(Originally posted in Facebook on August 20, 2019)
I’m always amazed how important routines and patterns that he can depend on have become to M. Not even big routines, like the alarm going off at 5 am and dinner at 6 pm . . . but silly routines like being able to watch a baseball game (almost) every evening.
We live in a part of the country where the team we see most often on television is the Atlanta Braves (yay!) That’s good news for me, not so good news for M – a Phillies fan. But he enjoys watching a game every evening. Last night, it really threw him off that the Braves were off for the night and we didn’t have a game to watch. I could tell that he was at a loss and didn’t know what to do with himself.
Thunderstorms were rolling through the area all evening or else I would have suggested going for a walk.
In positive news, when we were at the airport to pick up our younger son on Sunday, I brought a find-a-word puzzle book for M to work on. He wasn’t too impressed with it when I brought it out of my purse, but he started looking over the puzzle on the first page and, after a few minutes, found his first word and then kept on looking for the next. I had my Kindle and was reading, so I didn’t try to help him, but it was killing me. When I glanced over, four or five words jumped out at me that he could circle, but I kept my mouth shut. It’s a game for him to work on . . . not for me. It kept him occupied until our son arrived.
Sunday afternoon, I had a chance to speak to our younger son and tell him about the visit to his dad’s HR office. He seemed a little more accepting of what I was telling him than he had in the past. He also said that his older brother had talked to him about his dad and that he (the older brother) was looking ahead to how the future was going to be with the progression of their dad’s illness. Good to know, but I wish older son would share his thoughts with me!
I’m just the mom/wife here.