Chicken and green beans with soy-honey sauce
Today was, on the whole, a good day.
Mum didn’t go to church today: she told me yesterday that she didn’t want to go back until her head is better, meaning not her headaches but her memory issues.
Through a lifetime of conditioning, I know mum doesn’t like to talk about any kind of vulnerability, so she has never talked about her diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. I don’t know if she fully appreciates that it isn’t going to get better. I do know she perceives it as deeply embarrassing, and a lot of her anxiety and loss of confidence stems from that belief.
I also know that I’m not the person to help her with this, but I don’t know who might be. When mum was first diagnosed, counselling was mentioned as a possibility, but I have never heard anything more about it. I’ll add following up on this to my never-ending list of things that need doing, I guess.
Late in the morning, I coaxed mum out into the garden with me. Sadly anxiety won out, and she retreated inside, clutching her chest and, as usual, refusing any of my suggestions of help. (I have experienced similar, crippling anxiety, and know just about every self-help technique around. Even being told by a mental health practitioner to “listen to your daughter1 on this” hasn’t encouraged mum to accept anything I say.)
That short time outside was enough for me to remember all the ways in which our garden isn’t set up for a physically disabled person. My plan to sit on a folding chair and dig into the soil with my fancy long-handled trowel was foiled by soil as hard as a brick, and a lack of anywhere flat enough to safely put my chair.
The local branch of Age UK offers a gardening assistance service, so tomorrow morning I will give them a call and see if they might be able to help me get my new plants into the garden. If they can’t help, maybe Island Roads could lend me a jackhammer to dig the necessary holes instead!
This afternoon my gallbladder, after months of quietly doing its job, decided to give me a poke in the side. I therefore pivoted from my planned dinner of chicken quesadillas to a simple stirfry of green beans and the last of the roast chicken, with a sauce of honey, sesame oil, soy sauce, a small amount of miso paste, garlic and ginger.
I was pleased with the balance of flavours. Mum thought it was improved by the addition of a generous quantity of single cream poured over the top. I just keep telling myself – “as long as she’s happy”. 😬
Then we watched the Soccer Aid match, and mum said it was “OK”. I asked if that meant I could watch more football next season, and got an unconvinced-sounding huff in response. Oh well, it was worth a try!
And with that I will leave you, as my eyes keep threatening to shut by themselves. Goodnight, all, and well done the England team! 🏴🦁🦁🦁
- I’m non-binary, but the Isle of Wight is, as in most things, ten to twenty years behind the rest of the UK in terms of recognition of different gender identities, so I usually just go with ‘daughter’ to avoid a long and confusing explanation. ↩︎
Is it pineapple sponge today? 