Mable 2

Besides visiting with Mable at the nursing home, I was also responsible for getting her out and about in the community. This included activities that our Day Treatment program might have. One of the volunteers to our agency owned a home in St. Charles right along the Fox River. Every year she would sponsor an outing at her home that included a cook out and a boat ride on the river. All the clients looked forward to it and so did Mable.

The home itself was set right by the river and the parking was up a hill. I arrived with Pearl in tow and we began our decent down the hill to the event. Mable was dressed in her summer outfit, which was the same as her winter outfit; an overly large trench coat, combat boots, and of course her two drawstring bags.

Mable was a large woman. Clambering down a hill would not come easy to anyone her age and size and it was made more difficult by those two fully loaded bags she refused to let go of. As she headed down, the bags were a kind of ballast to each other – moving her back and forth. This in turn, acted much like the pistons on a steam engine, in that as she headed down she kept gaining speed. She could turn neither to the left nor to the right only forward, faster and faster. There was a line of tall shrubs between the parking and house and Mable was helpless to avoid them. I will never forget the site of her chugging down the hill and straight through those shrubs. I was beside myself laughing.

When I caught up with her – intact and still holding her bags, she scowled at me and uttered a muffled “dat wan’t funny!” I nodded at her and said, "No,I guess it wasn't" and proceeded with her to the event.

Oh – but Mable, it WAS funny…it was very funny!