The moment when Tara O'Leary first realized something was going on with her mother, was over a game of UNO around Christmas time, now some 20 years ago.
They'd played the game before, one of the easiest card games to learn and understand. Kids play UNO all the time. Yet no matter how hard O'Leary worked to explain the object to her mother, the spark of understanding never ignited.
And gradually, for the next 15 years, what light was left in her mother would continue to dim until it went out, Oct. 1, 1994. Phyllis Rosenberg was a healthy, vibrant woman who reared five kids on her own. For years she worked in the travel agency trenches first in Spokane then in downtown Seattle. To feed the kids she needed to work. Because she worked she needed childcare. So she'd hired live-in baby sitters, a job that had a revolving door as it turned out.
Though the kids went through sitters like the Von Trapps, the foundation their mother gave them was a good one and they were happy (there are a handful of grandchildren now). But Rosenberg, as she entered retirement, wouldn't have much time with them as the Alzheimer's she was diagnosed with, crept into her life. During her good moments, she was able to process her situation, her condition.
"That was the hardest part," said O'Leary. "She was afraid to be a burden and she was cognitive enough to know what the end result was going to be. That was the hardest part for me."
Each of Rosenberg's adult children pitched in to put her up in an apartment in Magnolia, just steps from Albertson's. It was a regular apartment. No nurses, no facilitators, just the kids who would check in regularly. The kids were especially glad the apartment was in Magnolia because as O'Leary said, "You can't go very far." Plus, she said, it made her mother feel independent.
But even the apartment became impossible as Rosenberg began to wander about the neighborhood, becoming a danger to herself. Gradually, Rosenberg's cognitive skills and her power of speech began to falter.
"She finally got us all raised and then she got sick," O'Leary said. "She wanted to be a grandma and enjoy her grandkids. She would have been a good one."
Her mother's death had left O'Leary in a state of frustration and wonderment about Alzheimer's. Her own kids would not get to know their grandma or even know how to process the illness. O'Leary continued living in Magnolia and working as an airline attendant for Alaska Air Group, sailing at 35,000 feet over the West Coast and across the country, making sure passengers were well looked after.
Eleven years would pass since Rosenberg's death. O'Leary's two small children were now well into high school. That's about when they learned their grandmother on their father's side had the disease. It was then that O'Leary would transform her daily thoughts of her mother (and now her mother-in-law) into something bigger than any one person: Tara's Tidbits.
A wholesale cookie business dedicated to good-tasting cookies while pitching in to help eradicate the disease that took O'Leary's mother. A third of the net profits would go the local chapter of the Alzheimer's Association and its pursuit of uniting people touched by the disease and its greater desire to find a cure.
She rented space at Catering by Phyllis just off West Dravus Street, experimented with some recipes before coming up with a chewy, crispy version of the chocolate chip cookie. Then she came up with a visual concept for packaging (her first grade school photo), some fun catch phrases like "phyl-osophy for the soul," marketing with a Web site (www.tarastidbits.com), T-shirts and magnet signage on her Ford Explorer with license plates reading: TIDBITS.
With the time between her day job and the on-call job of motherhood, she looks for partners, distributors and retailers. Café Appassionato, at one time in the Village, was happy to take some Tidbits. There were several individual purchases and private event purchases. Perhaps her biggest venture was the Alzheimer's Association auction of 2006 at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Seattle, in which she made more than 700 cookies. She did it again this past March. In the three years Tara's Tidbits has been in business, O'Leary has raised about $5,000 for Alzheimer's and she is anxious to take it further.
"I'm learning and in January am taking a course on how to be an entrepreneur," she said. She's revamping her Web site and has been talking with Alaska Air about serving the cookies on flights. For the holidays, she's considering pitching Alaska Air a signature cookie with an imprint of an Inuit native, modeled after the airline's popular logo. She also wants to get the cookies on cruise ships and may solicit the North Carolina-based Immaculate Cookie Co. about manufacturing. That company began 13 years ago and also dedicates proceeds to various causes. Though her big break has yet to happen, she remains optimistic. There is no alternative way of thinking, even when her contribution to the cause sometimes feels like a cup of water thrown into the ocean.
"My main goal is to find a cure for it and to help families who have to deal with it," she said. "Emotionally, it is so hard. I am somebody who has gone through it. I know they'll find a cure for it. I have to think that way."
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