DEMENTIA CARE: FOIL CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS.

Every winter I make sure there’s room for a Christmas tree. The space is currently taken up by essential supplies. These essential supplies rest on one of those over-the-bed tables. Several tables are dotted around the place.
   You always need a flat surface to put things on, going from room to room. Circumstances change rapidly when caring. Versatility sounds great. How do you create an atmosphere of versatility, though? Handy tables. I’m doing this. Now I need to do that. I’ll drop this on a table and do that. Versatility.
   Last year I had a bit of a tidy and much reorganisation of Christmas decorations. When I was finished, everything looked much the same. It wasn’t the same. But it was easier to deal with. This year, I’m keeping a festive spirit going…through use of nostalgia. Another way to say I’m tapping into memory.
   Those essential supplies, to one side of the chair, are now where the tree will be. But that handy table handily slides away into new space. I’ve worked to create new space over a few months. Every November, I have an eye on December. How much hassle do I face, setting up the tree?
   Christmas decorations go up on the first of December, to give as much of a festive feel for as long as possible. I’ve changed the layout slightly, so the number of decorations in sight became a bit of a problem…
   Yes, the carers come in and they like the decorations. But they are the cared-for’s decorations. And the changed layout made the decorations less viewable. What can I do in November to fine-tune the December display? I was reminded of my mother’s obsession with foil decorations.
   Her foil decorations gradually succumbed to wear and tear. Yes, they do last a good while. But simply putting them up, leaving them, then taking them down does wear them out. You have your share of accidents, and, one by one, they are no more.
   When I took over the decoration as a carer, I remember buying in small sturdy props to sit at eye-level, replacing the ceiling-level flashiness. Metal trees and snowflakes on stands. Pine cones. New tinsel for the fake fireplace.
   With recent changes, I thought maybe it was time to go for foil ceiling decorations. My mother went daft for these. Folding paper decorations, elegant yet fragile, made way for folding foil ones. Also elegant. Fiddly. Fragile, certainly.
   But they could be fixed. A rip here, a tear there, and she would use Sellotape.
   “You’ll no’ see that up there, wi’ its back tae the ceilin’ onywey.”
   She would announce a new arrival. A bell. Or a globe. Maybe a star. Or, something that amused her, a foil chandelier. There was enough room for two chandeliers. Heating came on and went off. The foil decorations stirred in the heat.
   This made her laugh. She could trace the pattern of warm air circulating. Her Christmas was about getting out the foil decorations. Seeing what had finally fallen apart. Buying a foil packet replacement. Adding to the riot of shiny colours.
   How did it work? The two chandeliers set the pace. With those in position, everything followed. Expanding foil garlands, the flimsiest of all decorations, stretched out from chandeliers to all points with space to take them.
   From memory, thinking about that room, how many corners are there? It’s not a straight rectangle. If I’ve forgotten any quirks, there are six corners. Some foil creations had to go around a corner or…
   Corners were the places various garlands met. And to disguise the junction-points somehow, a foil bell would claim the corner space. The room didn’t change from year to year. A dead foil decoration was replaced by an identical one. Not hard to do.
   So the pattern didn’t shift much.
   As her carer, I took the decoration down to eye-level. So, yes, Christmas decorations moved from year to year as I changed the caring requirements. Floorspace dictates where the furniture goes. Mobility dictates the furniture used. Viewpoints change. Regular spots for decorations migrate around and about, becoming irregular.
   Last year, there was a sense that I could do better than move things around.
   This year, what if I go back to foil decorations for the ceiling? She’ll see them from the bed. And when she’s tipped back in the chair – safety-feature that prevents falling out of the chair – she’ll see the decorations as she glances around.
   No, that wasn’t in the past. In the past, she slept in an actual bedroom. Now it’s all combined, for safety. I had to arrange this as it was done before, so I ordered foil decorations knowing they’d come from several sources and arrive at different times.
   That’s the festive ritual. Buy a decoration. Plan the pattern in your head. Another decoration comes in. Plan a bit more. Before you know it, you have enough to do the job. I’m using online shopping to recreate what my mother did offline. Another foil shape arrives. Let’s unfurl that and see what it turns out as.
   There’ll be one big change.
   Uniformity. When she put those foil concoctions up on the ceiling, they went there by means of tacks, Sellotape, and Blu-Tack…with bits of string thrown in and the occasional paperclip for good measure.
   A few of these new foil decorations come with paperclips to hold the unfurled structures steady. But I’ll be using decorating hooks to fix everything up there. They’ll be practically invisible throughout the year. Then I’ll hang the foil pieces in place, based on mad calculations I’ve yet to make.
   I stole this idea from town. Walking into town, I’d pass a house with a chimney. At Christmas, you’d see Santa hanging from it, in neon. And when it wasn’t Christmas, you didn’t glance up. I glanced up. And there, faint even in bright daylight, was the unlit Santa waiting for the weather to darken and cool.
   I’ll put the hooks up and leave them there. Uniformity in hanging things up. No thumb-tacks, Blu-Tack, Sellotape, or string. When the weather darkens and cools, the foil decorations emerge from storage. Like lighting Santa up, with minimal fuss.
   So. The hooks won’t change position. And the garlands will dangle in the exact same spots. I’ll use a reasonable stepladder to do the job, instead of the wooden chair my mother employed. The one rule was not to fall off the chair onto the television set. This wasn’t to save life or limb. Just the television set.
   I’ll be measuring. My mother would make wild guesses. In goes the thumb-tack, as a prison for a piece of string. No. Didn’t work. Move the tack. Memories of Christmas would revisit her in the summer, when she’d notice one tack left in. And she’d laugh and just leave it there. It would serve as a marker for next Christmas.
   Though it never did. She’d be on the wooden chair, putting a decoration in, and she’d place a tack next to the tack already there. Oh well.
   What’s the tally, so far? I’ve arranged two chandeliers. This won’t work for one end of the room, as the electric hoist cuts across. So down there, at that end, the decorations must go around the walls instead of moving diagonally across the ceiling.
   No big deal. The Christmas tree used to overlook the back garden, in its own corner. I had to make a new space for it, nearer the front.
   Other decorations? There are four bells and four stars. A separate star, and a globe. Four garlands. I think I need more of those. But I’ll work out the basic plan and then dissolve into a froth of poor choices. Nothing truly happens until the decorating hooks go up and stay up.
   I’m buying the hooks in a week. And then, for the first time ever, I will rehearse Christmas in November by decorating and then undecorating. See what works. Measure. And measure some more. I’ll note what she sees, as well. What works for her.
   No Blu-Tack for this. Heat would, occasionally, soften one Blu-Tack chunk. Then you’d walk into a room and see a foil decoration dangling down from its last remaining anchor. That always struck me as funny.
   Will I have to fix problems like that? Deep winter sees the room turn warm, consistently warm, for long periods of the day and night. I think these hooks will hang on just fine. At the minute, the autumn has been mild – milder than the summer on many a day. There’s no predicting the severity of winter, or even its heavy-handed arrival weeks from now. We’ve had mild winters for over a decade.
   If I have to fix problems, it won’t be done standing on a shaky wooden chair. Stepladders were my addition to the house. Safety, safety, safety. On that topic, my mother kept the Christmas tree in the loft. I keep it in the back hall cupboard.
   My big thing, lately, was clearing that cupboard out. A minor miracle. So much easier to use, now. Top tip. If you must have a Christmas tree, keep it in a cupboard downstairs. Never store it in a loft. Too much of a hassle to rescue, even if only on an annual basis.
   Speaking of storage, I found a use for a pack of cardboard sheets. Art supplies. But the material never quite worked out for the projects I had in mind. Foil decorations can’t sit on top of one another, as they will inevitably interlink and ambush you a year later as you attempt to hang them up.
   Solution. Put the decorations in a box. Slap one of these cardboard sheets on top. Put more decorations in the box. Flat, alone, piled in a shiny stack of fragile foil shapes, the decorations would take up hardly any space. And they’d be stuck to each other where metal loops, plastic fasteners, and paperclips meet.
   Stacked carefully, between cardboard bodyguards, those foil decorations fill the box. They’ll be easy to hang up, one at a time, and easy to pack away. For some, the toil of decorating is part of the fun.
   I don’t have time for that. Speed, with safety. That’s what I am after. I will also be decorating around the cared-for, and can’t fall over. Not once. No. Not ever. How to create nostalgia, to evoke memory, for someone…with minimum fuss. This is it.
   It’s the landscape you are in, as a carer. You find the safest way to do things. And you find the easiest way to do things. You always need to create more time for the unexpected. Streamline everything, with all eyes on safety. Then that extra time is there to be gobbled up by minor emergencies and major disasters.
   The ceremony of decorating was part of the fun. There’s no way my mother can stand on a chair and hang decorations. I have a stepladder for this, when it’s my turn to create a festive mood. Time is precious. She’d choose the day of the week to do the decorating. December. As close to the first of the month as possible. But not interrupting her television.
   And, if a weekday…at night. With the decorations in place and the chair out of the way, the effort didn’t stop. Assemble the tree. Decorate the tree. Today, I have all the decorations on the tree, and it takes hardly any time to put up. I do this in daylight.
   Her point was to decorate at night, have the foil shinies all ready, put the tree up, and then switch the lights on. You knew the tree worked and you saw it with the darkness outside. The final test was to open the curtains and go into the garden to see if the tree looked okay as you walked up the path.
   She made it an event, and, if you weren’t careful, it could last an evening. She needed more Blu-Tack. Or Sellotape. The thumb-tacks were only for Christmas and sat in a box that existed for a thousand years.
   I don’t have time. And I must stay safe. The initial set-up will take the longest. What do I have? And where do I display the foil as best I can? Measure. Apply the hooks. Decorate. Undecorate. Store it away for a few weeks. Some people have Christmas decorations all year, or from the first of November. December and a slice of January will do for me. If the decorating hooks work. Otherwise, it’s back to Sellotape, Blu-Tack, paperclips, and string. That really would be tapping nostalgia. But Christmas does that, every year.