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Thoughts From The Battlefield
It's January but it is seventy degrees here so my mom has been watering the lawn. To my ridiculous assertion that it is the middle of winter and besides that--this town suffers from water shortages, she scoffs. She has a sprinkler system which breaks the lawn down into individual sections. Each section can be watered individually, or together with other sections, and in combinations so complex that you are caught smack dab in your smart ass face with the whip cream pie of reality that answers affirmatively to your whining past querulousness self which wondered aloud or to yourself in class--will we really need all this complex math crap in real life?
She seems to be able to figure out the controls well enough even though she is completely unsure of the time of the year. In fact, she loves controls now or anything with dials. The two thermostats in the house will in the course of the day spin from 50 to 85 and from heat to cool.
I upset her earlier in the day by trying to take her to the doctor again but she has forgotten that now and so we are starting fresh. She forgot that I had called in my brother for backup, and that that is why the front door and storm door were unlocked early this morning. She is blaming that on the replacement paper boy, whom she doesn't like. The regular paper boy, whom she likes very much, will go on vacation in May and possibly due to the unseasonably warm weather here, she thinks it is May, and that her paper boy has left her in the hands of "that other guy."
She had a boyfriend before dad and she would have married him but he got killed in WWII. Dad survived the war but cancer killed him 12 years ago.
She was juggled from parents to grandparents to an aunt in her early youth. She was a country girl who went to a big state university in the mid thirties, back in the day when they called role in class, and the great depression was not a distant memory. Her somewhat mysterious parents gave her a boy's name, she thinks it may have been the name of a horse on the family farm, and so in the big college classrooms she would endure the giggles of her more sophisticated classmates when an instructor would call out her name and in a broken voice almost as ridiculous as a callous boy making fun of a country hick with a high pitched voice, she would say--heeereuh.
After we have difficult converstations about the need for her to have a some hired assistance in the home, a thing she will not admit the need for, she might be found sitting on a short children's chair, stooping over to detail clean a return air vent, or the tracks of the sliding glass doors, and weeping.
On the bar by the dining table there are leaned pictures of grandchildren and great grandchildren whom she really doesn't know anymore. Lately to this grouping has been added a little snapshot of a drop dead handsome black man who worked in the off campus dormitory in which she lived as a college student. I wish she would talk about him more; he has a kind face, and I bet was nice to her.
By the way, I failed in that attempt to get her to the doctor. She's a good fighter, wily, determined, and focussed on nothing but the battle. I though, like the invader of a foreign land who is motivated by questionably good intentions, am clearly outgunned here and doomed to failure, or at best--a very unpleasant victory.
Elderly Will
I can't even imagine what my mom is thinking about this Spec Bebop by Yo La Tengo which is coming from the device on my lap. She is 87. I am 45. Both of us are a little older than the Yo La Tengo core audience. Speaking of old I have through recent Internet searches found some comforting definitions of what was previously for me a gray area. What is elderly, I had wondered? According to at least one medical site you may be considered "elderly" the day after you turn 55.
And if you are elderly then it stands to reason that you should start considering into which assisting living facility you are going to insert yourself for those golden years.
There is a long waiting list for that one in Amsterdam which is exclusively for heroin addicts. The idea of that sort of appeals to me. I am not a heroin addict, or even a casual user, but I will not rule out a future which includes heroin addiction. Lorina was going to fly down here for a few days to...hey never mind what she was coming down here for, voyeur. The thing is, you can fly to Amsterdam cheaper than she could have flown down here on short notice and I'd rather save my money and hers for my future heroin addiction in Amsterdam, which I understand can be quite costly.
Here is something to think about. Don't get too used to the idea of independence. You are going to have to give it up someday and like all things, the longer you hold onto it, the harder it is to give up. Perhaps it is similar to a heroin addiction in that sense. I gave up cigarettes back in 98 so about giving up addictive behaviour I have some insight. Honestly though, if I had known giving up cigarettes was that hard, I would have at least been snorting heroin. I mean you could literally fill up a building as big as a school with subject matter that is not taught in schools. Of course, as a fan of brevity, I can also see the allure of short and simple messages like--Just Say No, or, Falling Bullets Kill. I'm not so crazy about stringing alot of ideas together cohesively. I think cohesion is misleading.
I think my mom thinks I am mad at her because she turned down my invitation to have dinner at a brother's house tonight. She is associating turning down that invitation with how mad and frustrated I was when she fought me about going to the doctor two days ago. I told her it was fine, really no big deal, but even to me it sounds like I may just be saying that, and that I really am mad.
In the white space between these two paragraphs is her sitting down over there across from me and pursuing one of her more frequent hallucinations. That there are other house guests here besides me. I ease her into the truth of the matter and she says--well, maybe I am losing my mind. It would be unlike me to respond otherwise, so I say--well, maybe you are, which elicits a smile. Partly she thinks the person up there is my girlfriend, Lorina, and partly she thinks it is the care-giver we have been threatening to force on her. I assure her there is nobody up there (yet), nor did anyone sleep up there last night, besides me. She goes into the utility room and from the freezer brings a whole stack of frozen dinners and sort of fans them in front of me to get my opinion on lunch. I am trying not to do too much for her because I want to see what she does on her own, seeing as how she persists with the assertion that she can take care of herself. We have lasagna. She was a pretty good cook back in the day. Now though I am happy to see her do the frozen thing without too much assistance.
The next day my brother came over and tried to get her to sign some papers but she got mad at him. He talked with her in a rational manner for a pretty fair amount of time and you could tell she wanted to believe him but, no, something's up and she knows it. My brother took his grand daughter and left to go spend 60 minutes in rush hour traffic, without signed papers.
Later we watched TV. She asked me during a commercial break what I had on tap for tomorrow and I said I was hoping we could do that doctor's appt., get it over with. She started in with her argument and I said no, uh, uh, not this time. You don't want to go, we won't go. You win. You now get to do whatever you please, whenever you please. You are a big girl. I can't fight with you over every single little thing. In answer to her question was I mad at her I said yes. She left the room. After a moment I went to check on her and I could hear her taking a bath. Such as she does, which sounds like she is conserving water. She came back into the room some time later, in her nightgown, and silently handed me a slip of paper, and then left the room. It said--I will go, against my will.
The Count
How are you going to intefere with my business today? she said.
Not at all today, I said. I rescheduled the doctor's appt. for 7:30 Friday. But today you will be glad to know there is nothing on the calendar.
Don't hold your breath, she said.
About what? I said.
I'm not going anywhere that early in the morning.
Yes you are.
Don't count on it.
I am counting on it.
Why?
Because for three grueling hours yesterday morning you fought me about going to the doctor and when you finally relented, and we did go, the nurses had to very politely, and apologetically, inform me that when they called earlier in the week to confirm the appt., you told them to cancel it. And they went to some trouble to find another spot. I gave them other local numbers to call. What happened yesterday is not going to happen again.
I guess my goose is cooked.
Yes.
I don't remember doing that.
I believe that, I said.
Well, don't count on me going.
You know, you have asked us to not treat you like a child and I want you to know that I am not treating you like a child. Because if you were my child I would have grounded you a long time ago.
I know that, she said.
It's just a routine yearly checkup. The same thing you have done all your life.
I don't know that doctor.
You went to him last week.
I don't remember that.
You did, it was on Thursday, and we fought about that one for awhile too. But then another of your meddling sons came over and took you.
Then why I am I going to him again?
Because the checkup last week was to look into your recent memory loss and this other visit is for blood work. The same type of physical you have been doing for many years.
Who took me?
AJ took you.
Did I tell you about not remembering who he was that one time, I think that was at a doctor's office too.
Yes, I think you mentioned that (all hyperbole aside, perhaps sixty or seventy times in the two weeks I have been here).
I just don't see why I have to keep going to the doctor. You can't do anything about memory loss.
I know. But we wouldn't have to go again if you hadn't canceled yesterday's appt. We would have been done with doctor's visits for awhile.
Who canceled the appt., she said.
You did, I said.
I really don't remember that. But those darn people down there should have tried to fit me in. That really gets me boiling. We drove all the way there and then had to come right back.
Yes. It will go better on Friday.
Don't count on it, she said.
Note To The Youthful
Had a woman do an assessment here at the house yesterday to determine the needs of my mother for whom me and my siblings are trying to set up some in home assistance so she can stay in this home she has lived in for forty years (the last 12 by herself).
I had thought it was going to be an African woman with a slight accent but it turned out to be an American-Nordic woman with a somewhat forced sense of humor.
I think it went pretty well. After the woman left my mom slammed her fist down on the dining room table and said, "I do not want that woman in this house ever again!"
Note to the youthful: do not get old.
Who's Your Mama?
In my twenties I was once in Mexico for several weeks and I met a bunch of Europeans in Palenque and a Scandanavian or two and after awhile I was saying yah instead of yeah. The affected speech wore off after I came back to the USA and likewise I'm hoping that once I leave Dallas I won't be so tempted to use my cell phone indoors at public places. Today I was at the big Half Price Books on Northwest Highway and I carried on a pretty long very personal conversation in the stacks looking for a particular Vollman. The Vollman did not exist. I got a Vonnegut and a Gide just to buy something. My brother was suggesting I not tell my mom he was bringing an African woman with a slight accent into mom's home, tomorrow at 2 p.m. I've been telling her everything though. He said to use my judgement. I'm a shitty liar. I'm great at being reticent, or absolutely mute, but get me started and I just spew and spew and spew. I share with my siblings the desire to see a care-giver of some sort sharing this house with her on a part time basis. So I am not separating myself from my siblings on this. We have different methodologies, that's all.
Are ya'll ganging up on me?
Yes.
Who is?
All of us, all six.
Why?
Because you are losing parts of your memory and over time that could become dangerous for you.
Do you think my house is dirty?
No.
Then why do I need some old woman in here doing for me what I can do for myself?
So that before your memory gets really bad you can have some say in who the person is that helps you
But I don't need help.
Everybody needs help.
I'm 87 years old and I've lived a good life.
Yes, we want you to keep up the good work.
Are ya'll talking about me behind my back?
Yes.
When?
Every couple of weeks, by phone, on conference calls.
Why?
I think its because we love you.
It's demoralizing to be treated like a child when you've lived through two wars and done a lot of things that none of ya'll will ever do.
I can see how it would be.
They took my car away from me last year.
I know.
I only ever drove to the grocery store a block away.
I know, but the people on the roads around here are lunatics. Its gotten worse over the years. But if you want to drive your car around, I'll go with you right now.
They took the key.
I have one.
It doesn't run.
Just the battery, I can get it started. Come on, change out of your nightgown and I'll get it started for you right now.
No.
Ok.
They treat me like a child.
I wish they wouldn't.
Instead Of Cheerful
There is an undercurrent of resentment which in my opinion belies the outward show of cooperation between the group. Who resents whom or what and why is something inside a variable of seven.
There is a feeling among three, six, or none, that emotion should be contained until the business is effectively performed to a satisfactory end. There is in this no mention of product but there may be one.
One or all have thoughts about the questionable benefits of longevity.
Everywhere around there is larger tragedy to dwarf that of the individual but the individuals are connected with no dissent on the issue of self-involvement.
Some are suspicious of the emotional hoax and some are just waiting it out.
The product lacks patience and so do the buyers.
No thing remains.
Twelve Hundred Miles Back
One thing I can’t get over is at the library in the New Orleans Lakeview area where I was hoping to check my email by borrowed computer the librarian asked me a question and when I was in the middle of answering her she shushed me and reminded me of my location, which as I have already mentioned, was at a library. Or in a library, I don’t know, I was, and am now, thinking about it, a little nonplussed. I mean most of the time I mumble like that guy on the King of the Hill cartoon, Boomhauer? So I’m really used to people saying--what? Or, I’m sorry, could you repeat that? But, shushing me for talking too loud, well, it’s just unheard of.
Then I’m sitting there, at the express computer, because after being shushed I really did not want to take a full hour, “no, I’ll only need fifteen minutes,” I said, and so I’m getting right to it, annoyed some by the library’s homepage, and the other librarians, standing right next to the librarian who shushed me, are yakking up a storm, and the man librarian, acting like the chief, keeps walking right behind me while I try to type very important stuff, just aimlessly wandering back and forth this guy is, until he collars another computer user who had gotten up to ask “my” librarian a question at full volume, and he, the seeming chief librarian, he says to this guy, at full volume, do you know much about football?
I’m having my first ever conference call that evening and I forgot the phone number and the ID/password numbers so I am accessing that information through my email inbox via the world wide web of the internets on a borrowed public library computer. I didn’t have my library card in my wallet, it was in the truck, my name is…was what I was explaining when I got shushed. The reason I come to Lakeview is because it is a rich neighborhood and I reason that rich people will have their own computers at home so that will free up the six computers for loan, for me. I have never, in the past, when living in New Orleans, and being temporarily without internet access, had a problem getting on a computer here, and needless to say, had never up until this day, been shushed. I don’t like noisy people myself, but I don’t shush them. Of course, in fairness, I’m not paid to do that, and I might feel differently if I were.
Anyhow, the guy says he knows a little and the librarian says how he can’t remember the name of the former quarterback for Dallas and no one could accurately guess who he might mean so the guy does what any half-assed football aficionado would do, he just starts throwing out names. Vinny Testeverde? Quincy Carter? Troy Aikman? The librarian says, that’s it, Troy Aikman.
Later, in some other town between Virginia and Texas, Lorina is finishing up what was turning out to be a rather complicated drive-thru order at a burger joint. The person taking the order could not hear Lorina properly and I, who wasn’t having anything and generally can’t be heard at all, mumbled something under my breath at the precise moment the complicated order was completed, and the drive-thru voice, apparently hearing me perfectly from the greater distance, said—what? Lorina looked at me with a look that screamed if you wanted something why didn’t you say so sooner and I just stared back blankly. Lorina was asking me what I wanted while the drive-thru person said will that complete your order. Lorina had the expression of someone who is having a run of bad luck. I told Lorina I didn’t want anything, hoping she would have better luck conveying that message than the she did the original order. That the world was conspiring to make things unnecessarily difficult for Lorina was a thing I could be sympathetic of because this was for me just like being shushed at the library. Clearly, whoever’s mixing my sound is falling down. I thought I had let that shushing incident go but I hadn’t. Reclining my seat as Lorina accelerated up the on-ramp I began humming, out loud or to myself (I was at this point unsure of volume levels in general), the Steppenwolf classic, Born to Be Wild.
Irrationally juxtaposing time schemes has me approaching New Orleans after 19 hours driving straight and Lorina is behind the wheel again so I have the luxury to contemplate executive decisions. “Let’s stop here in Slidell and go Walmart shopping at 11 p.m.” Lorina almost got sidetracked on a search for toilet paper but I, on the verge of a Walmart panic attack, assured her that not only can one get liquor and beer twenty-four hours in New Orleans, but also toilet paper. We could get the little stuff at the 24 hour quickie mart on Broad, near the house. At Walmart we got one of those queen-sized air mattresses with built in pump.
When we got to my house on Rocheblave we were met by two young men, one near college graduate and one near high school graduate/hopeful college graduate, who were preparing the house for our arrival by turning on the heat and laying out essentials, including toilet paper. When you haven’t been around for six months and are asking after people there is an obligatory recitation of who has been shot and who is in jail. The one bullet riddled young man from that Dumaine/Dorgenois area where I once lived was said to be upset because one of the bullets fired at him, one of the ones not entering his chest, hit him in the finger and sort of tore it off. The near college graduate, a former sixth man on a team that won the 5A state high school basketball championship, had in fact been on the very same steps where the shooting occurred when we arrived after 19 hours driving to pick up a key for my house, around the corner. I had slowed down and said hey E, and he had said he’d be right over, which I didn’t fully understand, until after getting the key, and stopping for toilet paper and water, and then proceeding to my house, where there he was, with J, being the upstanding citizen that he is. They had not executed this bit of kindness on their own, but with a little guidance had provided us with drinking water, toilet paper, and a frozen pizza.
In New Orleans Lorina and I attended a tourist site or two and leaving the French Quarter, walking through Armstrong Park, where alongside of you know I park on St. Philip, we saw right before exiting the park these two guys taking cuttings from the rose bushes. I’d never really paid much attention to the rose bushes in Armstrong Park. Lorina cupped a bloom in her hand, in December mind you, and sniffed. I will do whatever Lorina does, if it doesn’t seem harmful. I veered from Lorina at one point and on or near the seventh bush one of the guys, attending to a bush across the lagoon from us, said, that one there is my favorite. I carefully chose a bloom and sniffed. It was, as advertised, kickass. What are you gonna say? I said, nice. The guy said the bush was from 1830. From a cutting I would guess because the park hasn’t been around but since the mid 20th century.
I saved all my business for the last day. Made a run with Charles from across the street to the dump on Elysian Fields to get rid of all that stuff I had paid him to get rid of before leaving back in May. I paid him again. Got a brake tag/inspection sticker for the truck; went to the library and got shushed; went to the vintage record store on Magazine; visited my nephew so I could have a comfortable safe place from which to participate in a conference call; made a promise which is bringing me a little pain; called the person I was supposed to meet and said I couldn’t; went to a fancy ice cream shop to meet with Lorina’s college chum and chum’s husband; then had dinner at Liuzza’s on Bienville.
In Austin we stayed with Jose, who is projecting retirement to Puerto Escondido within the next year or two. And who am I kidding if I don’t admit to at least the consideration of being his chief bottle washer, or flower gardener. We ate Mexican food pretty much breakfast, lunch, and dinner, for three days. First place goes to El Azteca, on E. Seventh. We had spent the bulk of that day at Pedernales state park, which is near where Willie Nelson used to have a spread before the IRS kicked his ass. We weren’t on drugs but if we had known the sky was going to look like that, we would have been. We did the Continental Club on S. Congress one night, heard this bluesy, charismatic rocker, Jon Dee Graham, and thought him pretty good. Though the second hand smoke was enough to make me want to quit smoking, again.
In Dallas my mom remembered my name but recited a story about the ignominious forgetting of who my brother was and forgetting she had just told us, told the story a pretty good number of times, over just one dinner. One brother and his whole family and another brother with abbreviated family came over for Christmas Eve. Everyone seemed a little uncomfortable and ready to leave from the get go and I don’t know if it was because we are recently all plotting to help dear old mom, against her will (is it an intervention?) or if they all just had better things to be doing on Christmas Eve. I do know one thing though. They brought all these mom’s recipe cookies with them and then took them with them when they left. Yeah, I know you made a lemon cream pie especially for me but you could have left a few of those cookies, dudes, dudettes. How I expressed that last idea without cussing I’ll never know. Perhaps this will help—I’m a selfish bastard.
At that first ever for me conference call in New Orleans with my five siblings to discuss the ongoing realities of old age dementia as they pertain to our mother, I was feeling a little like the youngest son who has skated by on baby charm for most of his life and feeling that I had little to offer in this conversation that was all about bank accounts and powers of attorney and doctors visits I just spoke up and offered to come stay with mom for the month of January, to help execute this plan we are doing our bests to lay out perfectly in an imperfect world, and to say again, against mom’s will.
Lorina and I got back to Virginia a few days ago and she just came by to express no hard feelings that I’m not attending her New Years gig tonite, she being the trumpet player in a punk band (and me being the, cough, slightly older, curmudgeonly, non-pogo-dancing boyfriend). Tomorrow, if she doesn’t win the highway patrol lottery and end up DUI in jail, we’ll have collards, and black eyed peas, and cornbread. The next day I’ll drive the twelve hundred miles back to Dallas.