The Year

I'm really tired. My bones feel tired.
To overstate the obvious it has been the year of the mommy. After a rough start we seem to have found a groove of sorts. I have friends who go the sports club where I swim so I get a ride four, sometimes five days a week. Mom lives right next door so they drop me off for my afternoon visit and sometimes one of them picks me up. They help me get Mom to Oak Street on Fridays and home on Sundays. Mom loves her care givers, particularly the home health care woman who helps her get started in the morning. She has music therapy on Wednesdays so I stay home that day. I usually get three or four calls and I make a few of my own. It's not totally off but it gives me a wee bit of distance.
But I don't really have that many friends in the Hood. There are times when they all leave town, or someone is sick, or just busy. I feel like I'm crawling along and suddenly the floor falls out from under me.
As long as the mommy is in assisted living she's OK. But OK and good are two different things. I want her to be good more often than not.
Am I taking care of myself? I dunno. I try. Swimming is essential for my well being. Books are essential. Good food and a balance between cooking and not having to cook. It doesn't seem like much.
At this moment I'm really down. Of course I am. Christmas was tough. And my systems of support have been wobbly. In a week or so the rhythm will come back and I'll be OK.
I mean, it is what it is. Ya know?
Hardest fucking year of my life. I'd like to qualify that with some acknowledgement of love and beauty but I'm too tired right now.
As a friend of mine says. "Onward."

Occupying the Nest

When I was in SF I had a night light in the living room. It was a three sided brass (copper?) thing with a picture of Buddha. It was more decorative than functional. When I moved into the nest I put it in the kitchen where it was still more decorative functional. There is a streetlight right out side the window and the nest was never really dark. But I had a ritual of lighting the night light in the evening and turning it off in the morning. I had to get new blinds, which block a lot of light and it is actually dark now. I'd given up on the little night light ritual after I moved the Cuisinart and the Kitchen Aid in front of it. Recently I moved it into the bathroom where it is now a very lovely night light. It's bright enough to cast some light into the hall, which is useful now that the blinds keep out the street light. Every night I smile when I see that night light. It has finally found the spot in which it can fulfill its night light destiny.
The nest isn't huge but it does have an entire room that I did not have in SF. I call it the library, which is a bit ostentatious for the size of it. It is filled with book shelves, (which will some day hopefully be filled with books). Karen helped me move things around to make it appear that I have way more than I do.One of my old shelves is on the side with a few books and a lot of junk. Despite my best efforts it is the stash shelf. For now.
It is my favorite room. I wasn't going to put a TV in it but Mom had a small TV in her kitchen and I ended up putting it on top the fireplace. The fireplace is another formally Mom's item. Electric but pretty. Now loaded with a mash up of things from my Grandmother's mantle, some books (of course), random collected stones, shells, candles and so forth. I sleep in there when the Mommy is here on the weekend.
DeAnna switched the chaise lounge from the library and a recliner that was suppose to be the place where I sat to look out the window. It ended up not quite fitting. The chaise is larger in someways but fits at an angle. I sat in it the other day with a cup of tea watching the world go by.
I sleep in my bedroom when the mommy isn't here. This may sound like a given but because of joint pain I couldn't get comfortable in bed. And then Mom needed a new bed and we got an adjustable Tempurpedic, which is wonderfully comfortable.
I haven't broken my habit of dragging my meals to the computer but I am still trying. When the mommy is here we eat in the kitchen/dining room. She looks out the window and narrates the activities on Oak Street.
When I was in NYC I lived in a studio big enough for a single bed, a small dresser and a small refrigerator. My first place in SF was a bigger studio. And then a one bedroom but I had no furniture for the bedroom. I remember noticing that I sat in the same spot on my futon long after I had more furniture. I'd become overly acclimated to small space. Now I wander from chair to chair. From room to room. I sit by my sink and stare out my window. If I feel I haven't spent enough time in a room I move. It's all so amusing to me.
The first time I left for a few months and then returned it didn't quite feel like home. It didn't smell like home. Now it's mine. I feel it wrapped around me. I fill it up.
I have always needed/wanted a good place to live. I used to want a fireplace and I've had a few. Real ones. With wood and ash to clean. Even the tiny place in NYC felt like ... life in NYC. But I think if I had found something bigger and nicer I might still be there. I lived in my last place in SF longer than I'd lived anywhere, ever. It was physically painful to leave.
But.
And.
Now I am in my nest. Where I can occupy my destiny.
Heh.    

Ephemera. More. And More.

When I wrote the first ephemera post I was feeling comfortable, even happy, with the addition of family photos to my walls. And family memorabilia. And then we started clearing out the storage.
Oh.
My.
There were boxes and boxes of photos. Lots of landscapes from trips. I was happy to toss those. With the possible exception of David Hockney I'm not that into landscapes. There were pictures of groups of people that I didn't know. Interestingly the mommy and her mommy both spent lots of time in groups of women. Eastern Star. D.A.R. Various bridge clubs and church groups. I like that but ... I tossed them. K took pictures that were so far back you can barely see who it is. So ... Mom in front of a statue, or a tree, or a house. Mom. Very tiny in the middle of this ... landscape.
I am not emotionally suited to this project. I clench up every time I toss something. It feels like tossing a person's life.
Mom likes looking at some of the pictures but gets upset if she looks at too many. She never asks to see them. And there are so may old, old, old pictures of generations back. Some are very cool. But I don't know who they are. I toss them and then I clench. I have two copies of my grandmother in her wedding dress. One needs to go. I am not emotionally suited.
Somehow I've become the archivist for the family. And...they don't really care about all of this.
It's not just photos. I have a statue of Lincoln. It was Grandma's. I saw it during my childhood. I never really wanted it but there is NO Way I'm tossing it. And there is all the silverware. My aunt's silverware. My grandmother's. My mother's. I like a lot of it and I have pulled it out from time to time. Plus I use some of it regularly. But...I have way more than I'll ever use. I. Just. Can't. Let. It. Go.
There is more in the storage and a few boxes are now in my home storage because I was confused about what to do with them. I did all this with my own ephemera before I left SF and still had work to do with all of that. I am NOT emotionally suited. I feel damaged after each session of sorting and tossing. People say it feels good to clear things out but it doesn't feel good to me. Not while I'm doing it anyway. And not when it's someone else's stuff.
Mom had a friend who she'd known since they were both babies. The friend gave Mom a ceramic plague with a cartoon of two older ladies, which reads: Lucie and Betty. Best friends forever. Betty passed last year and Mom fell into a deep depression. If I hang the plaque on her wall it could trigger more depression. But I feel like weeping every time I try to put it in the trash. I realize that to some extent this is me dealing with the loss of Mom before she's gone. My life is filled with moments of needing to let go of her. It's a protracted last act of our time on the stage.  
I had a small stick that a friend's son had given me when we in a park sitting on my desk for years. I tossed it with watery eyes when I was clearing out in SF.
Not.
Emotionally.
Suited.
It has in some ways cured me of want to buy anything, ever, again. Although there will always be a book I need. I'm still caught by kitchen stuff. Dishes. Salt and Peeper shakers.
Oh lordy.

Religion

I've been reading Fields of Blood. With that as a background the mommy and I watched a lot of the pope this weekend.
I like him.
The coverage (like all coverage these days) was filled with hours of watching people waiting for the pope while people talked about how great he is. We clicked away for most of that. We watched most of the three masses and the visit to the school in Harlem. All of this broken up by hours of Mom's favorite show: Blue Bloods. She likes Tom Selleck. She has a hard time following plot lines these days so she likes to watch things that she knows, most of which seem to be cop shows. NCIS is her other favorite. It made for an interesting juxtaposition. Cops. Crimes. Lots of shooting. Blood.
Pope Francis talks a lot about peace. I listened to that as I read a section of the book in which Pope Alexander VI (AKA the Borges pope) orders a bunch of killing.
Armstrong (as usual) is detailed in her description of how violence, politics and religion wound together. Her scholarship is profound and overwhelming.
Every so often I try to wrap my head around the Ottoman Empire. Seriously. I always end up feeling dim witted. There were points in the book when I had to skim because I couldn't take it all in. I couldn't take in the information and the relentlessness of war. It's just always there. It always has been. It's sort of easier to understand how people with limited resources felt the need to protect themselves. Maybe even easy to to understand the desire to use your beliefs to buoy justification of that violence. But it never ends.
I could write an entire post about Blue Bloods. At this point I have watched episodes over and over. Even if I read while it's on it's the background noise for so much of my day now. It seems like they try to take on issues in policing and represent them from different angles but there is a lot of shooting and shouting and twisting of the rules. It tends to wrap up neatly with this one NYC, Irish, Catholic family taking care of everything.
I was a Protestant kid on block full of Catholic kids. I walked toward the public school when they walked toward the Catholic school. The only hostility I remember was when a kid told me I was going to hell because I wasn't Catholic. I went home in tears and my Grandmother dragged me to the kids house to demand an apology. Not terrible hostility. Just the background awareness of difference. Just a mini war. I also remember wanting to be a nun. My babysitter became one and I wanted to be like her.
I was a devoted child. I was a fatherless child. I wanted God. The father. In my adult life I continued to look for God. I wanted an active relationship. I wanted to see cause and effect. I wanted miracles. Now I say I believe in God but I don't know what I mean by that.
If you walk into the nest you'll see a lot of Catholic iconography. I like the art. There are also Buddhas and Ganesha and Shiva and lots of fat women. Ha!
When the pope stops every thing to go and kiss the forehead of a child I tear up. I feel that longing for belief. But there are the problems of belief.
The Saint of Small Type from MarkFiore on Vimeo.
Fields of Blood.

What's The Question?

Mom has been living in retirement communities for many years. Retirement communities are filled with older people. Older people die. It's just part of the experience. Death is always occurring. Surgeries, health issues, medications pepper conversations and every now and then ... someone dies.
You can be philosophical about this. You may not even know the person. Your concern naturally goes to their family. It's such a regular occurrence that you become a bit hyper vigilant but you know you can't be in that environment and fall apart every time someone dies. It's even more true in assisted living.
There was a woman who lived at the end of the hall. If I stood in front of Mom's door I looked into that woman's apartment and some times saw her and some times waved. She would walk around and around the hallway just before dinner and some times looked into our apartment and some times waved. She was almost always the first one in the dining room. I tried to smile and make conversation. She'd smile but she never spoke.
Last week I didn't see her for a few days and then one day her door was open when I arrived at Mom's. It was clearly being emptied. The handy men were there and noticed my startled look. "She's on the other side of the building now." The other side being memory care. I felt relieved but then I wondered why I did. She's not dead. But she's in some kind of decline. Piles of her belongings are in one of the side halls waiting for ... what? Family? It would be bad faith to ask. They can't just be telling other people's business. I did not really know her. Why should I care?
She just seemed so fragile. So dear. So focused on her walking and her dinner. Will she still be? Or will she sit in her room? Is she sad? Mad? Does she understand what happened and why? Does she even have family? Was it her choice?
Mom went into memory care after her sudden, shocking and rapid decline. I chose memory care because she needed a lot of help. But the day we arrived she rallied. She looked around and saw the other people, saw that they were very confused, feared that that was her future and she shook for three days. It was the worst. I left sobbing every day. She didn't remember (and still doesn't) the months of delirium. There are no locks of the doors on that side. Occasionally another resident would wander in. She never wanted to leave her room.
Mom's mind did clear enough to ask for her to be moved to assisted living. But I also put in lots of support structures, most of which are me being there or her being in the nest. Her apartment is small but nice and she has a view of a garden. She's OK. There's nothing wrong with memory care but it isn't as ... private? Or something. I don't really want her to go back but a time may come and I may have no choice.
Jung said, "The meaning of my existence, is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question and I must communicate my answer otherwise I am dependent on the world's answer."
I'm always looking for meaning. Meaning comforts me. I understand that meaning is a shape shifter but I still love that feeling when something rings true.
On her death bed, Gertrude Stein asked Alice B. Toklas, "what is the answer?"  When Alice did not respond she said, "in that case, what is the question?" They were her last words. Her last words. Does the lady from the end of the hall have a question? Or an answer? Does Mom?
A family member is having some problems and I feel like she's asking the wrong questions but who the hell am I?
When famous people die we talk about the meaning they brought to the world. Or the mess they created. We care. We don't care. We make jokes. We make memorials.
I'm not concerned with how long Mom lives. I just want her to be safe and comfortable and as happy as she can be. My requirements for my own end of life are much too grand. I (like Jung) am arrogant enough to think the world cares about my questions and answers. I'm "chicken scratching for my immortality." - Joni.
And.
What exactly is the question?

The Banging Narrative

Way back - well probably not way way but it feels way - I wrote about the day Mom moved into the bad faith assisted living place and I thought I had her settled. Sigh. It was a short post that referenced an essay I'd read in which Ann Patchett takes care of her grandmother. I remember the feeling of finally having time to myself and the reading being too close to what I was feeling.  I pulled a longer quote in which Patchett wrote: Could I do this every day for another five months? Absolutely. Another five years? I wasn't entirely sure. 
Never more true. And. Never more meaningless. Ready or not. The day begins. 
I keep banging into this narrative. I watched Still Alice, which was a self inflicted bang. Although it's about early onset Alzheimer's and Mom doesn't have Alzheimer's. Or they don't know but probably not. She has a fairly normal level of Dementia for her age. These are distinctions without difference. Her mind is shredding. Watching the movie was, again, too close. 
And then I read a piece in The Sun about another ageing mother recently. All this and countless stories from friends and family and people I barely know. Bang. Bang. Bang.   
I feel like we so often hear about the ninety year old person who just climbed a mountain, or who is still working, or leaping tall buildings in a single bound. In the last twenty years of Mom's life I've seen so many different story lines. Some inspirational but most exhaustingly difficult. It's not the level of ability or acuity that hits me. It's the chaos in terms of care. 
Jimmy Carter has Cancer. I love him and I want him to get the best care and he will. And I sort of resent it. Because the whole time Mom was so sick I felt time and time again that I was being told she was old and there wasn't much to do. I had to fight for information. And there were things that could be done. I remain hyper vigilant. Every rash, every mood shift, every bodily function. Is there something I need to do? Who can I ask? Who will care?
Mom is 89 and on no meds. She's really very healthy. She's had multiple joint replacements. She uses a walker but she gets exercise most days. She sleeps most of the day and is always tired. She may have something going on that will be the cause of her death but her new GP spends most of the time during appointments shuffling papers and failing on his lap top. I have to keep him focused. 
I'm not concerned with the length of her life. I'm concerned with the quality. She's safe. She eats well. She has focused care and she spends the weekends with me. She has music therapy and will be having physical therapy soon for shoulder pain. She had her teeth cleaned today. 
So.  
Sometimes she's just afraid. She doesn't know why. And I can't help. She seems obsessed with what people think of her. Do they like her? Was she always this way and just never let it show? Or is she just lucid enough to see that she's confused. She dreads making choices. She says, I love you over and over and over and I hear - please don't leave me. 
Can I do this for another five months? Another five years? 
People keep telling me what a good daughter I am. Maybe. But I am also filled with self pity and doubt. I never feel like I do enough and I regularly am not doing enough. There is a list of things that need to be done. I am not getting them done. 
This narrative is everywhere. I'm not even sure why. I guess we are living longer. I guess health care is a new industry. I guess there is only so much that can be done. I guess people my age are in this narrative and we are sharing. 
The end of the narrative is ... she's gone. I didn't read ahead. It's just a given. 
Bang. 

What Bernie Could Have Said

I'm having a hard time thinking and writing about politics lately. Mostly because so much political news is organized around the Republican primary right now and it's just so ... sigh...stupid. We need a vigorous second (or more) party. We need serious conversations about policy. We don't need reality (cough) TV.
I'm a registered Democrat but I don't really identify as one. I just want to be able to vote in a primary. And the political news on that side isn't inspired.
Yesterday there was a lot of chatter about Bernie Sanders being interrupted in Seattle by a group of Black Lives Matter activists. I'm not interested in talking about whether or not they should have interrupted him. Because. Ya know. Why not?
Sanders said - I am disappointed that two people disrupted a rally attended by thousands at which I was invited to speak about fighting to protect Social Security and Medicare,” Bernie Sanders said in a written statement. “I was especially disappointed because on criminal justice reform and the need to fight racism there is no other candidate for president who will fight harder than me.
That feels like old tired White whining. It makes me tired.
All lives matter? Of course they do. Saying that now is completely beside the point. Because right now we are trying to focus on the systems of social injustice that encourage the deaths we seem to hear about every single day. Deaths at the hands of people who are supposed to protect and serve. Death when someone knocks on a door in the night to ask for help. Death when someone doesn't like the sound of someone else's music. It's not new. It's the original sin of our country. Men wrote lofty ideas about liberty while owning slaves and ignoring the men and women who had been living on the land they were claiming as their own. Our founding declarations and documents are like a palimpsest. Something had been written underneath. We built systems of law, property and commerce with our original sin in the background. It is the exception in our exceptionalism.
This is a specific time with specific characteristics. It is true that Sanders articulates politics with which generally agree. I'm not overly excited by his campaign. He is more progressive than Clinton but so was Obama. I feel like Obama got more done than he is given credit for but he hasn't been able to do as much as as he could and life inside the beltway has not changed much. It's a system that will take so much to repair. Sanders has a great critique of that system but he has been part of it for years.
Sanders could have said - I know that as a White man living in this country at this time I have had access to opportunity. As a result I am here today with a public platform. I'll have lots of opportunity to express my opinions and put forth my political agenda. I've been on national television and I will be again. I'm happy to let these young people have this platform at this time because they are expressing things we all need to be thinking about right now. Especially today on the anniversary of the death of Michael Brown. I'm sorry if the people who came to hear me are disappointed but I encourage you to listen. I encourage you spend some time every day thinking about what the Black Lives Matter movement is saying and why it exists.
If he had said that (or something like that) he would have been truly, deeply progressive. It would have been a moment in which he could have modeled an active awareness of the need to set aside rhetoric (Social Security and Medicare) and listen to each other.
So today he has a new plank in his platform and a new hire. And OK. What ever. Yeah. Yeah.
There may be a conversation about tactics but I'm not interested. I am interested in conversations and demonstrations of real leadership. Really, the head pounding coverage of you know who is numbing. But the moment when two young women of color take the stage and are met with "disappointment" just pisses me off.    

A Girl Walks in a Bar

When I was three or four or five I was walking down West Liberty with my Uncle John. Maybe we were walking home from church, or maybe we went to Islay's for chipped ham, or maybe we were just walking. I was following him, keeping my eyes on his pant legs in front of me. I must have looked off for a minute.
I remember there was a hobby store on West Liberty with plastic models in the window one of which was a scene from the Pit and the Pendulum.  There was a man tied to a table and a pendulum swinging above him. There was another man watching. I think he was a monster but I'm not really sure what I mean by that. I had not read The Pit and the Pendulum. Still haven't. But I was always compelled and terrified by that model. What would happen to the man on the table? I might have been looking at it.
I looked back and started following the pant legs in front of me, which turned and walked into a bar. I didn't really know it was a bar. I remember looking up and seeing a bunch of men staring at me. My Uncle John walked in, laughing and asked if I wanted a beer. Everyone laughed.
For some reason this story is in heavy rotation in the mommy's head this week. She tells me over and over and over. Sometimes she thinks she dreamed it. She adds and subtracts details. There is no doubt my very Methodist grandmother would not have been happy about it. Some times (in Mom's version) Uncle John tells me not to tell her. Some times he swoops me up and carries me home.
My own memory may contain falsehoods. I remember the pants and looking up and Uncle John laughing.
I've always loved bars.  

Shine

Activity trackers worry me. They feel like they're one of the systems of control we are all baked in every day. I always worry about obsession with numbers as opposed to ... experience. In other words if you do some kind of exercise and it feels good then isn't that enough to make you want to do it again? Isn't that better than holding to a random metric? I could go on and on.
But.
I love gadgets.
There was a commercial in which a woman is swimming and then she puts a disc on her smart phone and gets ... DATA!!! Ooooo. What's that? Google?
It was a Shine and at the time of the commercial it wasn't even available. But because I had searched for it I'd see ads for it and ads for similar things and finally (after many months) I decided I wanted it.
I was interested in tracking my swim and my sleep. I've wondered if I have Apnea although I doubted it because I'm usually awakened (or kept awake) by pain, needing to pee and my yammering brain. If I stop breathing the other things will likely snap me out of it. And I'm not really sleepy all day, which I understand is a symptom. Sometimes in the late afternoon I crash a bit but I don't feel like I have a big problem. And the Shine has more or less confirmed that.
It has a three color graph that reads dark for restful sleep, lighter for light sleep and really light for awake. I always wake up at least twice a night (more if the mommy is in the nest), I usually sleep between 6 and 7 hours a night, about half of which is restful sleep. If you stacked up all my graphs for a month it would show that I don't really sleep the same way every night. The mommy has an impact (not a good one) and I usually have a "recovery" night when she goes back to her apartment.
I was a little disappointed in the amount of data on swimming. Shine makes you set a activity point goal. I set a really low goal. I make more than my goal during the time I swim. On days when I swim I usually more than double my goal. But on non swim days I sometimes don't make it, or I barely make it. On mommy days I usually make it. There's always "activity" related to her care. There have been some -uh- funny moments.
When I first got it I was manically checking all day. One day I arrived at the evening (AKA the time I stop moving) and I was kind of far from my goal. I checked after every trip to the bathroom. I washed dishes that might have left in the sink. I fidgeted. Squirmed. Checked. I made it. There's a commercial right now for the Apple phone (I think) in which people read the activity tracker and react. The last scene shows a fellow obviously ready for bed when he checks in and sees he hasn't quite made his goal so he snaps up and does some jumping jacks. It makes me smile. Or is it a grimace?
Remember that exercise thing in 1984?

I discovered that I get slightly more points when I read than if I watch a movie. One night I was settling in for a movie and noticed that I felt OK about it because I had been to the pool and was way past my goal. That's exactly the kind of thing I do not want. I do not want plastic and metal determining how I feel about anything, ever.
My Shine broke after a month. They replaced it but it took a week so the addiction broke. I stopped all the checking. Until yesterday. I was hyper and bored. I checked in the morning to see my sleep chart. I checked right before I went to the pool, which I often do just to see where I'm at. I checked after my swim and saw that I was past goal. OK. I usually don't check again until the end of the day but yesterday I kept finding reasons to check. At some point I saw that I was close to doubling my goal and got hyper again. (Made it!)
Sigh.
The good thing has been that I now do some yoga every morning. Not much. And the tracking on yoga is really weak. No real data. Basically you tell it to record that you did yoga and it does. I have no idea why this record that no one but me will ever see has created the space for me to do something that I love but can't get it together to do. I do understand how documenting creates awareness.
When I first started the yoga I was so stiff. I'm having more joint pain lately.  A few months later I stand a little straighter. I can't overstate how small the amount of focused yoga I do is but it does cause me to stretch more often during the day.
So that's good.
The Shine gives you a calories burned number for specific activity and the day. It seems a bit off. Either way to high or not high enough. You can take a picture of what you eat and add it to your day but there's no data. I took a picture of my French toast one day. It was pretty. I'm not dealing with calories.
And you can record your weight, which I do when I'm at the doctor's office but I am not going to do on a daily, or weekly basis.
I am a bit - oh I don't know - annoyed that I get the same amount of points for a day that I do for an hour in the pool. But it does make sense. I have some pain on the pool but not anywhere near what I have outside of it. My activity graphs are spiky. I get up and do as much as I can before it starts to hurt and then I sit down. Wait for the pain to abate and then get back up. So it does make sense. And it doesn't really mean much.
Funny also. I realized as I was writing that I mention commercials twice. Systems of control?
Heh.

Ephemera

A notice popped on my phone to let me know that a friend had posted a photo. This friend posts a lot of pictures on all the social media sites. I found myself wondering if they had them saved to a disc somewhere. Or even printed out. I imagined all those photos like leaves strewn across the landscape of the web. Some in places where no one goes.
I had to renew fatshadow.com the other day. I have always intended to have that be the address for this blog but I don't seem to be able to figure it out. I'm sure it's not hard but I just get cross-eyed reading the directions. I hesitated because ... who cares? I don't write often enough to build readership. My posts aren't focused. I spend much of my writing time doing things related to Mom's life. So ... who cares?
But there's all that old writing. I don't read it. I doubt anyone else does. Sometimes I get email telling me about a broken link and a service I can get to repair all my broken links. Uh. No thank you. All that old writing. Sigh.
I now have photos of my maternal family line going back to my great grandmother and grandfather hanging on my wall. I like it. Mom likes it. I think my grandmother would like it until the wedding picture of my mom and dad. Heh. I wonder if my great grandfather and grandmother would like it. Did they imagine those pictures always on a family wall? I wrote about the picture of my great great grandfather. Ahhhh... old writing. Safely preserved. Interest in that line stops with me. I have cousins who have not shown interest in the photos. They have kids who might some day. So...who cares?
I should have pictures of my paternal line and I don't really know why I didn't get them, or if they still exist. And? Who? Cares?
On the same wall is the sibling section. There is a picture of my maternal grandfather's family and my maternal grandmother and her sisters. My maternal grandmother had strong feelings about preservation and documentation. She took a picture of her kids every year for sixteen years. I found them so charming that I framed them. Every time Mom walks by them she stops to look.
I always knew I'd have these pictures some day. Moving Mom to Hood River accelerated the flood of family stuff. Most of it I love but there is a storage locker filled with things I'll need to sort and I am NOT looking forward to it. Some times I look around and imagine the person who has to sort through my stuff.
We are star dust.
Dust.
Strewn across the landscape.
And still I worry about all those photos. That picture of the coffee and scone in that cafe. The one where the young woman is holding a cat. All those pictures of toes.
Is preservation participation? Or materialism? Or attachment? All of that? None of that?
After natural disasters in which people's homes are destroyed they almost always mention the family pictures.
There is also a picture of me that Valerie took and printed out quite large. I love how she saw me. In it I look a bit sullen. Maybe pensive. Or ironic. It fits the mood of the wall for me. These are my people, my lineage. But I don't completely relate, as it were.
Heh.    

Year Two

I celebrated my second year of life in the nest by having a polyp removed from my uterus. SO much fun!
Really, it was not a big deal at all. Just an ageing girl thing. I spent the day napping and binge watching the second season of The News Room.
I went looking for what I wrote last year.
Mom's world was more or less dumped into mine. The nest filled up with family furniture, photos, lamps. The nest smells like both Mom and me. It smells like musky old books and cleaning products. It smells like aging. It smells like candles and soap. The smells from the outside float in. Diesel and coffee and smoke. In the morning, before the day begins and in the evening after things slow way down, it smells like pine and water.
I don't know if I'll ever feel completely at home in Hood River. But in my nest I have the first home that feels like a place I don't have to leave. I don't want to leave.
I just read The Odd Woman and The City . (Thank you Kristina.) It's a love letter to New York and a bunch of great thinking about the nature of relationship and connection. I've moved onto another book but I keep picking up the Gornick to reread parts.
When I was in NYC I lived in a residential hotel on the upper west. I headed south every day for work and my hang outs on Saint Marks. I don't remember why but I once looked at a small studio in the west village. I think I was there with a friend because there was no way I could have afforded it. It had a small fireplace and a window onto a garden. I still swoon with desire when I think about it. New York was like unrequited love for me. But I never felt like I had a chance so it didn't even hurt that bad. And I was so at home in SF once I got there.
So.
Gornick writes about her habit of daydreaming her life both past and future. Walking and dreaming. And then at sixty she stopped. She says turning sixty was like being told she had six months to live and she stopped being able to fantasize about the future. That's not exactly how I would say it but I do feel something similar. Some sense of ...it ...being over. Clearly there are ...its ...that are over. And clearly there are ...its...that may still be possible. It's not a dour give up on life kind of thing. It's just an awareness. She goes onto say that the fantasized tomorrow was a refuge and that now there is only "the immensity of the vacant present."
I realize this all sounds painful and it is but it is also liberating. The book is filled with the most lucid expressions of a sense of a failed self. It thrilled me.
Heh.
Oh.
It's hard to say all this and not be aware that people may think I am being depressive. Negative. Worrisome. Maybe. It doesn't feel that way. It feels ... real.
Gornick talks on (paraphrasing Woolf) about moments of being. I have moments in the nest when I am just looking around. Looking at it all. The book shelves. The salt and pepper shakers. My maternal family tree on the wall. The old Victrola filled with Pelligrino soda and booze. I take great pleasure in just looking at it all.
This year has been the most challenging year of my life because of Mom. And, although she is much better and things are generally better I know there are challenges yet ahead.
Last year's post and this years post aren't that different. I am happy and grateful and surprised by my life. I am tired and sad and alienated. All true at the same time.
And right now I am in need of my bed.  

Surfacing

I looked at a book the other day and felt like I wanted to read it. That might not seem unusual but the last two months have been a bit of a siege. Mom had a health crisis made more complicated by some bad faith actions by the management of the place she had been living. I have never been so drained of ...everything. Energy, will, desire. All I do every day is focus on her.
It's not over. But she is in a place where she is getting pretty good care. I am there every day but I have also gotten to the pool a few times. I've had some time to myself. I've spent evenings, sprawled, binge watching Call the Midwife and A Chefs Life. And then I looked a the book. There's also a stack of magazines. And...there's also a bunch of things I still need to work through related to the bad faith actions and general management of her/our lives.
I gotta say. I knew Mom moving to Hood River might make demands on my life but there was no way I could have imagined all of this.
I feel damaged.
But.
I am feeling.
And I have already read half of that book.

The Story

Memoir writers write about people in their lives. I think Lucy Grealy said everyone was fair game, or something like that. If you have a writer in your life you may see yourself on their page. But is that OK? 

When I was writing the book I thought a lot about this. I decided not to tell stories about my cousins. I mentioned them but not in any detail. In my rewriting I've struggled with how much to write about the two men I loved. I loved way more than two but there were two who felt the most ...uh...real. Er sumthin. I felt like my parents were fair game because our stories are so intertwined. 

And now, my story is all about Mom. I feel a bit unsure when I begin to write. Mom would never know what I've written. And maybe for just that reason I feel the need to be careful. 

Things were going fairly well for a short time and then it felt like we fell off a cliff. Right now I am at a loss for how to make things better. I feel like I can't do things fast enough. I'm not totally comfortable with writing out the details. It's just been rough. There have been health issues. Serious? Yes. And no. Health issues when you're almost 89 are ... I dunno. Normal? It's so hard to know how to think and feel and talk about it all.   

Rightly or wrongly this blog has been a journal and lately a chronicle of Mom and I. I've had a few ideas for blog posts that didn't have anything to do with story. Random thought posts. But I so rarely have time and/or energy. 

So. That's the story. 

New Normal

Mom moved into her new place on Sunday. I spent the first night there with her. There are still a few boxes to unpack and things to put in place but it looks really nice and she seems to be comfortable. She'll come back to the nest every weekend. 
I was ...so tired. More tired than I've ever been. I still am. 
I caught up on TV that Mom won't watch, haven't cooked more than scrambled eggs and best of all I read. 
I finished This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, which I had started in NC and read on the plane. It's a book of essays most of which are good reads. I think the problem for me with too many essays in a row is one of rhythm. Things start to feel the same. I feel like I'm rereading. I don't usually have that problem with Didion but I sometimes have it with McPhee. I love all three writes. I just get antsy. 
Part of the problem has been the scatter shot way I've been reading. I never really sink in. The number of ways Mom can be disruptive are legend. 
So yesterday I settled in for a lovely read and the essay I landed on was one about Patchett taking care of her grandmother in her declining years complete with a move into assisted living. Good read. But just so not what I needed to be reading at this particular moment. Or maybe it was. 
I've had friends who cared for ageing parents and parent-in-laws and I have friends who are doing that now. It's a thing. 
From Patchett.
My mother had kept my grandmother at home for 16 years. She had wanted to keep her at home until she died. But the thing about death is that you never have any idea when it's coming. I used to think all the time: if only I knew when she would die, I could pace myself. My grandmother was 92. Could I do this every day for another five months? Absolutely. Another five years? I wasn't entirely sure. 
Yep. 
I've been to the pool a few times, which is bliss. I have a stack of magazines to read. We are more or less at our new normal. What ever that means.