A Goofy Poem about a Man in a Nursing Home

When I was 15, I spent my summer charting and dispensing medication, giving insulin injections, and irrigating catheters at my job as a nurse's aide at Glendoveer Nursing Home in Portland. Anyone else find that alarming? At the time, I was too immature to be alarmed; now, I'm just so thankful I didn't kill anyone! The rule was one RN was required to work each of the three shifts. The RN on my shift was a lovely woman named Corbin (her last name, and what she preferred to be called). She really was a sweet lady, but sadly, she struggled mightily with obesity and was too heavy to make it up the stairs to the east end of the building, where the men's ward was. So she taught me to do all things she did.

With no computers, we used physical books to chart patients' medication and treatment. Corbin taught me to look at the chart, determine all the different meds each patient required and at what time, then take the proper pills out of pill bottles and put them in little paper medicine cups and deliver each patient his medication. We had three diabetics in the ward, so she also taught me how to give them their insulin injections, and at 6:00 p.m., they would line up at the nurses' station door for their shots.

I thought I was the absolute coolest doing all this stuff, and I have many crazy memories of my experiences there. One in particular I chose to memorialize in a poem.

Recently, my mom was cleaning out her bookshelf and came across a literary magazine from when I was an undergrad at Willamette University. In it is this poem. I have zero idea what possessed me to submit this poem to the magazine and less than zero idea why they chose to publish it. 

All the other poems in the magazine are serious, heavy, deep, and meaningful, the kinds of poems people discuss and argue about as they seek for hidden connotations and interpretations. Mine is just a goofy poem about a man in a nursing home. It's a true story, embellished just a bit (the FBI and private spies). For the sake of family history, one of the goals of this blog, and also just for a good laugh, here's the silly poem:

I once worked at a nursing home

Its name was Glendoveer.

I had a rare experience

I'd really like to share,

One night when I was working hard

My friend came in to say:

"Has anyone seen Mr. Brown?

I fear he's run away."

"Oh me! Oh my! Oh no!," I shrieked,

"Not dear old Mr. Brown.

He said he had to meet a man.

I'll bet he's gone to town."

We searched the east; we searched the west.

We searched that nursing home.

We searched in every single place

We thought that he might roam.

Mrs. Brown, his faithful wife,

Who lived just down the hall,

Was frantic and hysterical

Which didn't help at all.

We couldn't find him anywhere.

We called the F.B.I.

They begged us please to have no fear;

They'd send a private spy.

We waited not so patiently.

It seemed to take forever.

But finding one so small as him

Is quite a large endeavor.

Finally after hours and hours

We heard the telephone.

They'd found him sitting on a bridge

Quite wet and all alone.

While I can't remember a thing about his wife, all these years later, I can still vividly picture Mr. Brown. A tiny, frail man with osteoporosis, a cute bald head, and glasses, he was one of my favorite patients. By now, he is most certainly dancing with Mrs. Brown in heaven, but I will always remember that night, waiting with Corbin and my coworkers for news of this sweet man, about whom we had grown to care so much.

Surrounding that trailer were miles and miles of dirt!

One year ago in February of 2020, Shulamith and I sat in a white, single-wide trailer, with no masks or hand sanitizer, across from an Edge Homes real estate agent named Chase. Surrounding that trailer was nothing but dirt, miles and miles of brown, rocky mounds of dirt. Chase explained to us the vision for that dirt: a large housing development that included both single-family homes and rows of townhomes. She showed us floor plans and explained the process of bidding for these homes in a ridiculously competitive market that definitely favored sellers. 

Within a couple weeks, Shulamith and Matt had selected a floor plan and put offers on several lots, hoping they would be chosen for one of them. Stressful, much? In the end, they were successful in securing a perfect lot to build their perfect "forever" home. And then it was my turn. Eeeeek! Gerald and I decided to go with a townhome. I've second guessed myself on that decision dozens of times in the past year and continue to do so even today, but I need to stop! There are plusses and minuses to either choice. In the end, for me, it all came down to the yard. I couldn't handle the discouragement of yet another ugly yard, and trying and failing to make it good.

I hate yard work. I suck at it. I also hate the look of a shabby, unkept yard, which is what I always have, no matter how hard I try to take care of it. So while there are clear drawbacks to living in a townhome, I'm hoping this spring and summer, when I'm not mowing and not watering and not trimming and not clipping and not weeding, only to end up with the same ugly yard I had before I started, I will quit wondering if we should have bought a single-family house.

Gerald and I went through the same process of bidding for several units (because there were more bidders than there were available homes) and were ultimately successful in securing the middle unit of a row of townhomes. Shulamith and I think divine providence guided this process, because we had so little say about where, specifically, we would live. As it turns out, I can exit my back door, turn left, walk about 100 steps, and be in Shulamith's back yard. Since moving here two months ago, I've been able to watch the progress of her house from my bedroom window.

Of course, back then, both these houses were only hypothetical. Here in Bluffdale, it was still only dirt. We made multiple trips to Edge developments in Lehi and Saratoga Springs in order to see the the actual houses we were buying, and eventually, construction began here. The process was smooth as silk for me, but Shulamith's house was held up because of issues with the city and power lines. Then there was the giant stumbling block none of us remotely expected when we signed contracts back in February: the global COVID19 pandemic. This left Shulamith and Matt in a small, 2-bedroom apartment, sheltering in place with three little kids.

I am here to report that today, all that ends. First thing this morning, they signed the papers, and we spent the rest of the day moving and putting things away in the Webster-Monsons' new home. We are beyond happy and so grateful and just full of joy that this whole endeavor, which began one year ago, came to this perfect conclusion. It is a dream come true.  

Here are some happy pictures of the happy homeowners!

What is this white stuff all over my house???

Warning! This will likely be a whiny post. Sorry. Sometimes you gotta whine. So remember my unfinished basement, the one that was supposed to be finished by Christmas? Yeah, it's still not finished. How close is it, you ask? I'm not even sure. I think all that's left is paint, flooring, and the bathroom, but who really knows? No one from this company communicates. At all. They simply show up and work some days. But not most days. And we never know ahead of time which days. 

The last time I saw them was five days ago, which brings us to the main point of this post. 

Last Tuesday night, I was upstairs teaching my broadcast class. Most of my online classes are fully asynchronous, but this one is a broadcast format, so once a week I have to actually be online, teaching on WebEx, a Zoom-like platform, for 90 minutes. 

I was upstairs for two hours, and when I came down to start dinner, this:

These pictures don't begin to capture the magnitude of this mess. Fine, white powder (dry wall?) covered my house. We could see it in the air and feel it as we breathed. It was on the appliances, on the dining table, on the kitchen countertops, on the cabinets, on the furniture, and all over the floor. I wanted to cry. I didn't, but I wanted to. Instead, I went to work.

The next day, Isaiah commented, "It seems like you've been cleaning for the last 15 hours straight." No, I slept, but otherwise, yes. 

I'm still cleaning. Not as constantly as I was those first couple of days, but I'm still finding powder here and there, and no matter what I do, I can't get it out of all the creases on the laminate flooring. I'm afraid I'm going to need to hire a professional floor cleaner.

I tell my students to show, not tell, their readers, so I won't tell you how I am feeling about all this.

I'm sure you can guess.