Tea O'Clock

“I want a cupcake, but I don’t want any frosting on it, scrape it off with a knife.” – Eleanor Brophy

No other quote sums up what Eleanor Brophy seems to be; an enemy of happiness. What better symbol of happiness and joy is there than the frosting on a cupcake? Sure, she doesn’t like things that are too sweet, but the way in which she said it made it seems as if the frosting were somehow “beneath” her. And with a knife, no less, like a cold, surgical extraction; the way a neurosurgeon would remove a tumor.

This quote, however, also reveals just how particular Eleanor truly is. Whether this specificity is her original personality or a result of the damage caused by the stroke (we believe it to be both) is unknown.

Last week, during a visit from the Occupational Therapist, Eleanor had mentioned that she would like to be able to make her own tea again sometime soon and was looking for some instruction and guidance on how to go about doing that, stating that while using her walker she was unable to carry the hot water from the stove to the table in any form, be it tea pot or tea cup. She mentioned that she once made her tea in the mornings and stored it in a thermos for the day. All that tea, made with a single tea bag? And it would stay hot all day long? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

The Occupational Therapist told her that it would be some time before she could do that, but, as if placating her for no apparent reason, asked Eleanor if it would be alright for me to do it for her. Eleanor’s eyes lit up like she just got two social security checks in the mail, her excitement almost palpable, but in her calm, farm raised Canadian accent, simply said; “Yes, that would be fine.”

I didn’t mind this change of pace in the Tea Making Routine, as it would actually be far easier to make tea once a day than three times.  Not that making tea is difficult, but under Eleanor’s watchful eye, one would find her comments about the size of the flame from the gas stove or criticism on how long to let the water boil to be distracting at best and due to her apparently new inability to gauge time, the latter is an interesting conversation.

The following day, I rose at 7 A.M. to find Eleanor getting ready for the day. As I passed by her bedroom door on my way to the kitchen, I could see her sitting on the edge of her bed changing her pants. The ever present walker stood in front of her, the two tennis balls on two of it’s legs acted as a visual signal; despite their low eye-line, you simply can’t not notice them. They’re still far too new and bright for any form of ignorance.

There are times when Melanie and I often see this site as we wake up and fantasize about the walker becoming some kind of Hannibal Lecter type cage, restraining her to the bed until we are able to get her morning meal ready rather than have her shuffle about with it, uttering small complaints about the weather or how many times someone called her on the phone the night before with a tone that’s more commonly used by Anti-Semites.

On this particular morning though, she made eye contact with me as I passed by the door. “Going to fix my breakfast?” she asked.

“Yup.” I replied.

“Wait, I’m not ready yet.”

“Well Auntie, it’s going to take about 10 minutes to set it out.”

“I’m not ready yet.” She shot back at me, the tone in her voice getting angrier.

“I know that, but by the time you finish getting dressed, it will be done.”

“Well I don’t want to eat it cold.”

“It won’t be cold, Auntie. By the time you finished getting dressed it will be ready and warm for you.”

“Fine! Fine! Fine!” she yelled back at me before I entered the kitchen.

The anger she shouted my way was not new, but it was not common (yet), so there was some sense of surprise in my mind before I quickly brushed it aside and continued into the kitchen to start the process of making her breakfast, which consists, every day, of 1 cup of tea with lactaid milk, buttered white toast, homemade strawberry rhubarb and a little less than 1 third of a banana (mashed so 4 out of her 9 morning pills can be crushed and mixed in). The rest of the banana is to be left on the table next to her for her morning snack sometime between 9 and 10:30. Her breakfast is to be served to her with each item on its own plate and two spoons, one for the remaining pills to rest on and one for the strawberry rhubarb to be spooned in with the mashed banana and pills. Any attempt to do this part myself would result in what she would consider a scolding.

The first thing I do when I reach the kitchen is turn on the teapot, which I usually fill with water the night before. I set the thermos next to the stove so when the water is hot enough, I can poor it in with the tea bag and milk. After I put the teapot over a flame, I move to put the toast into the toaster before mashing less than one third of a banana when I hear the sound of walker shuffling along the rug towards the kitchen.

“There’s no way she put her pants, shirt, shoes and socks on that fast.” I thought to myself. And sure enough, she didn’t. She rounds the corner into the kitchen with the speed and agility of a Penguin wearing her bathrobe, or as she calls it, her housecoat, her pants for the day and her slippers; half in her pajamas, half in her clothes for the day. We lock eyes as she slowly makes her way to the table; the shuffling of her walker and slippers making what can only be described as a soft-shoe rhythm plotted out a 4 year-old. She says nothing to me as she sits down at the table to wait for her breakfast.

“I’m not done yet, you still have plenty of time.” I tell her.

“I don’t want to eat my breakfast cold! And you’re not going to wait so I may as well eat it now.” She says back to me. Rather than argue with her over the matter, I let her sit there and watch me finish making her breakfast. Originally, I thought she would realize by watching me that she did actually have plenty of time to finish dressing for the day. However, this process would require self-reflection and contemplating the fact that she might be wrong, two facets of reason that she simply does not possess any longer, and after talking to her family, I don’t know if she ever did.

Whenever you have a disagreement with Eleanor, it doesn’t matter how you handle the discussion, the result will always be the same; she’s right, you’re wrong, and she’ll forget what it is you were disagreeing about the next day. When Eleanor IS wrong, the discussion ends with a two-pronged reaction. The first; the internal prong, is her solidifying her wrong opinion or statement as true fact in her own mind followed what I can only assume to be a few explicit words aimed in my direction but never uttered allowed, because direct confrontation or simply stating a problem she has with you directly to your face isn’t her way, it must be told to you by one of the five other people she tells, whether asked about it or not. The second prong of the reaction is external, and is akin to something along the lines of an involuntary defense wild animals have developed over generations of evolution; the needles of a porcupine or smell of a skunk to keep predators at bay. While Eleanor’s external reactionary defense to ending a disagreement on the losing end isn’t as cool, it is just as much cause for study; her posture changes to an even more Quasimodo-esque position and her face turns into a pout that a child would make, something one might call a “puppy-face”. However, the features of her elderly face beguile any actual chance at the trickery of cuteness and the effect is negated. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this reactionary defense is that I honestly don’t believe she’s aware that she does it.

After I had set the table with everything that wasn’t the tea, I moved to the teapot and lifted it to pour into the thermos. “What are you doing?” she asked in an accusatory tone.

“Making your thermos of tea for the day.”

“No. No. No. It’s too late for that.” She tells me.

“What do you mean too late?”

“You have to get up at 5 o’clock otherwise the whole thing is ruined.” She said with a straight face. “Don’t bother now, it won’t be right.” She added. “Just give it to me in a tea cup.”

For one of the few times in my life, my brain couldn’t process what I had just heard. I simply froze in a state of contemplation and shock. After allowing my brain a few micro-seconds to reboot, I looked her right in the eye; the teapot and thermos still in my hands as I stood in the middle of the kitchen. I made sure to speak in a voice that was loud enough for Melanie to hear down the hall if she was still lying awake in bed but tepid enough not to come across as yelling.

“Let me see if I understand this, what you just said. You’re telling me that if I don’t make tea for the thermos at 5 O’Clock in the morning, it will not come out right? And that despite it being in a thermos, it will lose its temperature at a much faster rate? If I make it at any other time it won’t even taste right. Is that what you’re telling me?”

Eleanor took two seconds for either reflection (doubtful) or to process what I had just asked her.

“Yes.” She said.

I suddenly found myself asking the question “how the Hell did we get to this point?” but stopped before I could even finish the thought because the only thing I could do to keep from explaining everything that was wrong with what she just said was simply to pour the tea into her cup, put the thermos away and rather than start my day, I just climbed back into bed.