Mother's Day in the Institution

I awakened to the screamer having a fight with Jen, this lovely drug nurse. The other day, the screamer said to Jen, "Didn't you learn this in nursing school?" Jen really is this sweet, Chinese-Philipina woman. So after the screamer gets satisfaction, she turns all sweet and she wishes Jen Happy MOther's Day and asks if she has children. Jen says, "I have one baby up above. I have an angel baby." There was a day about three weeks ago when I got angry with Jen, and I had regretted it ever since. It was a day where I had just had it. I even regretted it as I was doing it. So just now, when she came to change my bedsore bandage (the sore is practically non-existent), I apologized to her for that day and I asked if she would forgive me. She said something like oh yes. And then said, "I know it's just a burst of emotion and it isn't aimed at me personally." I told her, and this is true, that even as I was doing it, when I saw her face I felt bad. Then I told her that I wanted her to remember me by my face, and not my butt which she has seen daily up close and personal and she laughed. So I know this sounds hokey, but I feel better about it. And now the institution has given us all a white carnation. The man who brought them around had a bunch of white ones and then one red one. I remember years ago, my mother knew and abided by this whole code of carnation colors -- like if your mother is dead, your kids are dead, whatever. Let me see if I can find it. As it turns out, the inventor of mother's day loved white carnations... and that became the original mother's day flower in 1908. Now children are supposed to give their mother's red carnations and put white carnations on the graves of their mothers. Oh well, I've got one white carnation. Maybe I'll put it behind my ear.