(no subject)
so, I just wrote this for my creative writing class. blah.
"sunrise, sunset"
“How’s Friendly Fred Elaine?” Elaine was down early for dinner again, so I decided to spark up conversation about her poor pet cat who limps around her apartment because of it’s missing front paw, while I put more ice in her iced tea to replace the cubes that had melted.
“He’s friendly.” She croaked.
“Is that why you named him that?”
“Yes… that’s why I named him Fred.”
I tried to mask my laughter and walked away into the kitchen. Tony, the chef, was preparing dinner and rocking out to some crap music on WAAF that made me envy the deaf, and Bryan was washing dishes, sending water spraying in all different directions like when a child puts his finger on the water flow of a sprinkler causing it to unexpectedly shoot freezing cold water in unpredictable places. This water was not freezing cold, but hot, and after bouncing off those dirty pots and pans, caked with who knows what, it was definitely not the kind of water you’d want to be running through in a bathing suit on a hot August afternoon.
“What’s the soup?” I ask Tony, with my little pad and pen in hand.
“Beef vegetable with rice.”
Hah, no one’s going to want that. And dinner; tuna salad on a roll, or tuna salad on salad. I’m sure all the residents will be pleased with that menu… not. Just because they’re old, doesn’t mean they don’t like decent meal choices that aren’t all the same, just presented differently. It’s like asking if they’d like a blue M&M or a red one. They all taste exactly the same, but the colors are different. I guess it’s whatever color is more appealing, or in this case, whether they’re in the mood to have their tuna and mayo served on bread or on lettuce. Neither sounds appetizing to me.
I start a pot of decaf and a pot of regular coffee and walk back into the dining room. More of those familiar wrinkly faces are down for supper. Catherine’s fast asleep in her wheelchair, and she was just wheeled in about 90 seconds ago.
“Look at that man out there, he’s looking at his hand like he found something. Look at him. He’s walking over there. I wonder what he has.” Loretta’s the gossiper here, and she comes down early for every meal and watches the residents that live in the other half of the building as they walk around their courtyard. The other half has a keypad and code to enter and exit. The most freedom those residents get is being allowed to walk in and out of the building into the courtyard. I wonder if they just walk in and out of their rooms on rainy days, to try and get the same effect. “Look at that woman, she has a baby.” She continues.
As sad as it is, that is no baby, but a doll, and as far as that woman’s concerned it’s as real as any burping, pooping, whiny baby that’s stared at through thick glass by brand new fathers in the delivery center of a hospital. But this isn’t just anyone’s baby; it’s hers. This poor woman lives in the past, and is convinced that it’s her actual child, and that she isn’t some old woman wearing depends living at an assisted living home. I wonder if she’ll ever notice that it’s chest never rises while inhaling and exhaling, that it’s plastic mouth never touches food, and that it’s as quiet as a mime. I doubt she will, but maybe it’s for the best. Reality can be pretty hard to deal with, especially for some of these people. You try telling her, her baby was made in China in some factory and that its arms and legs are detachable. It’s just not worth the trouble.
Evelyn walks in pushing her shiny silver walker. “I want to go home.” She tells me.
“Me too, Evelyn, me too.”
She stares at me blankly and repeats herself. Does she mean upstairs to her apartment, I ask.
“No, to Long Island. How do I get home?”
“Oh, well I don’t know how to get there, I’ve never been there before, but if I had a map I’d give it to you.”
“When can I go home?”
“Maybe soon, if your daughter will take you.”
She realizes that I’ll be no help in her attempts to reach her destination, and goes to sit down at her assigned seat. As nice as this place looks, from the nice carpeting and furniture, and fancy dining room set up, it’s like a hotel, it’s not like a home. All these people want to go home, no matter where it may be, but for whatever reason they were put here instead.
Angie’s down now; she’s one of my favorites. I bring her up chocolate ice cream every so often to snack on while she watches the Red Sox games. Me and my boyfriend visited her yesterday, and she told him he was good looking, and that I better keep my eye on him if I want to keep him. I don’t really consider an 80-year-old woman much competition though.
We get on the topic of me and him, and after telling her we’ve been together about five months she tells me I’m lucky I’m not pregnant yet. All I can do is laugh and walk away. I go to say hi to Armand. He’s the first resident I met when I started this job, and I’ll never forget what he said when we were introduced.
“Jimmy?”
“No, Jaimie.”
“Oh, I thought that was weird. I never knew a Jimmy that looked that good.” And to this day he still looks at my nametag and says, “Jaimie. That’s a nice name.” Like he’s meeting me for the first time, and I say thank you.
More residents are down now, as well as more employees to help serve dinner. I can’t serve fifty-one people all by self. I grab some coffee from the kitchen and bring them over to ask Jean, or mom as we all call her, if she’d like a cup. She nods.
“Decaf or regular?” I ask with a pot in each hand.
“Yep.” She replies. I don’t know how many times I’ve gotten the answer “yes” to a question that is clearly not a yes or no question, so I poor her a cup of regular and walk around to offer it to others.
After everyone’s got their coffee or tea I start taking orders. You can see the look of disgust on their faces when I read them their meal choices; like they’re on trial and I’m reading them their sentences. The verdict; guilty. The punishment; life in prison. I’m sure if they were on death row their last meal would be better than this.
I take down their orders next to their names that I wrote before I began. Rena: a scoop of tuna salad, a slice of her bread, and some chips. Lottie: salad plate, SMALL PORTIONS. Craig wants seafood salad. The thing you need to remember about him is that everything needs to be pureed. I’ve pureed burgers, and pepperoni pizza, and bread. They say that when you grow old, it’s almost like you go back to the way you were when you were born, and it’s true. His meals look like something you’d find in a jar in isle 14 of the grocery store next to the diapers with a Gerber label on it. The worst part is that he’s the youngest resident here; only in his 50’s, but he’s been like this since he got in a car accident at age 19.
I go in the kitchen to place my orders and get some cups of soup. I splatter some on my hand, and it hurts like hell. I always manage to burn myself in this kitchen. I bring out the soups to those who wanted it, and meals to those who decided to pass. I place Angie’s turkey sandwich with lettuce and tomato on the side in front of her.
“What is this shit!?” she practically yells.
“Angie, it’s what you always get.” Apparently she wasn’t interested in the lettuce and tomatoes because she had, had some that afternoon in her salad.
“Well, what would you like me to do with it?” I ask her nicely.
“You can stick it up your ass!”
“ANGIE!” I say with a look of surprise, and she breaks out into laughter. I know that I will be a wise ass just like her when I’m her age.
I walk away and Evelyn signals me over with the wave of her hand.
“I don’t want this.” She says, looking at her plate like I brought her a scoop of mud with maggots and worms crawling about it. I pick it up and ask her what she would like instead.
“What have ya got?” I read her all her choices and she asks for the tuna on a roll; the same thing I’m holding in my hand that she said she didn’t want.
“Evelyn, this IS tuna on a roll.” I say while showing her the plate that I just picked up.
“Oh. I don’t want that.” Everyone at her table is used to this. This isn’t out of the ordinary for her, so I keep my cool and offer her dessert.
Dessert. Ann wants her banana split. Lottie wants a “golf ball” of ice cream. John wants fruit with whipped cream. Dot wants her carrot cake to go. Helen will have whatever the person next to her is having. Craig will have ice cream; one thing he doesn’t need pureed. Jean wants a cookie; she doesn’t care what kind. Just like when she orders soup.
“Soup!” she says.
“Would you like to know what kind it is?”
“Nope!” It doesn’t matter to her.
Grapes for Pauline. Rena brought her own dessert. Barbara wants Jell-O and Donna wants vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup.
Dinner’s a pretty hectic hour or so, but just because the residents go off to their apartments, or off to the Chapman room to listen to Mr. Prescott play the piano, doesn’t mean my duties there are done.
I clear with the assistance of my fellow server. We wash the tables, we dry the tables, we wash the chairs, we vacuum the floor. You’d be amazed at how messy some of these people are when they eat. Then we set up for breakfast. Placemat, napkin and fork on the left. A knife, two spoons, and a cup and saucer on the right. A water glass lined up with the knife. Donna’s saucer goes on the left, and Nancy doesn’t believe in saucers, so she just gets a mug. We put out the stacks of jellies, and fill the sugar bowls. Loretta’s table doesn’t get a thing of jellies, because one of the employees found a trash bag of about 450 of them in her bedroom.
This setup it so monotonous. It’s always the same, every single day. I punch in, I pour drinks, I serve food, I clean up, I setup for the next meal, I punch out. Sunrise, I punch in. Sunset, I punch out. The beginning of my shift, and the end. It’s always pretty much the same old routine, but every so often it’s a little bit different. Like the sunrise and sunset. Sometimes it comes later, other times earlier. Sometimes there’s more orange than pink, and sometimes it looks like the sky’s on fire.
It’s about 7:30 and Loretta comes down to sit at her table, ready for breakfast.
“Loretta, it’s 7:30 at NIGHT. Breakfast isn’t until tomorrow morning,” we tell her.
“Oh, I think I’ll go to bed then.” She says and walks off to bother some one else. Not to much later Evelyn comes down looking for her plant. Why her plant would be in the dining room is beyond me, but apparently she ran out of other places to look for it. I tell her I’ll keep my eye out for it, and she walks off to look for it in the Pioneer room, that is, until she forgets she ever had a plant.
It’s 8:00 and I punch out, finally. On my way out I see the flashing lights of an ambulance. They’re frequent visitors. They’re taking out the woman from the other half of the building, the one who carries the doll, but I don’t see it anywhere. I wonder if maybe she asked some one to baby sit for her.
It’s just another shift at Sunrise Assisted Living, and tomorrow night, I’ll get to dress up like a penguin in my white tuxedo shirt, black pants and shoes and bowtie, and do it all over again.
"sunrise, sunset"
“How’s Friendly Fred Elaine?” Elaine was down early for dinner again, so I decided to spark up conversation about her poor pet cat who limps around her apartment because of it’s missing front paw, while I put more ice in her iced tea to replace the cubes that had melted.
“He’s friendly.” She croaked.
“Is that why you named him that?”
“Yes… that’s why I named him Fred.”
I tried to mask my laughter and walked away into the kitchen. Tony, the chef, was preparing dinner and rocking out to some crap music on WAAF that made me envy the deaf, and Bryan was washing dishes, sending water spraying in all different directions like when a child puts his finger on the water flow of a sprinkler causing it to unexpectedly shoot freezing cold water in unpredictable places. This water was not freezing cold, but hot, and after bouncing off those dirty pots and pans, caked with who knows what, it was definitely not the kind of water you’d want to be running through in a bathing suit on a hot August afternoon.
“What’s the soup?” I ask Tony, with my little pad and pen in hand.
“Beef vegetable with rice.”
Hah, no one’s going to want that. And dinner; tuna salad on a roll, or tuna salad on salad. I’m sure all the residents will be pleased with that menu… not. Just because they’re old, doesn’t mean they don’t like decent meal choices that aren’t all the same, just presented differently. It’s like asking if they’d like a blue M&M or a red one. They all taste exactly the same, but the colors are different. I guess it’s whatever color is more appealing, or in this case, whether they’re in the mood to have their tuna and mayo served on bread or on lettuce. Neither sounds appetizing to me.
I start a pot of decaf and a pot of regular coffee and walk back into the dining room. More of those familiar wrinkly faces are down for supper. Catherine’s fast asleep in her wheelchair, and she was just wheeled in about 90 seconds ago.
“Look at that man out there, he’s looking at his hand like he found something. Look at him. He’s walking over there. I wonder what he has.” Loretta’s the gossiper here, and she comes down early for every meal and watches the residents that live in the other half of the building as they walk around their courtyard. The other half has a keypad and code to enter and exit. The most freedom those residents get is being allowed to walk in and out of the building into the courtyard. I wonder if they just walk in and out of their rooms on rainy days, to try and get the same effect. “Look at that woman, she has a baby.” She continues.
As sad as it is, that is no baby, but a doll, and as far as that woman’s concerned it’s as real as any burping, pooping, whiny baby that’s stared at through thick glass by brand new fathers in the delivery center of a hospital. But this isn’t just anyone’s baby; it’s hers. This poor woman lives in the past, and is convinced that it’s her actual child, and that she isn’t some old woman wearing depends living at an assisted living home. I wonder if she’ll ever notice that it’s chest never rises while inhaling and exhaling, that it’s plastic mouth never touches food, and that it’s as quiet as a mime. I doubt she will, but maybe it’s for the best. Reality can be pretty hard to deal with, especially for some of these people. You try telling her, her baby was made in China in some factory and that its arms and legs are detachable. It’s just not worth the trouble.
Evelyn walks in pushing her shiny silver walker. “I want to go home.” She tells me.
“Me too, Evelyn, me too.”
She stares at me blankly and repeats herself. Does she mean upstairs to her apartment, I ask.
“No, to Long Island. How do I get home?”
“Oh, well I don’t know how to get there, I’ve never been there before, but if I had a map I’d give it to you.”
“When can I go home?”
“Maybe soon, if your daughter will take you.”
She realizes that I’ll be no help in her attempts to reach her destination, and goes to sit down at her assigned seat. As nice as this place looks, from the nice carpeting and furniture, and fancy dining room set up, it’s like a hotel, it’s not like a home. All these people want to go home, no matter where it may be, but for whatever reason they were put here instead.
Angie’s down now; she’s one of my favorites. I bring her up chocolate ice cream every so often to snack on while she watches the Red Sox games. Me and my boyfriend visited her yesterday, and she told him he was good looking, and that I better keep my eye on him if I want to keep him. I don’t really consider an 80-year-old woman much competition though.
We get on the topic of me and him, and after telling her we’ve been together about five months she tells me I’m lucky I’m not pregnant yet. All I can do is laugh and walk away. I go to say hi to Armand. He’s the first resident I met when I started this job, and I’ll never forget what he said when we were introduced.
“Jimmy?”
“No, Jaimie.”
“Oh, I thought that was weird. I never knew a Jimmy that looked that good.” And to this day he still looks at my nametag and says, “Jaimie. That’s a nice name.” Like he’s meeting me for the first time, and I say thank you.
More residents are down now, as well as more employees to help serve dinner. I can’t serve fifty-one people all by self. I grab some coffee from the kitchen and bring them over to ask Jean, or mom as we all call her, if she’d like a cup. She nods.
“Decaf or regular?” I ask with a pot in each hand.
“Yep.” She replies. I don’t know how many times I’ve gotten the answer “yes” to a question that is clearly not a yes or no question, so I poor her a cup of regular and walk around to offer it to others.
After everyone’s got their coffee or tea I start taking orders. You can see the look of disgust on their faces when I read them their meal choices; like they’re on trial and I’m reading them their sentences. The verdict; guilty. The punishment; life in prison. I’m sure if they were on death row their last meal would be better than this.
I take down their orders next to their names that I wrote before I began. Rena: a scoop of tuna salad, a slice of her bread, and some chips. Lottie: salad plate, SMALL PORTIONS. Craig wants seafood salad. The thing you need to remember about him is that everything needs to be pureed. I’ve pureed burgers, and pepperoni pizza, and bread. They say that when you grow old, it’s almost like you go back to the way you were when you were born, and it’s true. His meals look like something you’d find in a jar in isle 14 of the grocery store next to the diapers with a Gerber label on it. The worst part is that he’s the youngest resident here; only in his 50’s, but he’s been like this since he got in a car accident at age 19.
I go in the kitchen to place my orders and get some cups of soup. I splatter some on my hand, and it hurts like hell. I always manage to burn myself in this kitchen. I bring out the soups to those who wanted it, and meals to those who decided to pass. I place Angie’s turkey sandwich with lettuce and tomato on the side in front of her.
“What is this shit!?” she practically yells.
“Angie, it’s what you always get.” Apparently she wasn’t interested in the lettuce and tomatoes because she had, had some that afternoon in her salad.
“Well, what would you like me to do with it?” I ask her nicely.
“You can stick it up your ass!”
“ANGIE!” I say with a look of surprise, and she breaks out into laughter. I know that I will be a wise ass just like her when I’m her age.
I walk away and Evelyn signals me over with the wave of her hand.
“I don’t want this.” She says, looking at her plate like I brought her a scoop of mud with maggots and worms crawling about it. I pick it up and ask her what she would like instead.
“What have ya got?” I read her all her choices and she asks for the tuna on a roll; the same thing I’m holding in my hand that she said she didn’t want.
“Evelyn, this IS tuna on a roll.” I say while showing her the plate that I just picked up.
“Oh. I don’t want that.” Everyone at her table is used to this. This isn’t out of the ordinary for her, so I keep my cool and offer her dessert.
Dessert. Ann wants her banana split. Lottie wants a “golf ball” of ice cream. John wants fruit with whipped cream. Dot wants her carrot cake to go. Helen will have whatever the person next to her is having. Craig will have ice cream; one thing he doesn’t need pureed. Jean wants a cookie; she doesn’t care what kind. Just like when she orders soup.
“Soup!” she says.
“Would you like to know what kind it is?”
“Nope!” It doesn’t matter to her.
Grapes for Pauline. Rena brought her own dessert. Barbara wants Jell-O and Donna wants vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup.
Dinner’s a pretty hectic hour or so, but just because the residents go off to their apartments, or off to the Chapman room to listen to Mr. Prescott play the piano, doesn’t mean my duties there are done.
I clear with the assistance of my fellow server. We wash the tables, we dry the tables, we wash the chairs, we vacuum the floor. You’d be amazed at how messy some of these people are when they eat. Then we set up for breakfast. Placemat, napkin and fork on the left. A knife, two spoons, and a cup and saucer on the right. A water glass lined up with the knife. Donna’s saucer goes on the left, and Nancy doesn’t believe in saucers, so she just gets a mug. We put out the stacks of jellies, and fill the sugar bowls. Loretta’s table doesn’t get a thing of jellies, because one of the employees found a trash bag of about 450 of them in her bedroom.
This setup it so monotonous. It’s always the same, every single day. I punch in, I pour drinks, I serve food, I clean up, I setup for the next meal, I punch out. Sunrise, I punch in. Sunset, I punch out. The beginning of my shift, and the end. It’s always pretty much the same old routine, but every so often it’s a little bit different. Like the sunrise and sunset. Sometimes it comes later, other times earlier. Sometimes there’s more orange than pink, and sometimes it looks like the sky’s on fire.
It’s about 7:30 and Loretta comes down to sit at her table, ready for breakfast.
“Loretta, it’s 7:30 at NIGHT. Breakfast isn’t until tomorrow morning,” we tell her.
“Oh, I think I’ll go to bed then.” She says and walks off to bother some one else. Not to much later Evelyn comes down looking for her plant. Why her plant would be in the dining room is beyond me, but apparently she ran out of other places to look for it. I tell her I’ll keep my eye out for it, and she walks off to look for it in the Pioneer room, that is, until she forgets she ever had a plant.
It’s 8:00 and I punch out, finally. On my way out I see the flashing lights of an ambulance. They’re frequent visitors. They’re taking out the woman from the other half of the building, the one who carries the doll, but I don’t see it anywhere. I wonder if maybe she asked some one to baby sit for her.
It’s just another shift at Sunrise Assisted Living, and tomorrow night, I’ll get to dress up like a penguin in my white tuxedo shirt, black pants and shoes and bowtie, and do it all over again.