fat + salt + sugar + alcohol = pleasure

a diary of my mother's stubborn resistance to accept help

29 June 2025:

On a recent visit with my mother we managed to get a ton of financial chores checked off the list. It wasn’t easy. Ellen clings to her check register. She clings to keeping track of what goes in and what goes out of her account. The problem is, things have been going out swiftly due to the repairs and upgrades to her house in preparation to sell. Three plumbers, landscaper, hauler, electrician, carpenter, painter, flooring, inspections, and on and on. Her check register is as confused as the night sky, digits scattered like stars. She’s frustrated and angry and won’t let go. She yells at me in the car, yells at me over the phone, but is all smiles in the bank! Flirting with everyone! Like I said, we manage.

…

On the last day I took Ellen for a pedicure. It was a flash of genius to bring a grocery bag of old photos along.

Ellen and me, Florida 1980

As we shuffled through—chatting about who was alive, who was dead, where we were, what we ate—any time there was photo of young Ellen, I held it out for the pedicurists.

“Ooh, pretty!” they cooed.

Ellen showed the bud of a smile. Everyone loves being admired, especially my mother. In one photo she was in a bikini and the ladies all va-va-voomed. Ellen lit up!

“Keith, maybe?” she said of one man in the many pictures of Ellen with a man she couldn’t name. Men whom she’d thought maybe, possibly could step in and become my dad, her husband.

“Lots of boyfriends!” the pedicurists exclaimed.

Again she grinned. I held out a photo of her holding a vacuum. “Look, evidence that you vacuumed that one time!” She laughed. “Oh, stop!” Another had her posing on a cliff, the roiling, rocky beach below. “That was in Big Sur,” she said. I reminded her that yes, I knew. I was 8 or so on that road trip. “You were high on hallucinogenics. You almost drove the VW off the road…following sun trails.” The woman beside me nearly spurted Diet Coke from her nose. “My dad did that too!” Now we were all friends. “See?” Ellen said, “I wasn’t the only one!”

…

We went to lunch after. Just two ladies who lunch. Not the resentful daughter reliving an unsolved childhood, understanding that the relationship I yearned for with my mother is over. Nor the mother who in three months has endured many changes—losing her home, her dog, her independence. She read the entire menu and then, sheepishly said, “Is it bad to order French fries?”

Ellen is 85 with dementia. How in the world could it be bad to order French fries? And a mai tai. And creme brûlée. Dear Reader, she ordered all three and tucked right in!

Fat+Salt+Sugar+Alcohol=Pleasure.

In the car on the way home (she probably weighs about 92 pounds) she was feeling the drink. “If you’re 63, Natalie, I’m ancient. No one believes I’m 85.” I gave her the side eye, and asked, how old do they think you are? “26!” She patted her cheeks and added, “It must be the facelifts.” Ellen has had one, two, three—all of which she put on her credit card.

A sheriff drove past and she shrilled, “Sheriff!”

“When I was a kid you used to yell ‘Pig’ when a cop went by.”

“I did?” She howled. “Oh, it was the 60s, it was the times.” She made the clacking sound with her dental bridge that nearly sends me over the edge. “God, I was awful, wasn’t I?”

Often she was. This is not one of those times. “Not all the time, Ma.”

“Turn it up!” she pointed to the radio. She loved this song:

What a thrill to sing together…

…