When it’s my turn, I say that it would be helpful if my father would stop following my mother around. She goes to do the laundry and here he comes down the hall, looking for her. She visits the woman next door, same thing. She goes to the lobby to fetch the mail and stops briefly to talk to someone in the hall, and he’s ready to put out an APB.
I called my mother once and she moved into the bathroom to talk. We were discussing something we didn’t want my dad to hear: whether or not we should say the words Alzheimer’s disease to him again, whether that might help him to understand some things that were happening, or if it would only make him feel worse. But, “I have to go,” my mother said suddenly. “He’s standing right outside the door.”
“She just needs a little break now and then,” I say. “If my dad could just give her ten, twenty minutes.”
Janet looks at me. “He can’t.”
All of a sudden, I get it. His not doing puzzles is not lack of will but lack of ability. This man who uncomplainingly stayed home by himself while his wife went on vacations with her sisters, or spent whole days out shopping with them, now can’t go any length of time without wondering where she is, worrying about whether or not she’s all right. Time is not the same reliable index it was before; it’s now loose and vaguely incomprehensible. Either my mother is there or she is not. When she’s not, he doesn’t know how long it’s been since he’s seen her.
Well, I’m an Army brat, used to constant change and upheaval. When I’m with him, I’ll move again, this time into the land of Time As He Knows It. When I’m with him and my mother is gone and he asks repeatedly, “Where’s your mother?” I’ll tell him. And each time, I’ll try to act as if he’s asking me for the first time. I’ll tell him where she is, how long she’s been gone, and when she might be expected to return. I’m not only an Army brat, I’m a mother. I know some ways of soothing. I know that no matter what the problem or fear, it helps to say in some way or another, Everything will be all right.
I don’t want to think about this, but I can’t help it: when my first golden, Toby, was very sick—was dying— he needed to go out. He bounded down the back stairs, not understanding the extent of his weakness. When he came back in, he couldn’t make it to the spot in the living room where he liked to sleep. He collapsed in the kitchen, in front of the refrigerator. And I lay on the floor beside him, saying, “You need to stay here, pal? Okay, we’ll stay here together.” We lay there for some time, and the thing I remember most is that it wasn’t so bad. It was just different. The main thing was, he was still alive, and we were together. Also, it was convenient, lying there, in case either of us wanted something from the fridge. Toby was particularly fond of cheese.
* * *
That evening, I want to take my parents out to dinner, and I ask them to tell me someplace they’d like to go. “Well, we like Little Venice,” my mother says. “But that’s really far away.”
“No problem, we’ll go there,” I tell her. I’m thinking, You want to go to San Francisco for dinner? Listen, I’ve got some time on my hands, and it belongs to you.
Easy to make such grandiose gestures in thought. And anyway, the time it takes to drive to Little Venice? About eight minutes. It’s good food. The atmosphere is homey; we might be in someone’s kitchen. A member of the family who owns the place comes over to our table to see what we thought of the food. “It’s really good,” I say. “Well, of course it is,” she says. She points to my mother’s half-empty (huge) platter. “Box?” she asks.
After dinner, we drop by the house so that I can pick up my dog; I left her there while we had dinner. I’m a little afraid to bring my parents in, afraid it will make them sad, but they want to come in with me. I can’t tell from their behavior if being there bothers them or not. But later, after I’ve brought them back to the apartment, I ask my mother if, when she saw the house, she still wanted to go back. “In the worst way,” she says, and I can think of absolutely nothing to say in return.
Before I leave their apartment to go back to the house for sleep, my mother asks me to look through a box of Aunt Tish’s clothes that she salvaged, to see if there’s anything I want. I find some casual tops, and a soft gray jacket that feels like being embraced. That’s the thing I put on right away, and I keep on for nearly all the rest of my stay there.
* * *
On Friday I awaken to a gray, rainy morning. I start some coffee and sit in the booth, waiting for it to finish. I look around the kitchen at all the choices my mother made when she redecorated. She got a number of new outlets, so she didn’t have to move things to plug them in anymore. She refused a dishwasher, opting for more cupboard space, and got a number of pull-out shelves and clever storage spaces. She eliminated the wallpaper and selected a crème-café-colored paint. She got a double sink, a nice faucet, a remodeled booth. “Your mother is spending your inheritance!” my father complained, but I said, “Spend it! Spend it all. Why don’t you take a cruise?”
They didn’t take a cruise. My mother got the kitchen she wanted, and now she has left it behind.
When the coffee is done, I pour a cup, and then sit at the table, crying. I am suddenly overwhelmed with remorse about this house going on the market, about it being lived in by strangers. I remember my father carving the Thanksgiving turkey and the Easter ham on the pull-out cutting board, newspaper spread out below him to catch the juices and the occasional pieces of meat that fell, much to the delight of whatever dog was there—and there was almost always a dog there, if not one that belonged to my parents, then one that belonged to my sister or me.
I remember bringing my now thirty-six-year-old daughter over here a couple of times a week, when I lived in Minneapolis and worked the evening shift as a nurse. My mother would keep two-year-old Julie until my husband could pick her up. I’ve seen every season in this house, year after year: the apple tree bare, then budding, then flowering, then greening, then dropping its leaves to begin the cycle all over again. Though I never really lived here, this house has been the single most constant place in my life. My parents lived here for four and a half decades; I’ve come back to it again and again for the same length of time.
I look out into the yard, which, absent its container garden, fountain, birdbath, grill, and patio furniture, seems so much smaller. It’s hard to think that so many of us once fit out there when we had outdoor family gatherings.
I think of how I brought certain men to this house, including my college boyfriend, Joel, whom my mother adored, not least because he looked like a young Gregory Peck. I brought Joel along when I came to tell my parents that I was going to drop out of college. They were surprised, angry, disappointed, and I stood in this very kitchen weeping on Joel’s chest, saying, “See? I told you they wouldn’t understand!” I was the only one in the family to go to college; when I dropped out, I took a lot away from my parents. College wasn’t the place for me; I wanted the world to be my classroom, but they didn’t understand how I could squander what they saw as such an opportunity.
I also brought my boyfriend John here. He was the keyboard player in the band I was in; we moved out to California together, driving a taxi-yellow van that had OWOSSO TYPEWRITER COMPANY stenciled on the side. Before we left, we came over to say goodbye to my parents. My mother was furious that I was moving to California, and would not come out to say goodbye or anything else to me. My dad did, though. He hugged me and said goodbye, and he told John that if anything happened to me, he would come looking for him with a gun. John said, “Yes, sir.” When we drove away, my father stood with his arms resting along the top of the fence, watching us go. Over the years, he always watched me leave that way, standing at the fence, his arms crossed over the top rail. When it became hard for him to see, he still watched. When it became hard for him to walk, he accompanied me as far as the back door, then, from the window, watched me go.
I push back the rush of memories and think inste
ad about where we all are now. I think maybe Mom could start a newspaper at the new place. Maybe Dad could join the men’s discussion group. Maybe there is a way to enrich their lives and fill in the gap that leaving this house has made.
Early that afternoon, Lois, an old friend who lives in Minneapolis, comes over. She was my roommate in 1967–68, when we were going to the University of Minnesota, and we had a studio apartment (rent: $65 a month, split) where the bathroom was shared with four boys who lived in the apartment next to us. What a time that was! Many mornings, I made breakfast for all of us before we headed out for class, feeling like a real mother hen. The boys and Lois and I had a shaving cream fight that was nothing short of magnificent, running back and forth between apartments. They banged on their walls when they’d had enough of Lois and me playing our guitars and harmonizing; we banged on the bathroom door to get them out when we needed in. And we stuffed toilet paper into the keyhole of the bathroom door so they couldn’t spy on us when we were in there.
But Lois comes over, and we take Gabby for a two-hour walk. It’s longer than we anticipated, mostly because we get a little lost. But it’s fortuitous; we get to have a good long talk about aging and the problems it brings. Then we talk about how Lois is planning to leave her Minneapolis home to live with her daughter and family in Denver.
“But you love Minneapolis!” I say.
She nods. “Yes. I do.”
“Are you sure you want to live with your daughter?” I ask, and she looks wearily over at me. “Oh, I don’t know what I want,” she says. “But I can’t afford the house anymore.”
We have spent a long time talking about problems with our parents: the financial drain, the emotional drain, the time drain. But here come the issues of aging that we will face, nipping at our heels. And our kids won’t be able to help us the way we are helping our parents; the economy won’t allow it. We find ourselves in the same position as so many others, helping both our parents and our children. Right now, I feel that it’s an honor, truly; I’m happy to do it. I feel lucky I can do it. But I can see that a time may come when I deeply resent it, when my fears about how I will care for myself will have me closing my wallet against helping anyone else. We spend a fair amount of time talking about the Black Pill. We realize we each know what to do, if it comes to that.
And then we can’t bear it anymore, and we turn our attention to the blue herons who stand regally on one leg, the egrets dunking their heads to go fishing, the spring flowers struggling against the rain to make their presence known, the Baltimore oriole calling out from his post high up in the branches. We admire the placid water of the lake, the dip of the willow tree’s leaves into it, the blue-green coves created by hanging boughs. We smile at the Canada geese goslings who have grown past puffball stage and into an endearing gawkiness. We take what we can from nature, which never ages, but rather offers constant beauty and solace to those who will take the time to see it. I remember this about Lois and me: that we both always found what we needed in nature. And we shared other things, too. We fell asleep to music every night: Lou Rawls. Odetta. Buffy Sainte-Marie. Lois once broke up with a boyfriend just because I had broken up with mine and she figured I could use the company. Late one winter night we went out with our coats over our pajamas in order to give our Christmas tree a late-night Viking funeral: we set it on fire, ornaments and all, and dumped it off a railroad bridge into the Mississippi River. Then we probably went home and had some scotch, and I probably put Coke in mine.
When we get back to my parents’ house and part ways, we laugh, embracing (what can you do?), and wish each other luck.
I leave the worn-out dog in the house and go over to get my parents. I take them to Best Buy, where I’m going to get my mother a freezer. It’s meant to appease my mother’s desire for more storage for food, thereby making the place she’s living in now more appealing to her. But my father doesn’t understand why we’re getting a freezer. “Why do we need it?” he asks, and my mother tells him that the frozen pizzas she likes to buy won’t fit into the little freezer on top of the fridge, and she wants to be able to stock up on things that come on sale. My father shakes his head, clearly disgusted at what he sees as unnecessary expense. “We have two of everything,” he says. And my mother finally gives up. With tears in her eyes, she tells him, “Oh, never mind, then.” And to me, “I knew he’d do this.”
“No,” I say. “We’re getting you your freezer.” I speak to my dad firmly, telling him that this is something we have all discussed, though the truth is that mostly my sister and mother and I have discussed it. I call over a salesperson; I make arrangements on the phone with my sister’s husband to bring the freezer to my parents’ apartment in his truck. When we are waiting for the paperwork to be complete, my dad gets restless. I leave my mother in the waiting area, and take my dad for spin—he’s in one of the store’s wheelchairs. I show him the 3D televisions. “Doesn’t it look like things are coming right at you, like you can just reach out and touch them?”
“Yeah, it does,” he says, but he wearies of what is essentially just another gimmick, and we wander down this aisle and that. Finally, we are ready to go, and we ride home in silence.
That evening, my parents and I are meant to have dinner with another couple, Russell and Dee Fate, who just moved from Chicago to the residence where my parents are now. I met Russell yesterday out in the hall—it seems you are always meeting people out in the hall at that place. A resolutely cheerful man who used to be a pastor, he was ambling along, hunched over his walker. He told me they’d had to leave their house in Iowa and a lot of friends behind, but…the children were here. Ah, I said. Yes. A whole story in those four words, a story I was beginning to know very well.
At one point, I asked Russell something, and he fumbled with the answer; it was a memory issue of some kind. “It is…it is, uh…” he said. And then, most affectingly, he looked right at me and said, “I want to be honest about this.” He was referring, I think, to the difficulties he was having mentally. And physically, I suppose. Without talking about it directly, I gathered that what Russell and his wife had decided to do was to openly admit to their inabilities and face whatever lay ahead with as much love and optimism as possible, waiting for gifts of grace. (I saw him days later out in the hall wearing rainbow-colored suspenders, and when I complimented him on them, he said, “Yes, they make me feel good.”)
On the day we met, I told Russell my parents were new, too, and maybe he and his wife and my parents and I could all have dinner together the next night in the dining room. “Oh,” he said, “that’s a wonderful idea!” and a particular light shone in his eye. I got his phone number, called later to confirm with his wife (“Well, what a wonderful idea!” said she), and then I taped their phone number to my parents’ refrigerator. Here you go: friends! See??
Just before it’s time to go downstairs to meet Russell and Dee in the lobby, my dad comes into the kitchen wearing a nice shirt and pants and his fancy cuff links, comb marks in his damp hair. “You changed clothes!” my mother says, and he says, “Yeah, I did.”
“Well, I didn’t,” she says, and he says she doesn’t have to; he just wanted to. He puts his hand up to his face and says, “Oh. I forgot to shave.”
“You don’t have to shave,” my mother says, but my father says yes he does, and he disappears into the back to go into his bathroom. My mother seems annoyed that he’s taking such pains, but I’m thrilled. I hear the buzz of his razor and it’s a happy sound to me. Hopeful.
We get to the lobby at the agreed-upon time, and there’s no sign of Russ and Dee. We wait a little longer—five minutes, ten—and finally I go and knock at their door. I’m greeted with great pleasure by Russell, who, when I remind him about our dinner plans, says, “Oh! We forgot!” He calls out to his wife that I am there. She comes to the door, a gentle-looking woman, tall and thin with soft blond hair. “I’m afraid we forgot,” s
he says, smiling but shame-faced. “I’m so sorry.”
“No problem,” I say. “But would you like to come now?”
“Oh, sure, of course!” she says. “Wonderful!”
We are seated together at a large round table, and soon my father is engaged in conversation with Russ, and my mother with his wife. Russ asks my father what he finds to do around there, and my father says, “Not much. Mostly sit on my butt!” But he laughs saying it, and Russ laughs with him. My mother asks Dee if she likes baseball (my mother is a rabid Twins fan), and Dee says no, she’s more for tennis. I sit still as a stone, afraid to say or do anything that might interfere with this fragile beginning. Finally, I come up with some excuse, leave the table, and go up to my parents’ apartment. About twenty minutes later, they come back. My mother’s spirits seem improved, and my father says, “Well! That was a nice evening.”
JUNE 11, 2011
On Saturday morning, I call my mother from the grocery store. I tell her I’ll make dinner for us tonight: lemon-garlic chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, spinach-strawberry salad, an apple pie. “Oh,” she says, sounding pleased. In addition to groceries, I buy her a five-dollar betting card. Deluxe.
When I get to the apartment, I see that my mother’s in a bad mood. The toilet backed up last night, and she cleaned the mess with a mop, then with towels, which she had to wring out and carry down to the laundry room.
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