Some Quiet Time with My Mother and a Beanie Boo Named Kiki

Kiki was just what my mother kneaded. No, that is not a typo.

When I was at McDonald’s the other day stopping by for an ice cream cone I noticed on the menu the latest iteration of its Happy Meal for children. Along with a burger or chicken nuggets, apple slices, and a juice box, the meal includes one of 12 pocket-sized plush toys called Squishmallows, shown in the image below.

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Each toy has a name and a story. For example, Babs, the blue-and-white Squishmallow, loves superheroes. The blue-and-purple Squishmallow called Halley enjoys galactic travel. The purple-and-pink Squishmallow named Rossi likes to organize. The purple Squishmallow Zumirez is a vegetarian.

Seeing the Squishmallows brought to mind another collection of small soft toys. Furry, googly-eyed Beanie Boos were very popular in the early 2000’s. They also have names and stories.

My children received them as gifts when they were young. My mother received one from a caregiver a couple of months before she died. She died at home from dementia and depression just shy of her 83rd birthday.

Kiki was gray and white with big pink eyes and a pink-and-white polka-dot bow on her head. A tag on her left ear said her birthday was August 16. The tag also included a poem—

This little kitty wants to know, if you like the sun or snow.
She prefers a warmer house, while she nibbles at her catnip mouse.

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Anita thought to give my mother Kiki so she would have something to do with her hands. My mother always enjoyed working with her hands—cooking, painting, cleaning, cutting hair, wrapping gifts.

But now her hands were working in different ways and doing things they should not be doing—picking at a sore, or bandage, or fiddling with her oxygen tubing, or taking off her covers. My mother was losing her mind. Her hands had a mind of their own.

I met Kiki one afternoon when I came by to see my mother. My mother was in bed, propped against some pillows, kneading Kiki’s soft and squishy ears, her tail, her legs. An oxygen machine chugged in the corner.

Oodles of green plastic tubing coiled across the floor up over the side of the bed. Some light slipped between the curtains. A few Triscuits sat on a saucer on a side table along with a tumbler of ice water.

I pulled a chair over to the bed. My mother looked over at me and then back at Kiki. She shifted under her covers. Watching my mother work with Kiki I could imagine her as the baby she’d once been nearly 83 years ago, exploring the world around her, squeezing this, patting that, looking here, gazing there.

And then my mind juddered and whipsawed back to reality—my mother, diapered like a baby, wordless like a baby, but now also almost witless, and instead of being at the beginning of life she was at the end of it, dying a slow, creeping death at home.

It occurred to me to put my mother’s oxygen tubing on Kiki. Maybe this would amuse my mother. Maybe it would amuse me.

I took the tubing from around my mother’s head and wrapped it around Kiki’s ears. I turned Kiki toward my mother and smiled. My mother frowned. She looked at me. She looked at Kiki.

I smiled again and wiggled Kiki from side to side. My mother continued to frown and look at Kiki. My mother may have been playing with a toy but she no longer had any sense of play.

I took the tubing off Kiki and gave it to my mother to put back around her head. It did not cooperate. “You’ve got to fix this!” she snapped. I jumped. I set Kiki aside and settled the tubing around my mother’s head. I gave her Kiki. My mother squeezed her and turned her and rubbed her fingers through her fur.

“Now what?” my mother asked. “I don’t know,” I said. “I have no news of the world,” my mother said. “That’s okay,” I said, “I like the quiet.” My mother looked at me, she looked at Kiki, and then she went back to kneading Kiki’s ears, rolling and threading them through her fingers.

I stayed for about another 20 minutes, just sitting by her bed, watching her gaze at and play with Kiki. I did not have the right touch this afternoon. I am glad Kiki did.

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