On Sunday we took my Grandma out to an estate called Hartwood Acres where they hold a festival of lights every year for the holidays. It’s a windy, 3 ½ mile drive through the property and there are all these elaborate light displays and a couple LSD flashback inducing tunnels of lights. There's also a few sponsor light displays, yuck can't they be happy enough with a tasteful sign at the end? In the beginning Owen got all excited, 'That's the news display!' pointing at the blue 4 logo for WTAE. One section has elaborate light displays for the twelve days of Christmas, we didn’t catch on to it last year until we saw the three hens standing in front of the Eiffel tower. So we had the whole family packed up in the new car, one of the reason’s we got it since it can seat six, me in the last row, the kids in the middle and Toby and Grandma up front. My grandma is in an assisted living facility for people with age-related memory problems like Alzheimer’s and dementia, she is very sharp for someone closing in on 92 but her short term memory, especially keeping track of time, is just shot. So throughout the whole 45 minute drive my Grandma kept asking Toby ‘how much longer is it?’ or ‘have you ever been to this before?’ or ‘are we almost through?’ while Owen kept lamenting, ‘this is gonna take forever.’ Oona just looked out the window and pointed at everything and the kids, Owen's laments aside, were so good Grandma kept forgetting they were even in the car. Poor Toby really handled everything well. He never loses his patience or gets annoyed by my Grandma constantly repeating things. I felt awful in the back seat thinking it was a bad idea to bring Grandma there because it was in the early evening and she tends to be worse as it closes in on evening and maybe all the lights in the dark and the repetition, I was worried it might have been like torture for her, not knowing if minutes or hours had passed. But when we dropped her off and I took her to her room she kept talking about how nice it all was and that she was just amazed by the sheer size of it and today when I stopped in to see her the hairdresser there said she kept talking about going to see the lights – so I guess it was all worth it in the end.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
festival of lights
On Sunday we took my Grandma out to an estate called Hartwood Acres where they hold a festival of lights every year for the holidays. It’s a windy, 3 ½ mile drive through the property and there are all these elaborate light displays and a couple LSD flashback inducing tunnels of lights. There's also a few sponsor light displays, yuck can't they be happy enough with a tasteful sign at the end? In the beginning Owen got all excited, 'That's the news display!' pointing at the blue 4 logo for WTAE. One section has elaborate light displays for the twelve days of Christmas, we didn’t catch on to it last year until we saw the three hens standing in front of the Eiffel tower. So we had the whole family packed up in the new car, one of the reason’s we got it since it can seat six, me in the last row, the kids in the middle and Toby and Grandma up front. My grandma is in an assisted living facility for people with age-related memory problems like Alzheimer’s and dementia, she is very sharp for someone closing in on 92 but her short term memory, especially keeping track of time, is just shot. So throughout the whole 45 minute drive my Grandma kept asking Toby ‘how much longer is it?’ or ‘have you ever been to this before?’ or ‘are we almost through?’ while Owen kept lamenting, ‘this is gonna take forever.’ Oona just looked out the window and pointed at everything and the kids, Owen's laments aside, were so good Grandma kept forgetting they were even in the car. Poor Toby really handled everything well. He never loses his patience or gets annoyed by my Grandma constantly repeating things. I felt awful in the back seat thinking it was a bad idea to bring Grandma there because it was in the early evening and she tends to be worse as it closes in on evening and maybe all the lights in the dark and the repetition, I was worried it might have been like torture for her, not knowing if minutes or hours had passed. But when we dropped her off and I took her to her room she kept talking about how nice it all was and that she was just amazed by the sheer size of it and today when I stopped in to see her the hairdresser there said she kept talking about going to see the lights – so I guess it was all worth it in the end.
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