Mema has a friend at Woodridge.
Everyone loves Mema and says that she is so sweet,
is always smiling and always ready to help.
But Ruby Toot Toot is special.
Ruby is 95 years old.
She lives down the hall from Mema and looks out for her.
A favorite story she has, is when Mema lived upstairs.
Ruby lives on the first floor.
She keeps her door open all the time.
Her room is painted bright sunshine yellow.
One day she noticed Mema passing her door walking down the hall.
She looked out the door and yelled out
"Where are you going?"
Mema answered...."I'm trying to go home!"
"Well, you live upstairs. Come on, I'll take you."
This happened many times.
Elevators confused Mema.
Someone was always helping her upstairs to her room.
Mema now lives downstairs in the same hall as Ruby.
These two are always together.
Ruby has not lost a step.
In fact, you have to watch yourself around this pistol of a woman.
One time I was listening to a singer with the residents.
I was standing behind the couch where Mema and Ruby were sitting.
Ruby turned to me and said:
"If I were twenty years younger, I'd grab you and cut a rug to this music!"
She then leaned over to Mema and said:
"That would make me 75...but I'd sure like to try!"
When you are with Mema, and Ruby appears,
it is like you are not even in the room.
Her stories and tales are directed to Mema.
She whispers alot of the time into Mema's ear.
Saying, I'm sure, racy things.
Mema had missed a button in the middle of her shirt today.
When Ruby saw this, she asked if Mema was trying to catch a man.
Mema answered: "Oh ya, 2 or 3!"
Ruby leaned in and said, "talk is cheap, but it's all we have anymore!"
They both laughed!
I was with the two of them one day when Ruby told two stories of her childhood.
Her parents had eight children, she was the youngest.
Her mother died when Ruby was three.
Ruby used to sit at the breakfast table in the mornings
with her dad while he drank coffee.
She wanted to try coffee so badly when she was little.
Her dad would say "Oh no Baby. If you drank coffee you'd turn black."
This stopped her asking until she got a few years older,
then wondered why her Daddy was not black.
He quickly changed his story to
"the coffee would stunt your growth and you have to grow up to be a big girl."
(Now this story raised my politically correct daughters' eyebrows.
I told them that 83 years ago, this was a perfectly accepted way to talk.)
The next story she told was that she used to sleep under the bed
because they didn't have screens on their windows so the flies were always around.
She hated them landing on her when she slept, so she just crawled under the bed.
Well, her family didn't know this.
Her older sister, who was to watch her while her dad was at work,
went into a panic when she couldn't find little Ruby.
She didn't want a whoopin.
Finally, they found her and Ruby never slept under the bed again,
because her sister was so upset and crying at the thought
that she had lost her baby sister.
I am so thankful that Mema has found such a wonderful friend in Ruby Toot Toot.
They walk the long halls together, or around the property in nice weather for exercise.
They always walk holding hands when they aren't using their walkers!
Ruby doesn't let Mema stay in her room.
If they don't like the activity, they go to sit in the lobby.
"At our age, we have a right to do nothing at all!"
Ruby will come over to Mema's table after a meal and ask how she liked the dinner.
Ruby usually complains and says she could have made a better stew when she was ten years old.
Mema doesn't remember what she had.
Then Ruby usually gives the finger to the room, to no one in particular, and off she goes.
However, she won't put up with Mema saying Hell.....
"Oh now, you shouldn't say things like that!"
this photo was taken for the newsletter in October....fast friends!
I know, my photoshop skills are horrible!
