Is That My Ironing Board?

By Ijuana McCain Gadsden

Sharonda, a single mother, had no idea what she was about to face when she took on the role of care giver to her distant Grandmother. There was no time to research the symptoms of Alzheimers and Sharonda was clueless about the disease in general. With a full time job, church work and a teenaged daughter, Sharonda had her hands full and more headaches than the law allows. Grandmothers dramatic performances caused even more headaches. Plainly stated - Sharonda Lee was catching hell while skidding - trying to get to heaven.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524500184

Ijuana McCain Gadsden

Ijuana McCain Gadsden, a.k.a. Ijuana Gaye McCain, is a newcomer to writing. She was born in Andrews, Texas, and grew up in California and Texas. Ijuana attended Grambling State University many years ago and moved to South Carolina in 1986. She received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Criminal Justice from Strayer University in 2014 and is currently pursuing her Master of Science Degree in Management: Concentration in Project Management. She resides in North Charleston, South Carolina, and works as an Administrative Assistant at The Citadel in the Health, Exercise, and Sport Science Department. Ijuana is the proud mother of one grown daughter, Raven. Prior to joining The Citadel, Ijuana served the College of Charleston for almost twelve years as the Office Manager in the Office of Student Affairs/Office of the Dean of Students. In 2004, she was recognized in the Post and Courier as one of the “Unsung Heroes” and was also honored the same year as Citizen of the Month by the Charleston County Council. Ijuana received a concurrent resolution from the State of South Carolina House of Representatives in 2006 for various contributions of time, talent, and energy to South Carolina’s youth, the church, the College of Charleston community, and the state of South Carolina. She is a woman of faith and believes in practicing random acts of kindness. She was licensed as a minister in 2005 and later ordained as a minister in 2007. She has served in many capacities as a minister. She loves to cook and occasionally hangs out with a few long-standing friends. Ijuana believes that if you can dream it, you can have it! She also believes that everyone has a story - you just have to be creative and bold enough to tell it! Is That My Ironing Board? is the first work of Ijuana McCain Gadsden. It’s a book full of almost actual events mixed with an overextended imagination.

Book preview

Is That My Ironing Board?

The Call

I was at work minding my own business, with a cup of fresh, hot coffee in my hand—about to turn up, on the day the call came through. I hadn’t even been inside my plush cubicle a good five minutes before the first call of the day came into my office. Good morning, thank you for calling Student Services, Sharonda speaking, how may I help you? The cold-sounding man on the other end of the telephone introduced himself as Dr. Linsenberry, and before I could even say another word, he immediately began to explain Grandmother’s list of illnesses using scientific terms that only he understood. I did catch the part about Grandmother being in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and she had suffered a stroke with irreversible brain damage. She had neurosyphilis, and his list continued on and on to the point of—she would never walk again, nor would she ever be able to dress herself again. The doctor’s tone was flat, and his use of words was rather complicated in my simple world. I was wide-eyed with my mouth wide open, and I knew immediately that the doctor was really trying to say, Come get your Grandmother . . . Oh, and, by the way, your house is about to be turned upside down and inside out! My taste for coffee was no longer on the tip of my tongue. Work was the last thing on my mind, and why the hell was he calling me! Neuro what?

After hanging up the phone, I just sat and stared into space. Most of the rest of the day was spent thinking about Grandmother—what a distraction! I even questioned God, wanting to know why he was about to send Grandmother all the way to Maryland from Tipton, Arkansas, to live with me and my child. Why were we about to be so fortunate? Or unfortunate? While sitting and waiting for an answer, it dawned on me that I had been praying for a financial miracle on and off, and in my last prayer before leaving for work, I had prayed for God to send me somebody that I could help.

This was October 2005, and I had just seen Grandmother in Tipton, Arkansas, one month prior at my dad’s funeral, and she was doing well. In fact, she was doing so well, I’d never witnessed someone her age push a walker so fast, nor had she lost her knack for being nosey or wearing a wig. Grandmother had worn some kind of wig ever since I’d known her, and she could brush the heck out of them things. Age had definitely set in while we were away from each other. Grandmother had always been a well-put-together, plus-sized grandmother. She was a certified wig wearer, and whatever wig she wore on any given day was always on point, and her teeth were in amazingly good shape for an aging diva. She sported a 14K gold cap on her right front tooth. I could tell that her big awkward 3K diamond ring (spinning on her now-skinny fingers), teeth, hair, and personal appearance were all her prized possessions. Overall, Grandmother appeared to be aging gracefully. I was actually proud to say that she was my grandmother.

I don’t even remember when Grandmother started walking bent over, and I sure must have missed the memo when she added the walker to her wardrobe. Grandmother was easy to watch since I hadn’t seen her in months and Sundays. I found myself checking her out every other minute—just because. She was dressed really neat, and she was giving a piece of chewing gum a run for its money.

Eat, Drink, and Run

The evening before dad’s funeral, my siblings, a few friends and I were sitting around eating, drinking, laughing, and playing catch-up on the Tipton, Arkansas gossip, when an episode of family chaos ensued that sent everybody running except for Grandmother. She was the only one who wanted to stay around and see what was going to happen next. While we were trying to run away from the potential danger, Grandmother stood right there—seemingly comfortable in knowing that a bullet could possibly be her next meal. I learned two things that day—Grandmother loved drama, and she was quite a character. We weren’t surprised at the way Daddy’s People were behaving—one in particular, but couldn’t these people at least try to be cordial for such an occasion?!

My siblings and I, had traveled from various states to pay tribute to our dad, and we weren’t really up for the dramatic episodes that were sure to come, but we all knew that anything could happen at any time once we were in dad’s territory.

The tension among us came shortly after my mother and father could no longer exist peacefully. Dad started shacking with a weird Haitian woman and they moved across town - to the slums in the sewer district of West Arkansas. Dad’s new woman had ten children, and for some reason, we became the outsiders. Daddy’s People were something else, to say the least. I suppose his woman’s children just wanted to be what we already were: his children. And, his woman just wanted to be his woman—without us. At any rate, there had always been tons of tension between us and Mama couldn’t stand Ms. Haiti and she never let a day go by without telling someone, that heffa done put some black magic on Wally! or, She ain’t nothing but a little black witch! or She done hexed her entire household—you see how crazy them kids are! Here they were - acting crazy.

I never figured out what set them off, but Daddy’s people all snapped at the same time. There was a bunch of yelling and swearing and a few chairs and beer bottles flew through the air. I heard sirens and a few moments later the police arrived. Several people fled the scene, but there were several people left standing around ready to share their version of the story. I must admit that I was afraid, yet impressed by the number of police units that had been dispatched to the scene, and they were probably just as afraid of us as we were of them. All of the officers were white. We were all black, and we were in the middle of the hickest town in Arkansas—Tipton. I actually didn’t know that Tipton, Arkansas, had so many officers on the clock at one time. This is a little town out in the middle of nowhere and being black could put a damper on the outcome of this fiasco.

The police force in Tipton had really grown since I had last encountered them. They went from a four-man team to about twenty within a twenty-year span. Before parting, the team of officers assured us that they would be present at my father’s funeral and not to worry. As promised, they were there in full force. It gave them something to protect; and we, the outsiders, felt a sense of safety. We buried our father without incident and we all got the heck out of dodge.

Tipton Rehab

Two days and about twenty hours after the phone call from the doctor, I finally said a prayer and hit the road to Arkansas after dropping Mariah off at the Academy of Arts School for the Gifted. I loaded six CDs: Fred Hammond, John P. Kee and New Life, Bob Marley and three of T. D. Jakes sermons. After leaving Maryland, I only stopped for gas, food, and frequent bathroom breaks. I figured if I drank lots of water, it would assure my staying awake for the eighteen-plus-hour trip. So I drank, thought, prayed, praised, and stopped to pee over and over again. Every time I thought about what the doctor told me, it just didn’t add up.

I rolled into a parking space at the so-called rehabilitation center where Grandmother had been placed. I’m not even sure how I found the place so easily. I had no GPS in my little white Lexus, and half of the directions had been left at home—I think. I must admit that life was starting to move really fast. There was a great possibility that I was about to inherit my very sick and aging grandmother. How was I going to fit her into my already-busy lifestyle? I was a single mother, in Bible College, with a full-time job, new to the pastoral team with never-ending church duties, and a daughter—teenaged daughter at that . . . We were always on the go, and I just didn’t know how this was all going to go down. I was already losing my teenager to boys, social media, and peer pressure. We were due to go on a cruise to the Panama Canal, and now this. . . Mariah’s and my cruise had been booked and paid for, and there’s a possibility that we weren’t going to be able to go.

Unannounced, I walked into the spacious and long halls of this rehab place. There was no one at the front desk, and I didn’t see a human being for at least the first five minutes that I was in the building. This place was pretty big—reminded me of a scary maze of some kind. I finally came upon another desk, and there were two of the most unfriendly workers that I had ever encountered. Apparently customer service skills weren’t really that important in their line of work. One of the young ladies consistently popped her gum-like a mule eating stickers and the other one was busy polishing her fingernails.

After I was finally given Grandmother’s room number, I proceeded down another hallway. When I entered the room, it smelled of poop and pee. I couldn’t tell what the dominant smell was—both were winning! At that moment, I certainly knew for sure that I had to get Grandmother out of this dreaded rehab place. They call it rehab. I called it a sh-pissy-smelling nursing home prison, and that’s being considerably generous. It was