Part 3 of 3 Click here for Part 1

We had no idea what time it was.  I looked through the hole left by the doorknob and I saw that it it had become dark.  But, in the bathroom it was still fluorescent.  There are no windows in my mom’s bathroom.  It is in the middle of the house.  And if there were windows, nobody would have heard us.  Even before my folks added a garage and a house addition, they would have been facing an alley with no traffic.

Time passed, and no calls came from anyone.  My brother faithfully calls my mom at the commercials to talk to her about the shows that they both like to watch.  He didn’t call.  My husband had called and left a message on my phone.  He wasn’t alarmed when I didn’t answer.  He just thought we were busy with something.  Of course we did not even hear my cell ring.  It was in my purse, in the living room.

I stood and leaned on the towel bar at different times.  Then I’d go back to sit in a chair.  We switched back and forth between the chair and the stool.  Then we’d take turns working on the door a while before going back to sit.  We sang songs.  We prayed some more.  Sometimes I would begin to doze while I was sitting and my mom would keep me awake so I would not fall out of the chair.  At one point, I looked through the hole on the door and saw that a new day had begun.

We were starring in a comedy of errors.  And we still laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. But then I began to worry.  Mom is diabetic and has other health issues because of it.  I have epilepsy.  My mom and I had not had anything to eat.  She had missed her medications and so had I.  Her ankles were swelling and she was beginning to flag.  I rolled a rug up and set it on top of an open drawer in the vanity to raise her legs.   I took the two washcloths and got them cold with the tap water.  Then I placed them on her ankles and kept rinsing them to keep them cold.

I began to rub her back and try to keep her comfortable.  At this point I became concerned.  I was worried that Mom would have a reaction to the missed doses of her meds.  I was afraid of having a seizure in front of her, and possibly falling on the hard bathroom floor.

Suddenly, the phone rang.  We got so excited.  It rang and rang and rang.  And then it stopped.  We waited.  Nothing happened.  It seemed to be at least a half hour later till it rang again.  It rang and rang and rang again.

Finally, we heard my brother let himself into the house.  We screamed and screamed!  “We’re in the bathroom!  We’re stuck in the bathroom.”

He came to the door and couldn’t believe we had been stuck in there all night.  From early afternoon the day before until now, it had been twenty hours.  We had been in there for twenty hours!  It took him a half hour to get the door off the hinges.  They were so stuck that they had to be pried apart and he had to use tools to keep each of them open as he pried the next one open.

At last, all of the hinges were propped open.  But the door would not budge.  I even tried flinging my body at it.  It didn’t work.  My brother kept on working on it.  Finally, it came off.  When we examined it more closely, the only thing that had kept the door from opening was a tiny piece of wood about three-eighths of an inch thick.

Of course, he asked us every one of the questions we had asked ourselves so many times during this ordeal. “ Why didn’t you have a phone in the bathroom?”  “Where was your cell phone?”  “Why did you leave the button in the kitchen?”  And then he asked, “Why did you take the door knob off?”  Actually, I thought that was a good idea.  But, never mind that!  He was just upset.

We were free!  We were okay!  And you know what?  It wasn’t so horrible.  It wasn’t even scary, until the end.  One thing was for sure.  If I had to be stuck anywhere, for any length of time, under any circumstance, I could have never chosen anyone better to be with than my mom.  We never lost hope. We never got angry or cross. Most of all, we never lost our sense of humor.  After all is said and done, we actually had a pretty good time.  And now, we have a great story to tell again and again.

Part 2 of 3 (click here for Part 1)

We were stuck in the bathroom with a door that wouldn’t budge.  We looked at each other and realized that we had forgotten to bring her bathrobe in with us.  It just seemed to get funnier and funnier to us.  There were only two towels that were not wet, which my mom could put around her. Thank God she wasn’t cold.  Then we looked around and the telephone my mother always kept in the bathroom was not there.  She had just not gotten back in the habit of putting it in there in the morning like she always did.  She just wasn’t in her normal routine yet.

And then it hit me!  My phone was in my purse on the couch in the living room.  Usually we have two phones and her “button” in the room with us. Now we had nothing, no way of communicating to the world beyond the bathroom.  We both realized this at the same time.  We looked at each other and laughed some more.  I jokingly said, “What’s the worst that can happen?  If we don’t show up tomorrow afternoon for your doctor’s appointment, then people will know that something’s up.”  I had no idea how close it would come to that!

We fully expected my brother to call.  He is really a great son, so attentive and loving.  He watches over Mom like a mother hen.  (And I mean this in the nicest way possible.)  And she loves it!  What mother wouldn’t?  But no call came.

At least we each had somewhere to sit.  There was the toilet and the shower chair.  And we had water!  This was really good news.  Being stuck without these two things would have been so much worse.  Not to mention the fact that one of our seats had dual purposes.  Ha, ha.  The hinges were on the other side of the door.  I decided to see if there was something I could use to unscrew the doorknob.  I rifled through the drawers and found a tiny little screwdriver.  I loosened the screws and the doorknob fell outside the door.  “Good,” I thought.

I looked through the hole and saw the area where I could try to turn the small square part inside the door  so that I could pull back whatever was catching the door into the jamb.  I really didn’t know what I was doing, but I was pretty sure that I was moving in the right direction.  I could see down the hallway where the sunlight was hitting the wall at the end of the hall.  By now, it was probably about 2:30 or 3:00 in the afternoon.

I must have worked on that hole in the door on and off for a couple of hours or more during our ordeal.  Other things we did include: banging on the door with our fists, with a wooden hairbrush and any other hard thing we could find.  I even threw my body at it.  But my mom didn’t like it and she made me stop.

We took turns sitting on the toilet and the shower chair.  We sat across from each other and prayed.  We even danced a few times.  We still laughed and talked and laughed some more.  We kept focusing on the good things.  We did have water and a toilet and somewhere to sit.  These were very good things.  But, most of all we had each other.

To be continued……..

I still having trouble believing that this really happened.  Forgive me if this story jumps around a lot.  There are some “backstories” within my little drama.  And it is all true.  My mother had a pacemaker put in.  Because I was on summer vacation, I was able to be with my mom when she had her operation.  I stayed in the hospital with her and then went to her house for the days following her procedure.

The day before we were to see the doctor  for a follow up appointment, I said to my mom, “Why don’t we get your bath now? Then we will have time to relax before dinner.”  So, we began to get ready.

First, let’s rewind to earlier in the day.  My brother was at the house and he was getting my mom’s cable fixed.  I took the opportunity to go home and get some clothes and a few other things while he was there with mom.  When I came back, my brother was still with the cable guy in her kitchen and my mom was sitting in the living room.  I walked into the living room and set my stuff down on the couch.  I left them there.

After my brother left, we went back into the kitchen. We decided to do her bath.  My mom took off her “button”, (the one you wear around your neck or wrist in case you need help when you are older and living alone, like my mom.)  “Where should I put it?” she asked.  Silly me, I answered, “Why don’t you just leave it here?”  Remember this.  I told her to leave it in the kitchen.

She got undressed and went into the bathroom with me.  She wasn’t supposed to wash the spot where the pacemaker was, but water could run over it from her back.  So I was there to help with the sprayer and make sure she was safe. She was sitting in the shower chair and I was trying to pick up the sprayer and told her to drop it.  When she did, it landed so that it sprayed up in the air directly at me.  My pants were soaked and we were laughing really hard.  I had to take off my pants and put them in the bedroom next to the bathroom.  Then I went back into the bathroom and closed the door.

After her bath, I helped my mom get out of the tub.  We were still laughing as we often do when we are together.  After she dried off I went to the door and turned the knob.  It didn’t open, so I tried again, and again, and again.  We just looked at each other and laughed.  I hadn’t locked the door.  Even if I had, it locks and unlocks from the inside.  So I tried again.

Needless-to-say, I tried again, and again and again and again.  We were laughing even harder now.  I had jokingly said to her during the bath, “Well, now we will have a funny story to tell!” after the sprayer had soaked my pants.  Now, here I was standing in the bathroom with only a shirt and underwear on.  And my poor mom was standing there naked.

To be continued…………

Some time ago, I was just thinking about the positive things that pop into my head whenever I am out and around other people.  It may be in the grocery store, in line at the at the post office, at work, or in a park and I will think, “Wow!  That man is so patient.”  Or, I might see a person who just lights up a room with her smile, or someone who has a sunny disposition.  And at times, I have heard co-workers talk very highly of a colleague when the person is not present in the room.

So one day, I thought to  myself, “Why not tell these people the positive things that I think, or observe, or know about them.  Isn’t it a waste of positive energy to just let it stop there, unexpressed?”  Good things are blessings and I think that they are meant to be shared.  And so, I decided to act upon them and see what would happen.  It was a little experiment.  That’s all.

Of course, I thought there was no way this could fail to be a good thing.  After all, what was there to lose?  But I was amazed by how it made me feel just to think about telling them.  It was really wonderful to think that I would be able to share a little joy with people that I didn’t even have to know.

So the next time I had a thought that was positive, I just flat out said it.  I think the first time  it might have been to a cashier who was handling difficult customers with so much grace and patience.  I just told her that I had observed and appreciated the great job she was doing. The way she was dealing with the rudeness of the people she was serving was truly admirable.  I wish you could have seen the look on her face when I said those words.  She was so surprised and grateful for my appreciation.  I felt like we we sharing a brief moment of connection that was like affection.  I guess you could say it was a feeling of human kindness.  And I am not overplaying what happened.  It was profound.

In our culture, I think we have become very cynical. On top of that, in this world of distractions and busyness, it is hard to just take a moment and breathe, let alone think positive thoughts. But taking that moment to observe the people around us, and notice those good things, is an antidote to the negativity that we often feel.

I did hear a whole room of teachers talk about another teacher who was not present.  They were all so impressed by the job she was doing with her class, working with emotionally disabled students.  So, the next time I saw her, I stopped her in the hall and told her about what people had said about her, and asked if she knew this.  She was shocked and seemed unable to believe me for a moment.  And then she thanked me so much for telling her.  I said that I was just sharing the words I had heard expressed and I thought that she should know.

Every time I do this experiment, I am blessed by the experience.  It makes me happy to be the bearer of good news.  How could it no be so?

Let me introduce myself.  My name is Lora Marie.  I am what my counselor calls a divergent thinker.  My husband, like many men, is a linear thinker.  This has caused some issues in our discussions from time to time, as you can imagine.

I sometimes wonder how people follow the path of my verbal meanderings.  Once in awhile I catch myself in the middle of a mental rollercoaster and think, “Where was I going with this?”  But my friends just follow along and help me find my way back to my original train of thought.  I have some really fabulous friends.  Some of them even tell me that they like to listen to me talk.  I always tell them, “Watch out!  That just encourages me!”  And it does.

This idiosyncrasy of mine causes my husband to go crazy at times because he really does want to understand me.  By the time I come back to his turn in a dialogue we are having, he has this confused expression on his face and says, “I don’t remember what we were talking about in the first place.”  I don’t either sometimes.

My son used to call me “tangent woman” because the whole thing was really funny to him.  He even sang it to me like a little song when I was doing this.  Now my grandchildren just call me “random.”  They think it’s funny too!  That’s okay.  I like being considered funny.

One day I discovered that this behavior was not unusual in my family.  My mother and brother were talking and they were both doing these verbal gymnastic routines  in the same conversation.  They just followed each other in and out of several different topics and ended up completing all of them at the same time.  Wow.  I was impressed.  And to think I had never even noticed it before.

Upon further reflection, I realized that I had seen this pattern before with my dad and his mom (my grandmother.)  They did this flawlessly, and I had observed it all my life. So I guess you could say I came by this naturally.  And you could also say that some men are divergent thinkers too.

So, I have decided to do this experiment, so to speak, and write a blog.  I have no idea whether or not anyone will want to read this.  But what the heck?  Why not?  Let me know what you think!