“Well, this is just the neatest thing. I want one for my house.”

Mom loves hot tea. She drinks it all day, but not quickly. At her house, multiple times throughout the day, she pops a cup of room-temperature tea into the microwave until it’s hot enough for her liking. I don’t have a microwave. When we’re on my porch, I end up topping off her cup with boiling water every half hour or so. She insists she can do it, and then wanders around the house asking where the microwave is. I bought one of these cup warmers, thinking that could be a good solution. I made her a cup of hot tea, she kept it on the warmer, and voilà! Problem solved. And she could not get over how nifty it was. And she wanted one for her house.

I was hesitant. Introducing new gadgets and processes is tricky. Most of the time she can’t remember how they work or what they’re for. Things she can use independently: scissors, tape, eyebrow pencils, electric tea kettle. Things she can’t use independently: iPad, telephone, remote control. Things that she relied on Dad for, or was not proficient with, before her Alzheimer’s set in, it’s difficult to create those new pathways in her brain.

She asked for the cup warmer three weekends in a row. I decided to get it for her. After all, it didn’t get so hot and it had an automatic turnoff. What could go wrong?

“Okay, Mom, it’s here on the side table beside your reading chair. All you have to do is set your cup on it when you’re reading, and it turns off by itself when you take the cup to the kitchen.” I asked her to show me how to use it, and she put the cup on it. I was feeling optimistic.

A week later I arrived to her house and she was crying. She said she couldn’t make tea. I looked at the kitchen counter, perplexed. The cup warmer was there on the counter, but it was covered in something black. The electric tea kettle was off its base. I tried to put the tea kettle on its base and it wobbled. She had set the tea kettle on the cup warmer and the plastic bottom of the electric kettle had completely melted into a blob onto the cup warmer. I said a quick prayer to the engineers who developed that kettle – thanking all heavenly beings it had not caught on fire, even though it was melted down to its inner workings.

I turned to Mom. “Hm. Looks like these won’t work anymore. We’ll get you a new electric kettle. Why don’t we go to my house for a cup of tea?”

We’ve been participating in a wonderful music therapy study for about a month or so, where we listen to a playlist on a Kindle Fire, through a Jambox speaker. Every week Mom says, “I want that in my house.” She now thinks any shiny surface will keep her tea warm (she’s attempted to place her cup on my iPhone, the Kindle Fire, and the iPad). And trying to teach her to use any devices, even just to play music, would be futile. Today she pleaded, “Why can’t I have music in my house?”

I remembered a Google home mini that I don’t use often. We took it to her house and I set it up. I told her that she never needed to touch it; she could control it with her voice. I showed her how to say, “Hey, Google, play holiday music.” And “Hey, Google, stop.” I wrote the instructions down and taped them above the device. She giggled and said she had never seen such a thing, she couldn’t believe it. Then she asked me where the music was coming from. I pointed. She said, “That little fluffy thing?” I nodded.

“Okay, Mom. Your turn. I want you to practice turning the music on and off.”

She stood over the little fluffy orange device. “Hey, honey, play some music.”

“You’ll need to call it Hey Google, Mom. Otherwise it won’t know that you’re talking to it. Try again.”

“Hey, Google honey, play Christmas music. Please.” And the opening lines of Jingle Bell Rock filled the house. Mom burst out in a smile and danced a little dance.

“Okay. Now let’s practice turning it off.”

“Please stop, sweetie.”

“Remember to say ‘Hey Google’ first…” and then the device said something along the lines of “What can I help you with?”” I tried whispering to Mom, so that the device would listen to her, not me, but she won’t wear her hearing aids, so it was a comedy of errors – me giving a command, then ungiving it, Mom calling the device honey or sweetie and asking it to play music. And me whispering “Hey, Google….” from behind a mask to prompt her, which made it even more difficult for her to hear or understand.

When I left her house, Christmas music was still playing. And I haven’t gotten a call saying she can’t turn it off. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship between Mom and Google Honey Sweetie.