Mom's Strategy Books Disappear

Mom always kept books, the one book I came across took me a long time to find though. It was a small book, dated 1955. It was a book by E. S. Howe on "Chess in 30 minutes." I like to collect things like that on chess and board games and I was really distressed that the next time I went to see her it had disappeared. Now imagine my anxiety when I thought about where Mom had put other things.

One time my son, Craig, had brought all his snacks over to eat while he helped Grandpa cut cordwood.  All of a sudden he realized that his snacks were not where he left them. Of course I told him that it serves him right for not putting things "up". But anyway he went down to buy some more because he realized that Grandma had "put them away." Later, way later, that day they found them - in the microwave oven, and sure enough, Grandma had eaten some, but not all. They were energy bars full of protein and my son was worried that Grandma had eaten too many because "she had a lot more energy than normal."

Why did she put them in the microwave? My other family asked that question. Well, think about her way of thinking: it is food, it is going to be eaten soon by my son, food needs to be cooked, therefore the quickest way to accomplish all this is to put it in the microwave. I have no idea if she turned the microwave on or not. We are still chuckling over this. I have not yet figured out why she left them in the bag, but I am assuming she forgot to finish her task.

If you follow a possible train of thought, it does make sense. But it also shows that the brain waves can really get mixed up and take a completely insensible route sometimes. But there is always a reason, there is always some kind of path. If mom could, she would retrain her mind. She always talked about the fact that it is possible to "retrain" and would talk much about how to accomplish that by certain exercises connected to other body systems like eye/hand coordination. The point is is that the brain is a marvelous creation and needs to be protected and if possible, retrained.

Anyway, the short of the story is that the book "mysteriously" showed up, my Dad grabbed it and gave it to me. I now get to make use of it and have a good memory with it. So I'll address that book in another post on learning chess and chess moves.

Here is a picture of my Mom and Dad. I feel loved seeing the love in their faces.

Strategic Intent For Developing Critical Thinking Skills

I was watching my Mom today. She is 82. Guess that dates me too, but she is amazing and I just have to talk about her because she is so relevant to the topic of strategic intent.

When my Mom was younger, she had a strategy for everything. I learned much from just watching her. She was so organized in her thoughts and in her actions that all I remembered when I was very young was that the house was always clean and errands were completed with minimal wasted efforts. My Mom was into everything. She would be there helping out at school, she would be teaching me how to make bread, she eventually worked into going back to school before I was out of school and became an Xray technician. 

I was impressed that my Mom could be so productive. She always told me to make a list, to make a picture in my head of all the things I had to do and make sure I had an order to do them in so I would not waste any time. She never did waste time that I could tell. 

She never liked TV, so she never sat with us except on the one night a week that we were allowed to sit in front of the TV to eat dinner. But she loved puzzles, she loved crossword puzzles and she loved board games and card games. So we had a lot of interaction and opportunities to learn strategy. 

Strategic intent is a plan, or a statement of what you intend to accomplish. That I think, was my Mom's middle name. But not anymore.

My Mom has a combination of things that affect her mind now. She has dementia setting in, she has glaucoma and eye conditions that cause her to see double. She has high blood pressure that is controlled by medications, but those medications along with her other conditions cause her to visually hallucinate. She has to be watched over every moment. 

Today was the day I was able to watch her for my Dad. I asked my Dad one day, he is 85, how I could help him take care of Mom. I knew it was futile to suggest that he place her in a home, although I really believe she would love it, and my Dad agrees. But he just stated, "I'm doing what I really enjoy doing. I really enjoy taking care of her." 

She can get very stubborn, but her fun nature and easy going personality now is making it very easy to care for her. She knows she is not thinking right, and it is very difficult for her, but I see a lot of peace in her life that I would like in mine. I don't know whether it is because she has lived a full life, or whether she is just accepting her situation better, but she stands out to me as a very real example of using and developing strategy; and also the harsh reality of not being able to develop a strategic intent anymore.