Location: Lakeview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center
Date: Sunday, February 02, 2014; 2:30-4:00 pm
I had not signed up for this one
and Alisa told me to just come with Wilson.
He was going to pick me up and asked me to get oven mitts. This would be
a strange request coming from someone else, but hey, this is Wilson! We picked up Amanda and arrived at Lakeview Nursing,
to find Alisa was using a hairdryer on a candle. Our task today was to make decorative
candles. The idea was to create designs, or write something, on colored - or transparent - tissue paper; wrap it
around the candle, and then put a wax paper around it. After this it would be melted using the blow
dryer, so that the tissue paper gets embedded inside the candle. Once the wax paper is peeled, it is as if the
candle was molded with the design on it.
Since the candle needed to be held in one hand while blow drying, we
required the oven mitts. The skill was
really in making the design on the paper. Not
one of my strong points.
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| Love was in the air |
We had many seniors in attendance and that was fantastic. It also
meant that all of us would be needed today.
I saw a new lady resident and went over to chat with her. She said that she would make a candle for her
daughter and decided to use a design with grapes on a vine. I said that it was a fascinating choice and
then she mentioned that it was the exact design as one on my oven mitts. Well, a multi-tasker for sure! My buddy Elmer was there and I told him that
I was going to make him work, to which he finished, “like a rented mule”. I
asked what he wanted to put on his candles and he said something which was a ‘Valentine’s Day’ theme; with
hearts. Aah, another romantic! There was a volunteer at his table, and so I
decided to go elsewhere; which was not a problem since Emma had come in.
I went over to her table and Fran
joined us as well. I asked Emma how she was and she replied that she was doing
fine. I asked what design she would like
to put on her candle and she said that flowers would be nice. Plus she wanted pink color, which wasn’t a
surprise. Flowers did present a problem
of sorts for me, since I wasn’t good at making those. But I did cut some petal like things, while
Fran was cutting hearts. I wrote, “Happy Valentine’s Day” and then took
that, flowers and the hearts to the back of the room where Alisa was using the
hairdryer to make the candles. Since we
had only one dryer, there was a queue to get the candles done and I put mine on
the side to wait. I went back to Emma’s
table and asked her if she remembered that we had made ‘Valentine’s Day’ cards a year ago.
As usual her response was that it was nice. Well, considering that we
were talking about romantic things, I asked how she had met her husband and she
said something about high school, art classes and singing. Now, she may have been confused since I had
shown her the video of our ‘Christmas
Carols’ project and we were doing arts, but it not a bad story to believe
in.
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| This is also on my oven mitt! |
I went back to where the new
resident was making her candle and she had done a terrific job with her grapes
design. She was feeling please, plus she
was in a mood to talk. I learned that
her name was Holly and despite being 89 years of age, she was in terrific
spirits. She told me how her parents had
met and it was a lovely story. He dad
had been injured in ‘World War I’ and
was in the hospital where her mother was visiting her Uncle. She said that the moment her parents had
looked at each other and their eyes had met, there were sparks and within a
year they were married. She said that
her mom had been an opera singer and never had a more conventional job,
something for which she was criticized in those days. I asked if her father cared and she said
no. Then there was no problem I
said. Holly was the oldest of 13
children, but many did not survive, including 2 sets of twins. In the end only 3 of the girls had made it. Holly said that her youngest sister was born
20 years after her and since their mom had died soon after, she was the only
mother her sister had known. She said
that recently her sister had received an anonymous letter that Holly was not
born to her parents but was adopted. She
said that it may well be true since with red hair and fiery temper, Holly was
very unlike her sisters. I asked if it
mattered who her biological parents were and Holly said that only the ones who
raised her matter. Well said, I told
her. I then asked Holly how she had met
her husband and she said that he really wasn’t a nice man and she was trying to
forget him. She said that her true love
had died overseas and she had met this guy, who was handsome, but also a
womanizer and an abuser. This side of
him had come out only after they had been married and it seemed that he had
also abused their daughter. When her
youngest son had told her about that, she had left with her kids and never seen
him again. She said that he later died a
painful death and she could care less.
 |
| Emma's candle was ready |
Despite this, Holly was a great
spirit with a lot of love for life. She apologized
for boring me with her stories and I said that on the contrary it had been
fantastic. I could have stayed for hours
listening to her, but time was almost up.
Alisa was working fast, but there were still a lot of candles yet to be
done. We quickly got Holly’s candle
ready and then moved on to others. There
was no way that we would have skipped Emma’s with the ‘Valentine’s Day’ coming up and so we made it and gave it to
her. I helped with the clean-up, though
Alisa was going to stay back and finish all the candles. She apologized for the complexity of the project,
though we said that it had been a lot of fun.
Plus, it’s not all about the arts and crafts either. It’s about socializing with the residents and
time spent with Holly and Emma had been much more valuable than with a
hairdryer.
*All the client's names have been changed in order to respect their privacy
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