My fourth week at the nursing home

Hi there!
I moved to a new place last Sunday. Now I've been trying to settle down here. My new place is in Upper west side of Manhattan, 5 minutes from the nearest subway station. it takes me 1 hour and 15 minutes to commute to the nursing home, not so bad. So it couldn't be better. I think I'm lucky.


On Monday, it was a "same-question day".
People I met all asked me the same question, "How was you mother's day?" ummmm. Yes, we have Mother's day in Japan. But it's different here. On Sunday, restaurants are full of reservations, full of mothers and children. Flower shops are full of flowers, much more than usual. Many people traveled to mothers' place on the weekend. And Monday, everybody asks the same question, "How was your mother's day?" I had nothing special. I wrote a letter to my mom who lives in Japan. Actually it was my first time. I don't celebrate Mother's day, Father's day or even our own birthdays. We would bring some gifts when we visit our parents but don't celebrate the particular days. Here, everyone seems to do the same. Shops, restaurants encourage people to do the same. What if you don't have mother? What if you don't have any woman in your family? What if you hate your mother? It made me think a lot. I myself don't have father. Well, I have father so I was born. But I don't know my father's face because my parents got divorced when I was a small baby. Then I lived with my mother for a few month and started to live with mother's friends one after another. My mother didn't and doesn't want me to meet my father, to ask questions about my father. Now I'm glad because I have my father, who is my husband's father. OK, I'd tell about him when I'm asked about my father on Father's day, next month.


On Tuesday, originally we have Bible Study in the afternoon, from 1:30PM. Ieva told me that second Tuesday is special because we have Salvation Army people coming over and they do the Bible Study from 11AM. But a problem is they hadn't come here for the past two months and the contact staff can't contact them since the last time they came. So Ieva was asked to do it in case of they didn't come.

They didn't appear as we expected. We were going to do it from 11AM. Just before then, a phone call rang. It was from a nursing staff. They said they want to do a game instead of Bible study from 11. Ieva told me that the reason might have been a number of non-English speakers are there, so they wanted to choose one that was easy to understand for them. Bible study schedule was changed to 1:30, turned back to the very original schedule, hummmm.

On Thursday, we had a church service in the afternoon, from 2:15. Again I realized how difficult it was to prepare for it in advance. We expected a man coming. He used to be here as a resident. He became well and now lives another facilities where you can go out freely. He said he was coming. Everybody who knew him was looking forward to hear from him. He didn't come.

We expected another woman. We prepared a special scripture phrase typed and photocopied to share the phrase. She didn't come.

We expected a woman who told us she would bring her relative baby. We thought everybody would love to see the baby. She didn't show up.

I know they had respectable reasons. But I realized the difficulty of preparation.

However, we had a very good time. Some of the resident had their family visiting them. It was crowded in the service. For the first time, I sang "The Lord's prayer" with everyone. The song has wide range of notes from low till high-G. I was so glad to see everyone's shining eyes as I conduct them to sing together, standing in front of the piano.

After all, we were had a blessed time altogether!