops and asks for me to
put them in her eyes because apparently I am very good at dropping
saline solution into eyes.
And I cross paths with bunicas (grandmothers) walking to and from
school. Them hunched over and hobbling after years of manual labor,
communism and children; me walking tall, stumbling over words, asking
about their health, their children, their recipes. And so the elderly
have once again become an important part of my life, one that I even
seek out. And so my affair with the elderly continues…