Losing My Mind

by Thomas DeBaggio

  Where does this dance of hope lead?

  Mexico forty years ago was a kaleidoscope. Every corner brought me face-to-face with laughter and sadness. It was a startling show.

  One day I saw a young boy with his pants down, his back against a building, relieving himself in the middle of the busy city with crowds of people on the streets and sidewalks.

  Mike and I saw another poor kid, maybe eight or nine years old, alone in the street begging one day. We felt sorry for him and brought him home for some food and a good night's sleep. Mike spoke fluent Spanish. In the morning, we packed the child a lunch. After he left I went to the bathroom and discovered the kid's footprints on the toilet seat.

  Mike's apartment was on Kant Street and I was happy to be in a place honoring philosophers. Down the street from the apartment was a lovely house with a narrow metal-gated entrance. What was seen from the street was a hint of a delightful little garden. During the entire month I was there, two men worked on the gate. Each day they sanded the rust from the metal to prepare it for painting. Every night the damp air created more rust. The offspring of those two workmen may now be sanding the gate for the next generation of the family that lives there.

  Alzheimer's remains a poorly understood disease, but one study suggests a possible link between it and early life.

  One of the University of Washington researchers involved in the study. Dr. Victoria M. Moceri, an epidemiol-

  THOMAS DeBAGGIO

  ogist who presented the research in the journal Neurology, said she was not claiming she had found the cause of the debilitating illness.

  "There are many different causes of Alzheimer's disease," Dr. Moceri said. "One factor will not be unique to every person. There are genetic risk factors."

  Aware that early childhood factors play roles in a wide variety of other illnesses, like cardiovascular disease, the researchers reasoned that the same might be true for Alzheimer's. They were especially interested because the areas of the brain showing the first signs of the disease take the longest to develop, often maturing well into adolescence, as crucial synaptic and other connections are made.

  So they studied 700 members of a Washington H.M.O. who were 60 or over. Of those, 393 had Alzheimer's, and the rest showed no signs of dementia.

  The researchers say they found a link between the patients with Alzheimer's and the conditions of their childhood homes. For example, those with more than five siblings, which the researchers associated with lower income generally, at least when the subjects were children, had 39 percent more cases of Alzheimer's than other members of the group. Those who grew up in the suburbs, on the other hand, were less likely to develop the illness than those who grew up in poorer farm areas or more crowded cities, places where children would be more likely to be exposed to infectious diseases.

  - THE NEW YORK TIMES, FEBRUARY I, 2000

  Something happened last night so frightening I hesitated to write about it. Now I want to write about it but my memory got lost yesterday.

  LOSING MY MIND

  Joyce came across a pot I made thirty years ago. I built it from unamended fire clay to which I added small panicles in green pigment. It was then given a clear glaze. It made a sturdy, medium-sized pot with a faded green-grass color punctuated with tiny bursts of dark-green dribbles in an irregular pattern throughout. I recognized the decrepit pot, but I had no immediate memory of making it.

  It took almost twenty-four hours for me to dredge up this little story from my memory. I now live for encounters with the past like this. It is a way of proving to myself I am not ready yet for the trash can. Small things matter so much when the uncomfortable end is in sight.

  Time moved slowly in Mexico, so slowly I was no longer certain in which century I lived. I spoke no Spanish and it was the first time I was without language.

  Men and women clung to the sides of buses for free rides. Women inside the bus openly breast-fed their babies without any sense of embarrassment.

  It was good to know, in a city as vibrant as Mexico City, there were books in English by Henry Miller for sale. I found the store easily and bought a copy of every Henry Miller they stocked. Later, when I returned and crossed the border on the way back home, an American customs official asked me to open my bag for inspection. I had carelessly placed a Miller book I was reading at the top of the bag. The customs officer immediately took the book and asked me to dump the contents of the bag on the counter. He seized three more Miller books. The woman behind me saw what happened and in a bewildered voice said to me, "Why did they take your books away.'^" I told her they were banned in the United States, something she had never heard. That was the way of life then; police had the power to control what you read.

  After many years spent in the sunburnt outdoors, I now view the world through a glass window and scurry to my memory for com-

  THOMAS DeBAGGIO

  fort. But there is not much left where dandelions once hummed of spring.

  Is life real when we do not comprehend our surroundings or rec-ogni^e a heartbeat^

  There is always something lurking around the corner. For me it is a life without a life. A world of silence and confusion. The scent of nursing homes and tears. A stumbling life of humiliation and incoherence. Time without lies. Communication without words where eyes and determination speak in place of spoken words. Yet the presence of childhood hides in a corner. It is time to say good-bye. Babble and tears are the language of my dreams, and the song of my heartbeat.

  The sun in Mexico was heavenly that winter and I spent hours outside on the balcony and ended up with a deep, glorious tan.

  Returning to the States from Mexico, I went through Louisiana and at one stop the border patrol came aboard. I was pulled off the bus as an illegal. My suntan and shaggy hair got me in trouble. I got a bit insulted and "uppity" when I was pushed against the side of the bus.

  "Listen to my voice," I said. "Can you hear lowa.'^ There is no Mexico there. I am an American citizen."

  Border patrol roughly asked for my passport.

  "I don't need a passport," I said. "I am an American citizen."

  Fortunately, I had a passport, obtained when I went to Europe with my parents. I was let go, but I never forgot the incident; it made me realize the Gestapo mentality was not limited to Germany, and no matter who you were, you were vulnerable and at the mercy of the authorities, especially if you were young.

  Shopped yesterday for wine at the friendly litde store in Alexandria. Wondered where Ann was. Couldn't remember my usual selections.

  66

  LOSING MY MIND

  SO I asked the young man there if he remembered my favorites. He did and we picked four bottles.

  Checking out, the clerk wanted my address to add to the new computer. I stumbled, restarted, but couldn't remember for sure what it was. Finally I recalled my driver's license had the address. This was the first time my memory tumbled in public on such a common piece of information. I was embarrassed at the stumble. One thing I have done to lessen problems has been to inform the people with whom I do business that I have Alzheimer's.

  / hear the bird sing its staccato song outside my bedroom window, a dark morning with mind jumbled in a junkyard piled with anxiety and broken thoughts from a runaway mind.

  My spelling has become so bad it is difficult to decipher the meaning in my sentences. Even small, familiar words such as "blew" are beyond my recall and have to be painfully sought in the dictionary. It is torture to go though this, and slow. I am fifty-eight years old, but my mind is determined to make me regress to a child of few words—and worse.

  During my wandering days after high school, I became interested in writing plays and thought a little acting might be interesting and useful. I spent a brief few summer-stock weeks in the unpaid boondocks, residing in a hot and airless hotel room in the small town of Frederick, Maryland.

  A different play was presented each week with rehearsals each day and shows at night. I, the kid who avoided publ
ic speaking in high school because I was too afraid to stand up and talk, knew I was never going to be an actor.

  An early wastrel summer was ahead, but I stayed long enough in Frederick summer stock to miss the annual trek to Eldora. A summer in the tall corn of Iowa was no romance anymore. By skip-

  THOMAS DeBAGGIO

  ping the Iowa vacation, I also missed visits to the dentist, another annual event during the family's two weeks in Eldora.

  Almost from the first day, I was unhappy with my choice of summer-stock play. I had small bit parts and roustabout chores. I couldn't remember lines or I got them confused and the actors tried to circle around and get me back to the two pages I left out. I was an unhappy, tortured fool in bit parts, strutting before a nearly empty house when I wanted to be a writer not an actor.

  After I was certain my parents and sister were on their way to Iowa, I slipped off in the dark, leaving behind the actors from New York and the eager young local women with tight bosoms who ached for a chance in the limelight. For me, at that time, the summer trips to Iowa were pilgrimages to a past of manicured memories and a circumscribed life unchanged from the days before my parents were born.

  With my failing memory every day begins new — and often ends that way, unable to negotiate a past as short as twelve hours.

  Strange things are happening. I blew up suddenly this morning with surprising force and frustration. The cause.'^ The newspaper had not arrived. It brought loud anger and tears in a smoky explosion of uncontrolled emotion.

  Little things wear down my emotional equilibrium. First vocabulary fractures; then my emotions explode like snowflakes in an angry blizzard.

  I live a new life of slow motion, stumbling with lost confidence. New things are torturous, confusing, and hard to understand. Even the old stuff of my life is not always familiar but with time and patience it is often recognizable. My eyes tear for no reason and I explode, when in better times I might have laughed. Send me away. I cannot stand to live in this dying body with its floating alphabet. I do not want to see the life of my future.

  LOSING MY MIND

  As I lay awake this morning in 4 a.m. darkness, a light show began its yellow glow on the wall opposite me. Large splotches of yellow flitted before me, flickering from wall to ceiling. I thought the source might be car lights outside but there were no automobiles on the street. The yellow patches acted as if they were controlled from outside my mind but it was probably all in my head. There was no source of light in the room and every time I blinked the yellow splotch jerked to a new nervous home on the wall.

  I lay alone and insignificant, aware and unaware, as yellow discs danced around the room. They snapped off and on in large, torn shapes, each one unique. The torn yellow reflections continued for several minutes and disappeared as I became more interested in their presence. It was a frightening way to awaken and I slept no more.

  Was I given a glimpse of the biological war inside my brain.'^ Did I witness a barrage of tiny cells die inside my brain in the yellow flare of battle? Were these peculiar apparitions warnings of tomorrow.^ What generated this magical reflection of the fires burning in the holocaust of my brain.^ New mysteries. No real apparitions yet.

  f^.

  Joyce and I met over the counter in the art department of a large dry goods store in the early 1960s. Day after day I showed up and hung around to tell her fanciful and bizarre stories. I lived at home under worrying pressure from my parents wanting to know what their only son was going to do with himself. I was engaged in reading books of little socially redeeming value, making pottery, and trying to find my legs in the world of writing.

  Joyce also lived at home and attended the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC. She was way ahead of me in art and in life. She already had a little car; I still rode a bike.

  THOMAS DeBAGGIO

  Before long she was picking me up on her way home after work as I walked along Wilson Boulevard. We talked, and ate drive-in hamburgers almost every night and went out on dates.

  Soon my parents soured of my wastrel ways and prodded me to get a job. I found one in a military uniform shop and quickly rented a place of my own, a one-bedroom apartment in Buckingham, one of the first apartment complexes in Arlington. Presents were in order on moving day, and Joyce gave me a lusty unclothed female mannikin from the throwaway pile in the basement of the department store where she worked. I placed it in the entryway to the apartment as naked as it was on arrival.

  It was a strange way to begin a relationship but before long we talked of marriage. When it looked as if I might be drafted into the uglv Vietnam War (I was classified lAO, a conscientious objector), we decided to marry. Married men were exempt from the draft then.

  I met Joyce's parents for the first time when we told them of our decision to marry. I was given a stunning welcome by Joyce's mother, who took a cue from my last name and called me a "dirty wop."

  We married anyway and Joyce moved into my little apartment. At night we slept on a narrow day bed in the living room. Above us her caged bird watched the goings-on. The bedroom was filled with clay dust and pottery equipment; it was where I kept my homemade potter's kick wheel. By then Joyce had a wonderful job as an airline reservationist, a position that made possible a whirlwind vacation to England and Scodand. Before long our son-to-be, Francesco, caught us by surprise.

  / am forced into old age against my will and I am full of rage.

  When I travel to familiar places, I have always been able to visualize a crude map with all the turns for that specific journey courtesy of my brain. This attribute of memory provided reassurance of my ability to arrive at my destination without trouble. My brain is becoming shy with sharing this information with me.

  LOSING MY MIND

  A recent fishing trip with Francesco brought this new deficit to me powerfully. We had to wing the four-hour round-trip without maps. I had driven to Mossy Creek many times over the years, but I could no longer trace the way with my mental map before the trip. Francesco had been there several times but after we started he confessed he didn't remember the way. I had not forgotten completely, it was just difficult to locate the place in my brain where the information was stored. It was an interesting experiment in navigation.

  I don't know how long I will be able to retrieve stored memory like this. For now I have found a risky way around the trash pile of dead cells in my brain. Yet, I cannot stop wondering when my internal roads will have too many detour signs to make it possible for me to depend on them to take me to where I want to go.

  / live on the edge of fear and insecurity and I am filled with uncertainty.

  Alzheimer's has made me wary and cunning. I cannot hide from the sun. Now I expose myself for all to see in nakedness and uncertain pain. You are only a blur though my tear-soaked eyes.

  One of the most exciting developments in neuroscience research during the past lo years has been the refinement of techniques that allow scientists to visualize the activity and interactions of particular brain regions as they are used during cognitive operations such as memorizing, recalling, speaking, reading, learning, and other sorts of information processing. This window on the living brain can help scientists measure early changes in brain function or structure to identify those individuals who are at risk of Alzheimer's disease even before they develop the symptoms of the disease. These imaging techniques include photon emission tomography (PET) scans and single photon emission com-

  THOMAS DeBAGGIO

  puted tomography (SPECT), which produce "maps" of the brain that give information about activity in particular regions as a person responds to a task or stimuli, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which provided a way to look at the size and characteristics of brain structures.

  - "progress report on Alzheimer's disease,"

  NATIONAL institute ON AGING, I999

  Often when I awaken in the dusty morning light, the new day I see around me is patterned in tiny square checks through which I see the world. I
blink my eyes but the images before me remain. It is as if I am looking close-up through an old screen door. The precision of the tiny checks makes me think I am awakening in some kind of cell, a prisoner behind minute, rigid crisscross bars. Before long the apparition disappears and the world becomes clear and normal as the sun comes up. Is this another signal from the war in my brain where I am on the losing side in a battle with Alzheimer's.'^

  Mornings begin with tears and unfamiliar sightings. I am losing familiarity with myself

  Researchers at the Mayo Clinic have conducted several important studies in the use of MRI to measure shrinkage in the volume of the hippocampus. The initial studies were cross-sectional studies, which compared groups of individuals with various levels of mental function, from healthy to diagnosed Alzheimer's. In their newest study, the team actually followed a group of men and women with mild cognitive impairment over time to test the hypothesis that MRI-based measurements of hippocampal volume could predict the risk of future development of Alzheimer's. The team followed the patients for nearly 3 years, providing annual exams and

  LOSING MY MIND

  tests of mental function. Twenty-seven of the 80 patients with mild cognitive impairment developed dementia over the course of the study, and the investigators found that there was indeed a clear association between hippocampal shrinkage at the beginning of the study in these patients and later conversion to Alzheimer's.

  - "progress report on Alzheimer's disease," national institute on aging, 1999

  The sun is shining and warm spring air swirls around me as I sit on a large, rough stone. It is a beautiful, life-affirming day and I am a breath away from tears.

  These were warm, wonderful times for Joyce and me in the apartment on George Mason Drive. Joyce was an airline reservationist and I worked in a picture frame shop and made pottery in the bedroom.

  Pottery was something I began in the family house on 9th Street. I had great expectations of making a career out of mud, one of life's first and most endearing materials. I began by digging heavy yellow clay from the open bank along Four-Mile Run, the little creek I could see from my bedroom window on 9th Street. I dried it, pounded it into smooth dust, added other materials, and tried to throw pots, as the instruction books called the process of making pottery.