In The Nana Diaries Part One and Part Two, I talked about how my mom recently visited me for a couple of weeks. I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. I love my mom and I am very glad that we got to spend this time together. I had not spent more than a few hours with her for many years. It was time we spent quality time together.
As long as I can remember, my mom has been a reader. I remember her reading True Story magazine since before I entered kindergarten. She read books too, but she really enjoyed those magazines. I remember she would hide them from us so we wouldn’t read them. I never knew why until I was in about fourth grade and I found one of them. I hid it so I could read it and bit by bit, I read a story about a man that had given his wife VD and not known until she came to him crying and saying that she had VD but she didn’t know how she could have gotten it and apologized to him, not ever thinking that he had been the one to expose her to the disease. Of course, he thought back to a business trip and confessed to his wife that it was he and not she that should be apologizing.
When my mom was here, she asked if there is a lot of crime in the Portland area because there didn’t appear to be much in the areas that we traveled. We discussed it a bit and the conversation went from local crime to crime in general. She told me about a couple of young teenagers that had killed a police man not far from her area and that she thought it unfair that they had been tried as adults (they were 13 and 14) and been sentenced to 143 years in prison without the possibility of parole. It was unfair to her because a very similar crime had been committed by another set of youths and they had been tried as juveniles and been sentenced to the California Youth Authority. I don’t know the specifics of either case but I’m quite interested in looking in to both of those cases.
The conversation went on and she asked me if I had heard about the 14 year old girls that “they are kidnapping and abusing then murdering”. I said I had not. She went on to tell me about some of the cases. Eventually, the subject changed or perhaps we arrived at our destination and we stopped the conversation.
When she was packing for her return home, she brought me two novels she had read while she was here and asked me if I wanted to read them. I asked her what they were about and she described one then the other, saying that it was the one she was telling me that tells about the 14 year old girls that “they are kidnapping and murdering”. I said she could leave them for me to read.
After I got back from a trip to take her to the bay area to catch her flight to Riverside County, I picked up the books to put away. The book she read about the 14 year old girls being kidnapped and murdered turned out to be fiction. It isn’t even based on fact! It’s pure fiction!
Now I’m wondering if she is losing her grasp on the difference between reality and fiction! She is getting old and I know that she is losing it in a lot of other ways. It also makes me wonder about the validity of the murder case involving the youths.
It’s difficult for me to see this happening to her. It brings me face to face with the fact that I will lose her one day and with the fact that I too am aging.
I wonder how I am losing it! Maybe I should ask my kids!
i don’t think even we will escape having to watch our parents and then ourselves grow old and feeble… it was never a reality to me until recently either.. and i am just glad i have time to think about it,, and grasp the concept before it really becomes an active part of my life…..
Let’s just hope that it was an easy mistake and not a symptom!
My mom was never big on reading. I remember bringing her one of my stories to read once, and she glanced at it and said, “I don’t get it,” but in Spanish. I wrote lots of weird fiction as a teenager, but the concept was pretty simple. I wonder if she just didn’t like to read? My dad, on the other hand, loved reading. Mostly the Bible.
I’m with Jackie, maybe it was just a mistake? Some of that fiction is based on fact. Just look at all those CSI shows. Sometimes they take stuff from real crimes and make it “fiction”.
If that was the only thing you noticed, it’s probably nothing serious. There are many people who confuse fact and fiction when it’s well written.
That reality came home to me recently too, when we lost my dad’s younger brother.
Actually, she confuses a lot of things; forgets even more; and invents some things, I think the inventions are to cover up memory loss.
I had a great time with her, perhaps because I appreciate that it’s downhill from here.
I enjoy your blog, but I have a hard time reading it with the dark background. Would you consider modifying your feed to be full instead of just a tease?
Crisatunity…How do I do that? I didn’t set up a feed at all. I think it was done automatically by WordPress so I have no idea how to change it.
Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?
Okay, I changed the reading settings to Full Text instead of Summary. I think that will change it. I don’t use Readers so I didn’t know that it was a problem. Thanks for letting me know, Crisatunity!