Trainor & Tink: Made You Look

At age 92 my mother still styles herself as a coquettish cross between Tinkerbell and Meghan Trainor. Once I figured that out I had the tools to break into the mental loops she gets stuck in with dementia that’s suddenly wiped away her memory and abilities as the result of a tiny tumor growing in the space between her brain and her skull called a Meningioma. Don’t worry, this is going to be a feel-good read. Let’s get into it.

As I’ve written before, Mom’s a retired fashion designer who lived and worked in Manhattan after putting herself through the Parsons School of Design. Until three months ago she was living independently in her little home on the New Jersey Shore where there was no need for aid.

Now she’s here living here in Virginia with me as her caregiver because what we assumed was a stroke turned out to be a meningioma, a non-cancerous, tiny tumor on the membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord that continues to ravage her abilities to walk, talk, be continent, remember, hear and generally function. There are no treatments recommended at this age and stage.

As I packed her things to bring her to Virginia direct from the rehab facility in Jersey I made sure that her Tinkerbell dolls, shirts, hats, and especially her favorite pink cup emblazoned with Tink’s likeness and the word “Drinkerbell.”

She’s spent her life with that blond, flouncy, pixie-slim ability to turn heads wherever she went. She made you look.

Mom was 23 in 1953 when Peter Pan became a Disney film and her kinship with the feisty pixie was born.

Now her hair’s white, the walker’s cramping her style and she couldn’t hear us clapping for her recovery over the sound of her own loss.

Mom had given up in the one week of rehab where they put her in a wheelchair and special undergarments to prevent “accidents.” I’ve adopted animals from shelters who had been given more dignity, cleanliness, and hope than she had.

She didn’t want her Tink hat because she no longer saw herself in the sassy winged wonder who has lit the imagination of children and adults for 120 years since J.M. Barrie first published The Little White Bird in 1902.

Everything changed as I drove her for the seven hours from Jersey to Norfolk, Virginia with a Meghan Trainor-heavy playlist.

I could have my Gucci on

I could wear my Louis Vuitton

But even with nothin' on

Bet I made you look (I made you look)

Mom’s brain fog lifted abruptly.

“What’s that about Gucci,” asked the commanding voice I suddenly recognized as the woman I knew. “Turn it up!”

We must have played every up-tune Trainor ever wrote on that trip but “Made You Look” was the new anthem. We bopped through tolls, over bridges and through a monster storm that hit.

That’s when I knew this was going to be the key to getting her up and moving every day. OK, it’s a little maddening that dementia caused by her condition means that every few bars she asks, “Who’s singing? Have I heard this before?”

The key is to answer every single time as if it’s the first time she’s asking and show zero frustration or worry.

At first, the music was just to help her get through the exercises which I do with her. Then she decided to end every session with a dance party.

The best part is that both Trainor and Tink sport a sassy blond updo so Mom’s back to paling around with her favorite pixie.

It doesn’t matter what year wear, the color of your hair, your weight, age, or condition. There’s magic in music.

When I’m in my 90s I hope my kids will find this column and get my fairy groove back with some hand-clapping, toe-tapping, and a dose of musical star power.