a good day

I went with my daughter today to visit my brother and he was in a really, really good mood, just bursting to tell me about his week.  It turns out they had a bake sale at the nursing home where some of the clients helped bake (he made blueberry muffins and brownies) the merchandise.  Then he proudly told me he had won 6 times in a row at some kind of dice game.  Over lunch at Wendy's, after some prodding, we finally figured out he had been playing craps.

The staff seems to really like him, and they seem very kind to him, this is so different than the last two nursing homes he was in.  I was telling my husband when I got home how wierd it feels not to feel guilty about him or going on vacation.

We did have an interesting experience when we came in to pick him up.  He can alway be found in a fairly large activity room, when they are having an activity, it is packed by seniors and others in various degrees of disability, and only a few, besides him, are not in wheelchairs but on walkers.  So we walk in, the room is packed, and we hear Klezmer music being played on a boom box, the kind of music where you just need to sway or move around in time to the music.  But everyone (including my brother) is just sitting there with blank expressions on their faces, I wouldn't exactly say they were rapt, there was no sign of pleasure, really no sign of movement at all.  It turns our we walked right into the Jewish Saturday service.  My brother has never gone to temple since my parents had us go as teenagers for two years, so this was kind of a surprise for me.  The rabbi told me that my brother was participating, whatever that means.  Later, thinking about it, it probably shocked him that I would interrupt a service, but I didn't even know what was going on until it was too late.  As we were walking out the door (it takes a while to get my brother prepared) the rabbi mentioned that there was going to be a Passover service the Sunday of Passover.  Since I have no idea when Passover is, I asked him what the date was (he told me, I have since forgotten.)  I wonder what the rabbi thinks of all this.  Organized religion is just not my thing, but if it keeps my brother busy, it's ok with me!