In which we offend decency

  Mom was parked by the side door this afternoon, with a view beyond the Exit sign of a driveway, a tree and the birdfeeder I hung in that tree last month and really ought to refill. She was quietly muttering. As I came along the hall I heard her, over and over: "I am now a man. Oh, God! I don't know how to pee!"

 

   Dropping my stuff on the floor and getting set to crouch beside her for an hour, I thought, "Huh. This is what we're doing today." Aloud I said, "Well, you'd better learn how."
   She nodded earnestly, and searching my face asked, "How am I supposed to do that?"
   Meanwhile I was busy scanning her, looking for anything that would explain a physical complaint. In general, if she has a complaint, something is wrong. It's not likely to be whatever she's complaining about, but something's wrong.
   No puddles, no trapped arms or legs, so I cast at random: "You watch one of them do it. Watch what he does and do that. Each one see one, each one teach one."
   "Oh God," she wailed, "I don't know how to peeeeee."
   I started wondering how many residents were in the Bistro, just out of sight but within earshot.
   "Each one see one, each one teach one," I said. "See one, teach one."
   "I don't know any men," she said. "Where do I see one?"

   Pause here to acknowledge that this was perceptive. Hardly any men in her life now.
   "It is almost all women here," I allowed.
   "I need to learn to pee," Mom said. 

   And then she said it about 10 more times, while I tried to change the subject. I thought I'd gotten her thinking about Latin when, as she paused between Oh Gods to look at the Exit sign and say, "That sign. Exit," I said, "He, she, it goes out" and her head cocked. I thought I had her, but her reply was just, "I need to learn to peeee."
   Hopeless. 

   So I brought out the floor show I'd prepared — a couple of children's picture books. Reading baby books with her has, sometimes, been a lovely segue into getting her to talk about my granddaughter, Clémentine, whom she's met and also seen in photos and videos.
   Sometimes the books themselves enchant her. She still asks me about "How to Find Gold" by Viviane Schwarz. She did so again today — between asking me who Clémentine was and telling me that she had to learn to pee, and saying she'd seen the baby and the baby was trying to talk.
   Until, suddenly, Mom announced she could now pee.
   She had learned how to do it.
   "I watched one," she crowed. "I can pee like anything.
   "I watched one. I can pee all over the place."

   "Good job," I said, continuing to turn the pages of a book titled "Where Do Pants Go?"

   Sunny rolled up in her wheelchair to roll her eyes, hand me a printout of the nursing home schedule and tattle a bit on other residents. Normally I let Sunny draw my attention off Mom, but today I didn't look at her, I talked to her while showing Mom another book about a lemming that looks like the wooden head of a golf club but teaches other lemmings to eat pizza instead of jumping off a cliff.
   Every time Mom said, "I can pee all over the place," she laughed, and her eyes were so merry that pretty soon I was laughing too and bragging about how great I can pee.
   Sunny decided to roll someplace else.
   

   "My teeth need to be cleaned," Mom announced. As I walked into the Bistro to get a cup of water to swab her mouth out, three old ladies in wheelchairs stared at me like I was a cockroach. But when the still-smart one who lives across the hall, Clara, snickered, I knew it was all good.
   

   So what brought this on? It could have been recombinant past conversation, of course, something my sister said that Mom had too thoroughly digested; but I think it was a simple physical puzzle she couldn't solve: The aides lift her from her bed to the chair by rolling her onto a lift blanket that has four straps, one on each corner. The straps are gathered together and slipped over a hook on the mechanical lift. The aides leave the blanket underneath her when they put her into the chair.
Today, one of the straps had fallen into her lap and was, well, pointing the right direction, with her hand touching it. I think she could see that, but they'd tucked her knit throw beside her so, maybe, perhaps, she was unable to sort through the sensations.
   Possibly her problem-solving mind put two and two together to make 22: "I am a man now!"
   

   The fact that she was willing to take that in stride — OK, this is what we're doing today — is totally like the old Mom. So is how happy it made her to have learned something new.