Sunday, July 4, 2010

meeting mrs. summers

mrs. summers' son, Bill, took me over to her house to meet her before i started staying with her for about 2 hours at a time.

my first impression was: wow, she does not look 92.
she was walking around without any help, and had icy blue eyes which popped against her white hair and wrinkles.

slow down jasmine, you're getting all poetic...

i didn't know what to expect. would she remember anything at all?
she asked the same questions a few times but thats it. she told me she wasn't good with names, and laughed. so far that's 1 thing we have in common.
later that day i went alone to see her for my first 2 hours.

when i rang the doorbell i waited for a while until mrs. summers looked out of the entrance window to see who was at her door. i waved, but i couldn't tell if she remembered who i was. still, she answered the door, and to my surprise left me there, because she wasn't wearing any pants.

she later let me in, and i noticed her pants were on backwards, but was too embarrassed to say anything.

i sat down on the living room couch and noticed a photo album was out. my mom had told me that old people like to talk about the past, so i asked her who people were and where pictures were taken and stuff like that.

the only problem was, she had no clue about any of it. so i kind of gave up on that and started telling her about my family. when i brought up my dog, she told me her dog ran away very recently, and that they'd been looking all over for it.

now i don't know who "they" are. but i do know that her dog died about 20 years ago. i didn't know whether to play along or mention that her dog passed a long long time ago...

i played along, afraid to argue with her.

she told me stories that seemed stretched to me, and asked me about my family, my school and if i drove about 5 times each. i tried to answer the same way everytime.

her favorite story to tell was her dog story, though. she must have told me 20 times that her dog loved to watch people on the window sill. but she couldn't remember if it was male or female, or even it's name.

the interesting thing was, she realized that it was ridiculous that she couldn't remember her dog's name, she just didn't know why.

she also went to the fridge twice, asking if i was hungry or thirsty, only to find some rotten strawberries that she swore she had picked yesterday. the only thing was they were in a plastic box that read SPECIAL: picked in Quebec. i showed her the mold and suggested she throw them away but she just put them back in the fridge.

mrs summers gave me a lot to think about that night.

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