Old ladies having fun

The women who work as home aides in San Francisco are mostly Filipinas and mostly overqualified. In their native country they are registered nurses, schoolteachers, professionals of various sorts. Despite low wages and long hours, they all say they love their work in this country as caretakers of the elderly. Indeed, some are quite elderly themselves. Two of the four aides I've met who have taken care of my mother looked reasonably young but confided that they were 69. Could I have misunderstood? It's a 24-hour-a-day gig, and they work five days straight, then are relieved for two days. And my mom gets up to use the bathroom several times a night. Not a job for the flimsy or fainthearted. 

But all four have been tireless in their attention and good humor—and courage. It's daunting to give a shower to an 82-year-old in a long-leg brace who has osteoporosis and a history of strokes. Or at least I thought so. I was quaking the day I was asked to assist in such an ablution but charmed when the aide instructed my mom to wash her "flower." My mom and I looked at each other, puzzled at first, then amused, as the aide grabbed  the hand-held shower head and began spraying her, um, vulva. 

My mom, who was never a cuddly person, seems to love the physical attention she gets from the aides. One day I came home to gales of giggles. My mom and her aide M were carrying on like schoolgirls as the aide penciled in my mom's eyebrows. When I walked in they looked up guiltily, like a couple of six-year-olds caught with their mothers' makeup bags.