All About Henry

The care is full on these days.  Henry now has pain when he is moved. After 3 months in bed it is not surprising. Lying quite still is fine, but attending to him, the slightest movement causes him to cry out.   How to change him and the bed and apply cream and all that rigmarole without moving him?  Happily massage to his legs brings a little comfort.  This morning, a helpful friend told me of a family member who lay in bed for 11 years.  Forgive me if I do not discuss my feelings at this point.

I am getting a break! When a London friend complained of back pain and I thought, I should be there, I made a decision. How irrational is that. But hey, if it is going to be 11 years I am glad and have no regrets. I really need to eat Chinese/Indian/Italian food and see movies and the theater and the Giacometti and the rest.  Plus bring some Polish cheer to my back suffering friend.

Henry is slowly going down, but Stefan will step in and help, and if they need three, then big Stefan can help too. There is a problem in that Henry and Halina do not understand each other, so my Stefan has to be much more around to interpret, if nothing else. When Henry needs a blanket because he is cold while she does stuff, or she wants to tell him something, they each struggle.  For all his languages, none of which is Slavic, it is a sick joke he should end up with a mono-lingual Ukrainian looking after him.  But she could not be kinder nor gentler so, you can’t have it all.

Life moves on chez Majka/Federer.

It was a huge National holiday this last week, with most of the country taking off from Friday till Thursday, at least. May Day on the 1^st, then May 3^rd which is Polish Constitution Day…  Poland was the first European country to draw up her own constitution, May 3, 1791. Rightly, the day is joyously celebrated. Sadly, to express independence with their own constitution so dismayed their neighbours that the following year Germany, Russia and Austria instituted the 1^st of three partitions and Poland disappeared from the map for 123 years. But it came back, strong as ever. I am full of admiration for the Polish people; in my view they are indomitable.

Trying to study in between…. Uphill but it is coming. Never fails to amaze me how complicated the language is.  I was taught today about the various verbs for go.  12 so far: go up, go down, go round, go to, go from, go away, go through……. You get it. And they ALL decline into 8 cases. They say learn a language in old age. Certainly more productive than crosswords, but this is overdoing it a bit.

Beautiful, gorgeous, bathroom at last. All done with regular Polish tiles, too, by regular Polish builder! Is not complete, you can see, but getting there. I stuck my neck out with the yellow but I love it, especially padding in there in the middle of the night half blind with sleep.

I shall soon be playing around with colours to have the whole house painted. Looking forward very much to killing that interminable white.