Before I ever had a job, my father passed along to me his view of work.

“Anyone who works at a job they don’t like is an idiot.  There are hundreds of jobs out there, so why do one you don’t like?”  Okay, this was in the Sixty’s, and he was a drop-out from his gray-flannel generation.  Today, we work where we can.  But at fifteen, I took his advice to heart.  After all, the man was a genius, or so he said.

Because my main work is writing, I’ve been free to lead an interesting life, traveling sideways through it rather than looking up some ladder or following prescribed paths to goals.  I’ve ended up here, caregiving and writing, finally settled after a lifetime of adventure.  I’ve arrived with a treasure, the honed version of my father’s advice, which I apply to everything – work, play, and people.

Whatever I do, or whoever I do it with, if it is not absolutely delightful, I will not do it again.  Friends who know I’m not into poetry will probably want to point out that that sentence could perhaps be parsed into a poem.

My work life lately passes for delightful.  Just enough, not too much.  Having a say in the business, having great co-workers.  And the clients! The dancer, the writer, the actress.  I am honored to serve these artists.  Then, once a week, I have a date with a dog lover, whom my dog loves, and we three delight in each other for three hours. Clients who are almost neighbors, clients who are old friends.  A mother-daughter household that mirrors my daughter-mother homelife. My bookend ladies, for whom I clean, once or twice a month, generationally indentical in the habits of their lives, and yet one is staunchly Republican and the other a dedicated Democratic.  They both amuse me, respect me, and educate me.  Several wise and silly ninety-year olds.  They keep me young.

When there are so many people who need companions and helpers, (“allies,” as one of the artists has named my role), why would I work for anyone who is less than absolutely delightful, or who thinks I’m not a delight, myself?   Here and there, I might spend a few hours with someone who is only barely delightful, to earn a coin to buy a fantastic new pen (or laptop), but otherwise I’m sticking to my to my hard-earned self-counsel.  This pretty much means I won’t be writing any more poems.

Whatever I do,

with whomever I do it,

if I’m not absolutely delighted,

I will not, not, NOT! do it again.

Family caregivers can follow the lead of professional caregivers by practicing good self-care. This includes:

• Asking for help when you need it!  Arranging respite care so you can get a break.
• Getting enough sleep, especially when you are not feeling well
• Getting good nutrition – a healthy and sensible diet
• Keeping your regular medical and dental check ups
• Taking time for regular exercise
• Practicing stress reduction techniques – yoga, mediation, exercise, etc.
• Spending time with friends and family in activities that bring you joy

All well and good; I’m on it.  But as a professional caregiver who is also caring for a self who is an artist, I have a few more things I have learned to do to care for my writer soul.

• Work as much as possible with clients in whom I can take delight, who have interests, passions, and experiences with which I can deeply identify.
• Claim a day off, regularly, weekly, religiously.  Take it, use it.  Say no to work on that day. Stay home, play with the dog, garden, write.
• Diversify exposure to age groups, hang out with little kids and teenagers as well as old folks and sick folks. Keep attuned to the sameness and differences of people at different stages of life.
• Let go.  People die, people move away, people forget who I am.  All in the circle of life.
• Monitor the size of my tribe.  Somewhere I’ve heard that the natural size of tribes maxes out at 150 people.  Starting cold, in fifteen minutes, I made a list over 150 people whom I see, pray over, work with, deal with on a personal level in any given month.  Given a few hours, I can add a lot more people whom I would grieve were they lost. Given that I think of myself as a hermit, this is probably too much and explains some occasional grumpiness.
• Follow the natural seasons; listen to frog songs, watch the moon.
• Sing and dance.  For me, singing can be a chant and a barefoot walk in the grass definitely counts as dancing.

So, my list is not for everyone, but I’m glad to share it, especially with my 150 tribe members, which includes all of the COL caregivers and a lot of clients!

Before I say more about this book, I should tell you about the top shelf of the bookcase near the chair where I write.  It hold twenty books, all written by someone I know personally.  In the few least familiar cases, the authors might not remember me, despite having spent a good part of a day hanging out with me at some event (perhaps over twenty years ago.)  Most are dear friends.  Sushawn Robb is my sister.

The Women’s Building, four stories high, in the Mission District, is covered with the Maestrapeace mural, also four stories high, the largest mural in a city full of them.  As a visitor to my sister’s city, the enormous art has always impressed me; I thought it was the most interesting thing about the Women’s Building.  Not so.

This history of the Women’s Building is not architectural, although interesting details do surface (a hidden room discovered, the challenges of owing an old building, the effects and financial after-shocks of the 1989 earthquake.  Interestingly, for me, Sushawn and I were in Pittsburgh together visiting our grandmother during that quake.  The national news obsessed about a crack in a sports stadium.)

This book tells the story of the growth of the collective that took on this project.  The “San Francisco Women’s Centers” sponsored a women’s credit union in SF in the 1970’s, before women had legal rights to credit and consumer loans.  They made collective decisions by consensus, and had the same feminist dedication to diversity, and commitment to providing childcare, that I experienced at a battered women’s shelter, and a NOW chapter, far from SF.  To read about feminism (and of course the lesbian community) in SF is to see in a mirror the same things that affected activist women everywhere in this country over the past forty years, including the complications of friendships and relationships. The personal is political.

Eventually, with the responsibility of the building, the collective “grew up,” taking on non-profit status, and administrative headaches.  Hiring and firing directors, evicting an Irish bar from the building, the debt growing and the work expanding.  Lessons for coops abound.  Are your Co-op minutes good enough to hold up legally, should you ever need to prove your formal agreement with a tenant (or anyone?)

I began reading this book, because it was written by my sister.  But, as I devoured it and became eager to share it with my current co-op “sisters,” my awareness of our blood tie began to melt away.  Oh, sure the earthquake in 1989, and I do remember the year Sushawn moved to SF, my own life that vagabond year… broke down in my bus and she happened along to lend a hand.  There are those odd personal connections, but they pale, beneath that glorious four story mural, and the sisterhood it represents.

 
I’m recommending this book to all the “sisters” I know.  Hopefully our co-op can host Sushawn for a reading here in Bellingham.   Meanwhile, of course, everything is on Amazon.  website: sushawn.com

Several exciting events marked this meeting.  First, the administrator distributed profit dividend checks to caregivers currently working based on the hours they worked in 2011.  Profit sharing was one of the original goals for COL, so achieving it was a big milestone for the business, and an excellent reward for the caregivers who made it happen.  The administrator distributed mid-month pay checks for the first time, with mechanisms now in place to be able to continue to issue pay checks twice monthly.

A highlight of the meeting was the presentation of membership certificates to three caregivers who have finished paying their $300 membership fee.  Those caregivers are Chris Agnew, Trudy Hodgins, and Catalina Concepcion.  After the midmonth paychecks were distributed, a bit more math revealed that Genée Gillis, one of COL’s founding members, has also paid her dues in full, so we were quite happy to honor her as a dues-paid member.

The members (all caregivers currently employed) unanimously elected two new members, Catalina Concepcion and Nikki Kilpatrick to our Board of Directors.  They join Alice Robb, Charlene Law, and Kathleen English to serve the coop in the coming year.  The other question on the ballot was whether to pay a small stipend to board members.  This was unanimously approved.

In 2011, the board established a strong momentum, partly due to training from Holly ONeil on organizing and prioritizing the tasks necessary to keep our business thriving.  With the growth of the board, and additional skills and passions, we’ll accomplish more next year.

Everyone at COL has a voice in the business.  All contributions to the growth of the business are respected and appreciated.  As the membership grows and the wealth of enthusiastic ideas continues, the board will be listening to our members, working to achieve results that benefit everyone, including our employees, clients and the larger community in which we live.

Food is often been part of COL’s best meetings; this year’s feast was prepared for us by the Community Food Co-op.  The delicious, healthful, and plentiful meal was a way of giving care back to the caregivers, who provide sustenance and support to a large group of clients with many diverse needs.  Over the meal, conversations developed, touching on topics including health, hobbies, shared clients, and COL history.  We talked about our pets, our children and our aging mothers.  Old friendships were renewed and new ones begun.

As we got ready to leave, a new caregiver asked “How often do we have a meeting like this?”  Annual meetings happen every year, and next year’s may be even more of an event, but there will never be another one like this, our first profit making year!

Over the past few days, I’ve been delighted to let myself get lost in Wendy Lustbader’s new book, Life Gets Better.  I first encountered Wendy and her books at caregiver conferences about twenty years ago.  When I met one of my favorite elders, a Quaker lady named Billy Vincent, we bonded quickly once we knew we both had Wendy’s book Counting on Kindness, Dilemmas of Dependency on our bookshelves.  I inherited Billy’s copy and I share it with other Circle of Life caregivers. I re-read it just last month.  Billy and her family allowed me the privilege of being a caregiver for her sweet husband Tad during his years at home with Alzheimer’s.  Within a few days of meeting Billy, I said to her, “I feel like I’ve known you all my life.”  Billy said, “That’s what Tad says too!”

My elder care life and Wendy’s books have always been on the same shelf in my brain.

Wendy talks and writes about older folks in ways that resonate with me, echoing my own experiences and attitudes. It is rare to find someone who understands and can articulate the precious knowledge that old people are people first and that aging is not a disease but in fact can be a wonderful part of life.  Now, with Life Gets Better, I have advanced into new territory.

This is going to sound silly coming from a grandmother of six, but in the course of reading Life Gets Better, containing stories about elders, many about people in their fifties, I suddenly thought, “Wait, this is me, this is my age group.  I must be an elder!”  Did I finally become an elder when I wasn’t looking?

Since my early childhood, when my favorite people in the world were my Great Aunts, Alice and Jean, I have wanted to be an old lady, like the two of them.  They had a fun life, and the best laughs.  Their old age was far more appealing to me than my grinding childhood.  Having surrounded myself with old people for the past thirty years, I’ve felt like the perpetual young person. My attitude toward age has never been oriented toward the usual goal of being “ageless,” because how then would  I ever achieve that blessed state of being like my great-aunts?

Life Gets Better includes lots of stories about how and why elders are so much happier and fulfilled than the young can ever understand.  In the Epilogue, I found one of those Wendy lines that resonates so deeply with my life.  “I became old when I was young.”  Exactly!  Awareness about aging has certainly changed and improved my experience of my continuing life.  My lack of fear about aging however did keep me from recognizing that somewhere in the past ten years or so (as I approach sixty), I crossed into sacred territory, becoming the age-full being I always wanted to be. (I know, the ninety-somethings still scoff at my new found elderhood, but I will catch up, hopefully, eventually.)

Thanks, Wendy for sharing your life and work.  Anyone who doesn’t know about Wendy Lustbader and her books should go find them, right now, before any of us get much older! (www.lustbader.com)

Over the past twenty-four hours, I have been hearing on the local radio news broadcasts that Robert D. “Bobby” Johnson, a 72 year old man with early stage dementia, has been missing in downtown Bellingham since Saturday, January 21.

I don’t know Bobby, but I am “holding him in the Light,” as the Quakers say.

I’m hoping he’s been restored to his family by now.  How frightening for all of them.
If Bobby is still missing, I want to know how to help in the search.  This afternoon, radio announcers called for people in a certain neighborhood to search their yards and out buildings.  I’m listening now to every newsbreak, hoping he showed up in someone’s garage.

For Photo and newspaper report: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/01/26/2368141/police-looking-for-72-year-old.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy

About twenty years ago, I got a call as a caregiver from my supervisor at the agency where I was employed.  There was an emergency need for someone to go spend the night with a lady, “Anne,” at an Assisted Living facility.  Anne had Alzheimer’s, and had been sent to a doctor’s appointment on a paratransit bus.  At the end of her appointment, she went downstairs to the lobby to wait for her ride home.  Before the bus arrived, she wandered off, on a Friday afternoon.  Police and family searched for her, and located her, dug into a pile of dirt at a construction site, on Sunday afternoon.  The family was exhausted and the Assisted Living would not allow her to remain in their facility without supervision.  I went for the night.

Ann’s only memory and concern about the weekend was that she did not enjoy being checked out for hypothermia at the local hospital, citing a strong prejudice against “the nuns” working there.  We have a Catholic hospital in our town, but the nurses have not been nuns for quite awhile.  Ann’s son was especially exhausted from the search.  He told me he was furious with the local police because they told him to go home, that it was unsafe for him to be in the downtown alleys at 2 a.m.  Their insensitivity to the potential of danger to his mother really stuck in his craw.

Meeting Ann and her family stuck with me, and became the seed for the novel I am almost finished writing.  After living with this story so close to my heart for so long, I can’t help being a bit obsessed about Bobby.  What are the police doing? What is the family doing?  What is the media doing?  In my novel, I despair over the lack of help from the media in Seattle hunting for my fictional “Annie.”  As a writer, I’ve worried that I am overdoing that.  But now reality bears me out.  In this day of tweets and facebooks and instant media, why are we a week late in organizing a good community search?

For children, we have Amber Alerts.  A child would not be lost a week before we asked people to start looking.  In Texas, they have “Silver Alerts.”  Something to work toward?

You don’t have to be a politician or bigwig CEO to make important decisions. We little people have to make crucial choices too.

Friday night: Washington State has been snowed in for a week.

I was unable to get out to my clients. My caregiving wages aren’t impressive, and I worked zero hours this week. In some ways, I don’t mind. I saved money not buying gasoline or extra groceries. I wrote four chapters, about 7000 words, on my novel, so I’m a happy snow bunny. Well,  except that I got a sore throat, body-wracking, headachey cold in the middle of the week.

I’m disappointed.  I’d volunteered to work a shift at the local severe weather shelter, on the women’s side, and couldn’t get my car out to go. There’s a homeless woman in the novel I’m writing, so I was hoping to do some harmless eavesdropping on shelter life. Life is research.  But, my car has coolant problems, to start with. Then, the hood froze shut. I couldn’t even check the anti-freeze. Then, I got sick.

The rain has set in, and the temperature is rising. The weather people say the snow will melt and the roads will clear overnight. My co-workers have been putting in extra heroic hours covering shifts with our clients. Now, one of them needs Saturday evening off to take care of a sick grandchild. Another certainly deserves Sunday afternoon off from a different client. I could use the income on payday. How sick am I?

Should I go to work or not? I must decide soon.  But it’s not so simple as in other work settings.  Like I say, in many contexts, “We’re not selling toasters here.”  Toasters can’t catch a cold.  One client is signed up with Hospice, living with a daughter who loves him fiercely through his dementia decline. The other client has breathing issues. Working with these men requires physical closeness – lifting, toileting, feeding. I have missed these guys over this past snow-bound week.

In the morning, I will have to call my co-worker about tomorrow evening. I feel better tonight than last night. By morning, maybe I will be well enough to commit to that evening shift. If the sore throat is gone, if the coughing is under control… If need be, of course, I and my workers will put our needs aside for the safety of our clients.

To be continued…

Wednesday evening: I’m back to work with clients tomorrow morning.  I got four more days to write and a day to catch up on errands.  As for the decision, I cheated.  Friday night, one of the co-workers called, heard me croak out “hello.” He said no way could I work with his client.  Another caregiver covered Sunday. The grandma co-worker got another family member to sit up nights with the grandson.  Thanks, COL team. Another sneaky ace up my sleeve: my housemate.  She’s 78, and has strong opinions.  “You’re too sick to go work with people,” she insisted.  Thanks, Mom.

Section One Chapter headings:

• Different Missions, Different Agendas, How the Aging Process Affects Communication.
• The Need for Control.
• Legacy, The Need to be Remembered.

Just as we have different psychological missions and drives earlier in life, elders have their own important drives.  They need to continue to be in control of their own lives.  They need to organize and pass on the important events and lessons of their lives.  Understanding and respecting these drives and how they affect us as we age has been a big help to me in communicating with my elder friends (and COL clients.)

From this base understanding, Mr. Solie proceeds to show us “The Everyday World of Older Adults, How it looks, How it feels, How it sounds.”  He talks about the predictable dilemmas of getting older only after addressing what he calls the “Myth of Diminished Capacity.”  Elders are diminished by our misunderstanding of their lives as much, or more, than by the realities of aging.  The prevalence of our assumptions about aging, that all is in decline, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I have long been a cheerleader for positive aging.  I am not talking about the perky “you’re as young as you think” attitude that denies aging, but rather,  this same attitude that Mr Solie explains and portrays so well in this book.  With aging comes wisdom, experience, and the ability to understand the big picture of life.  We need our elders to share their special stories and perspectives.  For that to happen, we need to learn to listen to them and to speak to them in ways that resonate with their pace and those important psychological drives.

One of the reasons I liked and recommend this book is the practical common-sense advice for establishing communication with elders.  Mr. Solie’s work as a medical director and the CEO of an insurance company gives his advice a real boots-on-the-ground feel.  He comes through solidly on his promise in the introduction to do these four things.

• Appreciate elders’ age-based agendas.
• Minimize the clash with our own non-elder agendas.
• Master easy strategies to facilitate elders’ life tasks.
• Enhance language and non-verbal communication with elders.

How to Say It to Seniors is full of interesting stories and insights. Check it out, try it out.  Spread the word.

For 2012, I am planning to post these blogs twice a month, on the 1^st and 15^th of the month.  I have been writing entries of 500 words.  As a writer, I find the puzzle of that word count to be a good practice.  I have a pile of stories to share.  The short story below about Betsy and Sammy was written for Home Care Association of Washington, (although they did not use it for their calendar, they might post it on their website: www.hcaw.org.)

At Circle of Life Caregiver Cooperative, a lot of exciting things are happening. We are getting ready to celebrate our third anniversary with a profit, and patronage dividends for our workers!  We’ve noticed that national leaders (Congress and President Obama) are working on our issues (support for co-op businesses and caregiver pay.)  Articles in Winter 2012 newsletter, on our website.  Links to information on those topics:

www.campaign.coop to download and read the National Cooperative Development Act of 2011.

www.directcarealliance.org   The Direct Care Alliance is the national advocacy voice of direct care workers in long-term care.

Betsy and Sammy

We sometimes serve two clients in one household, and we are happy to help families in that way.  Last spring, we worked with a unique family: Betsy and Sammy.  Sammy, Betsy’s cat, was the main reason she was so keen to get home after months of recovering from a broken hip at a local rehab facility.

Although she’d worked hard at physical therapy, Betsy wasn’t strong enough to walk alone. She had COPD, and full time oxygen.  Six caregivers provided round-the-clock support to Betsy.  We monitored her safety, helping with showers and dressing. We did the cooking, cleaning, and shopping. We worked with the rehab facility to arrange her discharge. We kept her calendar organized, coordinating her care with a nursing agency, physical and occupational therapists, physicians, the pharmacy, para-transit, and Betsy’s friends. Betsy and Sammy were happy, safe, and together.

Betsy’s first night home was rough. Exhausted, she coughed a lot.  Sammy climbed up onto her bed and stayed all night.  He napped, she coughed, he woke.  She talked and he purred.  She napped, he prowled, she coughed. They were thrilled to be together. After that first night, they slept well, with Sammy curled up next to Betsy. Night or day, Sammy was never far from Betsy.

After six weeks, Betsy had a health emergency. Our caregivers facilitated the emergency hospital admission, remaining with Betsy several days until her POA arrived.  We visited Sammy while Betsy was hospitalized, because Sammy’s well-being was Betsy’s passion and part of our job.

A few blogs back, I said this:  Some people like cats, others prefer dogs.  Some people love to be with babies, or even, I’ve heard, teenagers.  My objective was to arrive at the admission that I love folks with dementia.  True enough.

But I’ve been thinking about what lies behind the little bit of humor alluding to teenagers.  As if it is unbelievable that anyone really enjoys befriending that group of humans which is, according to stereotypes, moody, uncommunicative, mercurial, mysterious, and generally a pain in the kahoochie.  I don’t know many teens, and I’m sure some fit that mold, but I do have one great teen friend who has none of those traits. (Hi Tess I luv u!)  So I know, beyond political correctness, that generalizations, while an easy source of humor, are fairly useless in making important judgments about people.

This applies to elders, across the board.  To list and debate the stereotypes only recognizes them, so I am going to skip that.  What I have seen is that people have different pre-conceptions about old folks, usually based on their early-life experiences.  So, what I want to explain is that just because your own grandma was a sweet cookie-baking baby-kisser, this doesn’t mean every old lady is Mrs. Claus.  Likewise, if your neighbor when you were a kid was ten times meaner than old Mr. Wilson was to Dennis the Menace, you might be surprised to learn that there are old men with soft hearts of  pure gold.

Imagine a classroom of five-year-olds.  You know that each child will have a personality and response to the world that is amazingly unique.  Add about eighty years of experience to those kids.  How would this not make every single one of them even more profoundly one-of-a-kind?

My favorite story about generalizations:  At a church potluck, I met an old guy who used to have an orchard right on the Columbia River.  There was a beaver living nearby in the river, and sometimes it would come out of the water and up into the orchard.  The beaver was large and aggressive.  “He would chase my dogs clear up to the house,” the man said.

Not the shy busy beaver of our nature stories, this cantankerous river creature.  Since then I’ve wondered if there are perhaps some bold mice, quiet magpies, peace-loving wolverines.  This seems no less likely than sweet teenagers or writers who know where to end a story.