Christmas Visit

We picked the coldest day of the year to go down to Linda's home town and take her mom out to dinner. It is not always easy to spring a senior citizen from a nursing home, but we convinced the staff that a little cold air wouldn't lay her low. Our son, fresh from fall semester, met us there, halfway along his way home from college, and he helped wheel Grandma out to the car and steady her in.

The restaurant of choice was the local Bob Evans, just around the corner, and I scraped the curb, pulling up as close to the door as possible to minimize the effects of the numbing combo of seven degrees and 25 mile per hour winds. We secured a table and Linda's mom got her usual - a big, seemingly oversized bowl of their potato soup with the bacon and onion sprinkled on top. Linda's mom is a woman of simple needs, so it seems, and potato soup at Bob Evans appears to be one of those needs. William and I opted for the taco salad, and Linda ordered up a raisin pork chop dinner. Good, hot stuff on a cold evening.

We got back to the nursing home and Linda got chatting with a few of the wheelchair-bound along the way, showing them a couple Christmas artifacts of her mom's, like the singing Mr. and Mrs. Claus. The knick-knacks were well received.

Back in the room, we were chatting about this and that when Linda went down the hall to ask about meds or something down at the nurses' station. The thing about Linda is, whenever she takes off somewhere, you are never quite sure what she's likely to come back with. I guess this is part of the excitement of our three-decade marriage. For the most part.

Anyhow, this time she brought back young carolers and their mothers from the local Lutheran church, who proceeded to camp out at Grandma's door and belt out a few verses of a couple of the Christmas standbys. Linda responded with the Mr. and Mrs. Santa routine, and everyone was thanked for their contribution to the Christmas spirit. It felt kind of festive and, for a while, not so much like a nursing home.

Nursing homes used to give me the heebie-jeebies, but enough experience has made me realize they are like other places full of people with needs, which is basically everywhere there are people. While many just want to be left alone, and that's cool, there are others who are reaching out, and who react pretty positively to being reached out to. Again, basically like everywhere else. You may not expect it, but it felt like Christmas in there, safely away from the harsh cold just outside.