still here

"How are you, Dorin?" my cousin Paul asks. Paul is the youngest son of my mom's now-dead sister, Marguerite. He is very dear to my mom.

Paul and I are sitting with Mom. It's been a long day of therapy and meal-eating and truncated conversations. In speech therapy today, Mom put on her glasses and was able to unscramble the ten sentences Lisa offered to her--granted it took a half-an-hour and two of them were truly a struggle ("you are how?" and "dinner is what for?"--the questions were difficult for Mom for some reason)--but time is not the test here. Exercising her brain is. Mom is holding her own and, at times, making improvements--small incremental changes like grabbing hold of a fork or helping to pull down the hem of her shirt when being changed that don't necessarily add up to anything now but may mean something decisive in the future. Meaningful change happens very slowly here at Mirabella--fork by fork, hem by hem.

Today, as I help Mom eat her meal, I am struck by the myriad of things we assume as humans. I'm coaxing Mom into eating her Brussel Sprouts, a vegetable she actually likes but she finds these particular ones too a la dente, despite there being sliced in half by the chef. Mom becomes a child at dinner, requiring infinite dialogue to encourage her to finish her plate. Usually she just eats half, sometimes less.

Today her "Grilled Top Sirloin with Maitre d'Hotel Butter" is pulverized because the soft mechanical diet restriction has yet to be lifted. Eating "pre-chewed" food, as Mom calls it, is difficult when you have limited ability to grab hold of a spoon or a fork. I have to hold the spoon for her, because as she tries to maneuver the spoon to her mouth it flips upside down, like a boat belly up, and the meat tumbles into the creases of her sweat pants. What works better is stabbing Brussel sprouts with a fork--I do the stabbing and she rotates the fork towards her lips. I support her elbow as she moves her arm in a half-swing that just misses her lower lip. With a little nudge from my supporting arm, the forked sprout jumps up an inch or so and makes its way between Mom's teeth. After two of these halves, however, Mom calls it quit, making a face that could scare even an adult on Halloween. "Eeeeyyeeee," she says. "No...no" While sometimes Mom's communications are difficult to follow, this one is clear enough--yuk!

Mom refuses to eat the pulverized meat, muttering something about "dirt" which I don't understand until she starts gesturing towards her plate and the mound of brown-grey carnage laying there. Mom thinks the meat looks like "dirt" and won't eat it. While I have to agree it doesn't look particularly attractive, I try to explain that actually it's steak, the same thing her neighbor-next-door Dot is eating. In response, Mom purses her lips and moves her head left to right, just enough to make her meaning clear. "No Way." After a few more attempts and a bit of conversation, it tuns out that what Mom doesn't like is the meat's tasteless quality, fair enough I think. So after I liberally shake salt and pepper onto it's "dirt"-like demeanor, Mom agrees to eat a mouthful or two. These I spoon into her mouth, taking advantage of every open-tooth moment, whether she intends to accepts bites at these times or not.

When we get to the ice cream, however, it's a different story. Mom loves ice cream. She says "yum" when I pull off the lid and lift a spoon of cream from the cardboard Dixie cup container. It's vanilla tonight. At first I spoon it to her, as the iced cream is already soft and difficult to handle, seeing how we took so long getting through dinner, or through the best we could. But Mom is so eager that soon, between bites, she is grabbing for an imaginary spoon and lifting the ice cream into her mouth, though there's nothing there--not the spoon or the dessert--as she can't tell the difference between grabbing the real spoon or thinking she's grabbing the spoon. It takes me a minute to realize what she's doing. When I do, my breath leaves me for just a second or two and tears bead my lower lids, swell my cheeks. I'm grateful Mom is too busy with her imaginary spoon to notice.

I say--"Wait Mom," you don't have the spoon in your hand yet." She gets a scowl on her face like I'm saying something either wrong or stupid and says with a bit of pique--"Yes, yes...I do." So at this point, I let her take her own spoon, the real spoon, come what may. And while she manages to get several spoons of ice cream into her mouth, another several land in her lap. Mom doesn't even notice. If she doesn't care, I think, neither will I.

Despite it's difficulties, Mom trying to eat her own ice cream is an improvement.

Another sign of recovery is the resumption of her sense of humor, or perhaps in her case, her sense of irony. So when Paul asks Mom--"How are you doing"--there's a grand pause into which we all wait breathlessly, Paul and I for what she will say and Mom for what she will be able to say. This pause goes on for at least a minute and in its duration I become convinced that Mom has gotten distracted--a frequent occurrence. But just before I prompt her to remind her of Paul's question, she says, beaming a grin--

"Well....well...you see...I'm still here."

Paul and I laugh and so does Mom. We laugh hard, like this is the funniest thing we've heard in weeks. I can feel my vocal cord stretch, strain with the effort--vibrate with song. Strings of a violin. The music is dear, sacred. I've nearly forgotten how to laugh like this.

Actually, it's the most real thing we've heard come from Mom. Gives me hope that Mom's still there and we're here too, right along side her. All of us...still here.

Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifewithmom--

missing: part five

Fact: My brother becomes a Christian in 1976--he is twenty-one years old and he is golden. Peter never does anything in a small way, so his conversion is news. He makes it this way. I am skeptical, not sure of how God is going to change my brother for the better. At the moment he says "I do" to the Lord, he becomes a saver of lost souls, particularly the souls of young women--lost, misshapen sheep who need saving by a handsome young man like my brother.

Fact: Peter meets his wife-to-be, Heather, in 1977 through the church they are attending--an evangelical "progressive" church named "People's" in Tacoma. Heather is a mousy, ordinary looking woman who has no job prospects and little to say for herself. We do not understand her. But one thing is apparent, Heather does need saving in a fundamental way, as Heather has schizophrenia and, like many schizophrenics, sees no need to take medication. She's certifiably "crazy." My brother, however, is certain he can save her.

Fact: In 1978, Peter leaves People's church with Heather and joins an extremist splinter group from the congregation at People's, an enclave led by Stu Peterson, former assistant pastor at People's. Peter see Stu as "The Way"--others see this group as a cult. Under Stu's guidance, Peter and Heather come to see my parents and my family as "The Devil," something to be reformed or shunned. He tries the first and resorts to the second. They are penniless.

Fact: Peter elopes with Heather early in 1979. My parents are not pleased. They argue so hard over Peter's defection that I'm sure they are going to be divorced. Peter's version is--"my parents are not supportive of this union blessed by God." I believe my brother for consistency reasons. There's no reason to think my mother is any different with him than she is with me. Manipulation is familial, heredity even.

Fact: Soon after their marriage, Peter and Heather pitch a tent in the atrium of my father's Lakeview Medical Dental building. They cook their meals over a camp stove. The fumes of hamburger frying and freeze-dried pasta steeping in boiling water seep under the doors and through the open windows of my father's tenants. My father is mortified. He assigns his assistant the task of "finding that pair a place to live." A place is found, just off of Bellevue Way, several miles from where my parents live. It's nothing much--just barely Motel 6 standards of accommodation--but my father foots the bill. Peter has insisted.

Fact: My father receives dozens of angry letters in 1979 from his first-born son, the son who could do no wrong. In these letters, his favorite child shouts fire and brimstone from his "pulpit," accusing my father and my mother of immorality and ungodliness. "Renounce your parents," Stu Peterson shouts. "Get away from me Satan," Peter responds in kind to my parents. My father cries. Inconsolable. Some things can break a man, even a man as vigorous as my father. My father is afraid--he doesn't want to "lose" his son.

Fact: My father dies. August 1979. It's an accident, though there's an investigation due to the circumstances of his death. My younger brother is with him and there's approximately thirty minutes between when Dad's motorcycle crushes his chest and when my father breathes his last breath. I envy Eric these thirty dying minutes, sure I've missed something essential by not being there for our father's passing. I keep looking for these minutes, even now. Soon I hope to find them. Eric, on the other hand, is cursed--he never gets beyond that death scene on the dusty back roads of Idaho's Copperbasin. Crippled for life.

Fact: Peter does not attend the memorial service for our dad nor does he show up at the interment at Wal-Sheli. Instead, he hires an attorney to investigate why he has been "disinherited" under my father's will. Actually, there are no provisions for any of Dad's children--it all goes to my mother.

Fact: Peter moves into housing my mother provides in Ketchum, Idaho. Mom pays the rent. Oddly enough, Mom has reversed her role taking on my father's fear, leaving behind her anger. It's my father's bequeath, unbeknown to him. Peter's going to start a landscaping business, a far cry from the legal education he was acquiring before he married Heather. My mother is afraid--like my father, she doesn't want to "lose" her first born son.

Fact: Peter and Heather create a "godly" world of their own, never leaving their apartment, hoarding the place with junk and debris. People in town term them "The Crazies." Ketchum is a small place. Mom pounds on the door, often, says she wants to talk. Peter and Heather hide, not wanting to pollute their soul with the sins of my family. We see them once at Christmas, when Peter is persuaded to come over to visit for several hours. Heather chooses not to come. We sit silent in my mother's house, strangers to each other. Not even the ghost of my father can loosen our tongues.

Fact: Peter and Heather leave Ketchum, no forwarding address. It's 1993. My mother is inconsolable. To have lost a son. But to my way of thinking, Peter was lost a great many years ago. It doesn't take 20/20 sight to see this.

Fact: Peter and Heather get a divorce. There are no children and no properties. We hear about this through Heather's parents. This is the last we hear.

Fact: While on vacation in Ketchum, my brother's family runs into Peter in 2001 or 2002. They spend an afternoon chatting and learn that Peter runs a mission for street people, children in particular, outside of Phoenix. He is penniless. When he demands his "share" of Dad's estate, Mom sees Peter for what he is. This miracle of sight is devastating.

Fact: Some "sins" are just too bad, too deep, can never be forgiven. And those we overlook, choose not to see, are the ones we never get over. What we carry with us. Maimed for life. No matter what anybody says, blood only goes so far.

Fact: Peter no longer lives in Phoenix. I've checked.

Fact: My favorite photo of Peter. It's 1978. We are skiing Baldy Mountain--it's a heady day of powder. This is something we do well together. He's persuaded me to begin early, despite the toe-freezing cold. Overnight the clouds lifted, leaving the morning sharp, in-focus. Camera ready. I've stopped half-way down Holiday, just below my brother, my thighs are burning. Fire against ice. At the time, I'm not as good of a skier as he. I lift my camera from it's holster, thinking I can catch my brother's lean form before he skis by me on down the hill. I point my lens into the hill, adjusting for the low light, all the while searching for his blue ski hat with it's two thin white bands. For a second there's just the snow and the frigid cold and then I see the snow shift and shimmy and my brother's gloves and hat and right pole emerge out of a mirage of white. I snap the shutter, sure I've got him, that I've memorialized what there is of him before he vanishes again into the powdered mogul troughs.

As it turns out, however, I've not captured him at all. I don't know this man. Not at all. Is love enough?

There's as much of him missing as present.

Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifewithmom--

missing: part four

"Do you think he's happy," Mom asks.

Happy, I'm thinking to myself, who's happy? Mom's asking the wrong question. But I don't say this to her because I'm intrigued, instead, by the fact that she's asking this question so many years after Peter left our lives. Did she think about "happy" when she took him out of her will? Did she think about "happy" when she refused to support his choice of marriage partner? Did she think about "happy" when she let all these years slip by without ever trying to find him?

"I don't know Mom," I say to her, trying to imagine if someone can be "happy" and still live with all the pain and resentment I know my brother carries. Last I spoke with him, our conversation felt like a psychotherapy session where my brother unloaded every wrong, from childhood to adulthood. I listened. For three hours. His reservoir of pain was very very deep.

"I think he likes...you know...likes...what he does...you know...with the kids...he and that woman."

Mom's referring to the last piece of knowledge we have about my brother--that he's running a mission for street kids in a suburb of Phoenix, a project his second wife (whom we have never met and will never meet) is helping him with. When I tried to check this out, I could find no such mission and no such listing for Peter Ross Schuler in or around Phoenix, Arizona.

I realize what Mom's doing--she needs to feel like Peter's life makes sense, despite his schizophrenic first wife (Heather) who refused to take her meds, his divorce many years later from Heather, his angry self-propelled expulsion from the family, his marriage to a woman (Susan) who apparently hates us more than Peter even does.

The last time Mom sees Peter is serendipity--she and my brother Eric's family are vacationing in Ketchum, Idaho when they accidentally run into him; he's also there on vacation. I am not present. According to my sister-in-law, they all have a nice "chat" with Peter telling stories and my brother's kids listening with bated breath to every word their until-now-unknown uncle has to say. Mom's comment on the afternoon is that--"I thought we...resolved...things...you know...everything's fine." Susan is not there with him.

When Peter gets up to leave, Mom walks him to the door. This is when my mother knows but can't quite admit that all is not well. I can imagine how it must have been--my mother's slight 5'4" frame overshadowed by Peter's angry 5'11'' bulk. Can I have some money," Peter asks her, just as she opens the door to let him slip out into the early evening cool. "I don't have any," Mom explains to him as by then Mom is strapped for cash--she has property but no income to live on. My brother apparently doesn't believe her, as he launches into the age-old tune of--"you took my money from me, the money I deserved when Dad died." In point of fact, there was no money for any of Dad's children as my father had an "I Love You" will and left everything to my mother. Apparently Peter doesn't believe this either, though right after my father died he did have an attorney contact Mom's attorney and demand to see the will and explain his supposed disinheritance. There was none.

Peter is an angry man, maybe even a greedy man, though when you have so little economically it's hard to call the desire for money and comfort "greed."

As I'm listening to Mom and replaying these event of our collective history with my brother, I am trying to decide whether to ask the question I have come today to ask--do you want me to find Peter? Do you want me to bring him to you?

I've been debating this question in my head ever since Mom had her first stroke a year ago in October. Something tells me he should know Mom is ill...that, if it were me, I would want to know. But this is Mom and Peter we are talking about--two of the most stubborn, angry people I know. I still don't have an answer.

But before I can say anything, Mom says--"You know...you know...he wouldn't...right...wouldn't come...right?"

I consider what to say. Mom's right, of course. But do I say this to her?

I look at Mom. Today is a pretty good day. Mom attempts to straighten her chin and level her eyes at me. She is sitting in her usual position, head ratcheted to the right, her body slumping into her right arm rest. While Mom is making some gains with her upper body--she can hold onto her fork and spoon and, with some help supporting her elbow, can bring that fork and spoon somewhere near her lips--Mom is still not in control of her torso. Sitting slumped in her wheelchair, she looks forlorn, abandoned, even with me sitting right next to her. Even so, Mom needs the truth. She needs it now, more than ever.

"Mom," I decide to say to her, touching her on her arm. "Mom, I think you're right. He's too angry."

She takes this in without comment. But still I'm sorry I've had to say it.

"What would you say Mom, if you had another chance? What would you say if Peter walked through this door right now?"

I see Mom's lips moving, her fingers worrying her blanket like a rosary. No sound comes out.

"It wasn't me," she finally says, "you know...it's your dad...not me."

Mom's words are astonishing. Even now, so many years later, she thinks in terms of blame--who is "at fault," who is to blame for Peter's loss?

"Mom," I say with a bit of reprimand in my voice, "are you sure about that--is that really the thing you want to say to your son?"

"No," she then says, and pauses.

"No...maybe not."

"What would...what would...you know...you say?" she asks me.

"I'd say 'I love you'...that's what I'd say, Mom." My answer comes out quickly, with ease, before I can edit what I'm saying.

Mom says nothing. But she catches my eye and, in that glimmer of a smile, I can see she'd say this too.

If she had the chance.

missing: part three

The last time I see my brother.
It's 1987 and I'm standing in Atkinson's supermarket in downtown Ketchum, Idaho--a geography I know Peter has come to but where precisely he lives in Ketchum I am uncertain. It's 90 degrees outside, but inside the store it's winter--the air conditioners have been working overtime to produce an unseasonable cool. I've been choosing bread in the bakery department, trying to find the perfect whole grain loaf. There's a lot to choose from, so I've been here for several minutes, focusing on plastic wrappers and labels that reveal the amount of barely-disclosed sugars injected into each of these loaves. I've squeezed a few loaves also, checking for freshness, as a loaf that's more than a day old feels tough and resistant to the touch.

Out of the corner of my eye I see him, scurrying amongst the cheeses and the salami. He's wearing a blue T-shirt, the kind that has writing silk-screened onto the front, or at least it looks this way. I can't tell what his shirt announces as he's too far away, but I can see he's overgrown the size, as his triceps and belly extend out beyond the edges of the cloth in a way that screams--in need of a bigger size.

My first impulse is to shout, to say loudly across the bread and the cheese displays, "Peter, I'm here!" or "Peter, it's Christine" or "Peter, it's your sister...I can't believe I've found you." But I say none of these things. Instead, I just stare for a moment or two, confident that somehow he will still be there if I take time to absorb what I see. I want to stay here, just for a breath or two, take him in, the brother who let himself be lost. It's been years since I've seen him, years since we hiked together up Fourth of July Creek over in the Whiteclouds, just an hour from Ketchum. I still have that photo, taken in 1978: Peter and I standing side by side, and Chamberlain Basin at our feet. Peter has his hands crossed, his hiking mode, and I look adoringly into the camera--I'm in love with my brother, with his charm and golden aura. We all are. Peter is everyone's hope, particularly my father's.

But here in Atkinson's I see none of my brother's charisma. He looks harried, overweight. Nothing like the brother I think I know, but it's been years since I've see him, eight to be exact. So what do I know of my brother? When he doesn't turn in my direction, I know that I need to get his attention, say something. So, I stop my bread squeezing finally and focus my attention on his visage, his bulky form, his blue-T-shirted torso and arms. I reach inside myself and feel for words I need to say--braille I assume must be there if only I can apply a delicate enough touch to listen.

"Peter," I shout across the rows of neatly lined cheeses and meats. "Peter" I say even louder, not certain if he's heard over the din of other shoppers making their selections.

There's a moment then, a moment I will remember--the moment when the world changed for me, or at least the assumptions I had about it. I see Peter raise his head, the golden sweep of his hair settling back down on his head and shoulders as he levels his eyes at me. I remember this hair, this crown, as my brother's signature statement--something sensuous and lovely that all of his women found irresistible. And there were lots of women, broken women who needed my brother's religion to save them from themselves. Even then, at the time of my hiking photo, Peter was a saver, a man who saw himself as God's gift to women in need. I don't mean this in a mean or ungodly way--Peter did really see himself as a tool of salvation and he did do a lot of good with his tools. As a member of People's Church in Tacoma, Peter beckoned all his flock to attend, finding infinite ways to spread God's love, even amongst twenty-something eligible women.

So, Peter is looking right at me and there is a span of a second or so when I think maybe I see my brother, despite the physical changes in his profile. Our eyes lock, and I can see he recognizes me, the sister he knew but has chosen to forget. We stand this way for a minute or so, and I can feel my body sweating, feel the perspiration ring in concentric circles under my arms, feel the sweat slip out from beneath my breasts, till it's rivering down my belly and spine, catching in the waistband of my jeans. I can't think of what will happen next, I just know I don't want to stop looking, stop taking him in. This may be all I get.

And then, it happens, the thing I hadn't imagined--my brother takes off at a run. I see him turn his bulky middle towards the chocolate and the nuts on Aisle Two, and waddle his middle down the aisle till he reaches the spice rack and the end of the aisle where the gourmet crackers and cookies are kept. He runs faster than I can imagine someone his size can run, and just as I think to pick up my own feet to chase after him, his bulk disappears into the next aisle, beyond my sight. Soon he's out the door, or at least I imagine this is so.

"Peter," I shout after him, albeit a bit too late. "Peter...come back to me." But I know he can't hear any of this, as he's already out the front door of the Atkinson's and safely ensconced in some vehicle of choice--maybe a VW or a Honda, something inexpensive but dependable. He's gone, gone, gone...gone missing...and there's nothing I can do about it.

I chase after him, or rather I chase after the space he has occupied, knowing that my attempts to track him are feeble at best. My feet hit the store's Linoleum at a run, slipping a bit on the polished squares as I attempt to turn the corner and head for the door. But despite my sprint, he's gone and I am here, standing in the checkout stand at Atkinson's grocery, wishing I was somewhere out there, paired with my brother, arm and arm, no matter how many years have kept us apart, no matter how much dysfunction might be in the way. I love him that much.

Sometimes not even wishing is enough.

Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifewithmom--

missing: part two

Saturday, September 26th. Three weeks now at Mirabella. Mom has a new caregiver for the weekend, Alisha--Mulu has the weekend off. I sit with Mom. We read the headlines together and I read the articles aloud to Mom, sometimes paraphrasing their content to make sure Mom is following what I'm saying. A thwarted terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11. White collar union's response to Boeing's announcement terminating its education program. And then my personal favorite--"Anklet sniffs out alcohol," an article about how states are using new technology to monitor defendants who are court ordered to be alcohol-free. The anklet can measure alcohol in a defendant's perspiration and then automatically transmit this back to the server at the monitoring center. Nifty, right? Big Brother rides again! Mom gets pretty worked up about this one--disparages the use of government to infiltrate privacy. I'm surprised by her politics, I'd have figured she would be for anything that gets drunks off the streets and out of their cars. It's an age-old issue--when does the "public good" demand that personal liberty and privacy be impinged upon?

After several hours of reading and chatting, me sitting with my legs curled under me on Mom's bed and Mom resting comfortably in her elevated hospital bed, Alisha looks at us and says--"I can tell how close the two of you are....how nice that you've always been this way." There's a pause then in her train of thought before she finishes with--" I am not close to my mom. Never see her, in fact...and when I do, we don't get along. Not at all."

I watch Mom's face for her response to this unexpected outpouring, wondering what she might say to a blanket affirmation like this. I'm nervous actually, because I don't know how much Mom might reveal to this semi-stranger caretaker of ours.

There's a pause in the conversation before Mom begins to sputter. "I think...she and I...we do..." The words get stuck, and for once I'm grateful, grateful that she can't say what she might say, which is--"sure we love each other, but...but...but...we haven't always been close." Or she might say--"Close, yes, but there was that time..." Or, due to Mom's well-protected need for privacy, she might not be saying either of these, choosing to say nothing at all, letting Alisha's conclusion stand in place of the truth. After all, it does sound better, doesn't it? Better than the truth? But the fact that her face looks so agitated and her voice is working overtime to try to find the words (and this time I don't try and help her, I just let the words slip away) tells me that the last of these possibilities is not what Mom has in mind.

I know Mom is thinking about those "terrible years" in the mid-eighties-to-the-mid-nineties where Mom refused to talk to me, angry that I moved away to the "Hicksville" part of the state (Wenatchee, eastern Washington), angry that I chose to align myself with the "wrong man" or rather men (first there was the cowboy attorney, Mark, and then later my developer husband, Dana). As I've learned, Mom can be so uncompromising--it's her strength as well as her weakness. She never backs down, never admits when she's wrong--takes no prisoners. Not concerning me....and certainly not concerning my brother, Peter. That's what aligns Peter and me--keeps him breathing in my memory, despite how long it's been since I've seen him, as the two of us took on the brunt of Mom's displeasure: we acted "badly" and married the "wrong" people and (and this is an important "and" as it brings with it the social humiliations that Mom just can't forgive us for) we did so by eloping, without Mom's public or private sanction. So for Mom, Peter and I were simply "missing"--gone from her life, even if we were living and breathing in some other geography. Losses such as these are difficult to bear as there's no memorializing of the one who is gone--no ceremony around death that allows for the living to move through grief and on to other ways of being. They are "ambiguous losses," as psychotherapist Pauline Boss describes them. It's like Peter and I were MIA, only Mom's grief over this did not necessarily include a fervent hope for our safe return. Instead, she lived in a martyred world of unresolved grief, sure that things would always be this way, that a happy ending would not likely bring her children back to her.

I look towards Mom hunched in her bed, her neck bent sharply to the right. Her misaligned position looks painful, her limbs and torso frozen, like her arm or shoulder could shatter at just a touch. There's a silence here, as both of us are still in the sway of Alisha's revelation. I see the dark violet penciled brows that arch even when Mom's eyes are closed (Lorna's idea of how eyebrows should be painted). I see her fine fly-away-hair that never seems to keep it's curl, despite the hairdresser's attempts to curl-iron the facsimile of ringlets into her hair. I see the sag and bag of her cheeks, how her face no longer can carry the nuances of expression that it did when I was growing up, those years when I would scour her face like a nineteenth-century physiogamist for the slightest sign of what she may be feeling, thinking, sure that her face held the key to earning my mother's pleasure and approval. A smile meant "yes" you are my beloved daughter....an absence of a smile could mean so many things, but mostly that I'd disappointed expectation. Now her face, once so mobile, is a lacy webbing of wrinkles and sun spots that speaks her age. Every emotion leads unilaterally to a wrinkle-frown--overcoming the effects of gravity on the skin takes concentration, impetus. It's only those uncommon joys that light her face temporarily to an semblance of what it use to be.

After a few minutes of Mom's sputterings and Alisha's and my silence, it becomes clear that nothing more is going to be said. I'm relieved really, though there is a part of me that is curious and now disappointed, wanting to know what Mom would say about it all these years later. Does she really still hold a grudge towards me, like she does towards Peter? Am I still that "disloyal" daughter she decided I was, despite all the years that my presence has proven otherwise?

"So Mom," I say into our lull. My voice startles me, sounds odd to my ears--high, pinched, like the words are having a difficult time escaping. "So Mom," I begin again, "you never did tell me if you missed Peter after he disappeared for good?" I remember clearly how Mom dodged this question yesterday, but had done so in a circuitousness way, never actually saying "No....I won't talk about this." Instead, she just never got around to her answer. Or maybe there had been an answer but her Alzheimer's stole it away.

We are sitting just a foot or so away from each other, so intimate that I can smell her soured breath as it escapes her teeth and lips, forming a stale cloud of spent oxygen between us. So close that I can hear the intimacy of her bowels, the way her intestines just relieved themselves into her Depends without Mom initiating this happening. Mom too hears the release of her sphincter valve, her face contorting for a moment into what is either a grimace of pain or one of embarrassment. "Oh, dear," she mutters softly. I say nothing.

We sit like this for a bit. I can be as patient as I need to be and Mom has no where else she needs to be. We both are listening, me to Mom and Mom to what she can remember or allow herself to know.

It's been a day of firsts for Mom--first time she tried to brush her teeth (not successful), first time she spun the bicycle handlebars with her own volition (and she did grab a hold and spin these on her own, albeit slowly), first time she could pat the head of dog (not her dog's but the soft golden head of a visiting Labrador named Buddy), first time she could feed herself a sandwich (and she did grab hold of the corner of her grilled cheese and angle it into her mouth). All firsts, all amazing--I caught each one gleefully with my camera, just in case we forget they happened. But these are bittersweet victories for me. There's a glass ceiling for Mom--not sure of where it lies exactly but there's a limit to what she can achieve. Soon we will know. It's like pieces of Mom have gone missing, are now beyond her control--pieces of her arms and legs, bowels and stomach, spine and cerebral cortex, fingers and hands. The facsimile of these bodily parts are here, easy to be seen by the naked eye, but the "real," functioning parts have vanished. Missing. Mom's Alzheimer's will make sure of this, make the recovery of her corporeal self nearly impossible after her stroke. In its place is my ravaged mother.

"I do," Mom finally says in answer to my question about Peter. "I do miss him."

"But you never talk about him," I fire back to her.

"True," she says. Nothing more.

"But why not?" I ask her with a bit of an edge, feeling myself getting annoyed.

Mom pauses then, and I watch her closely. So much seems to hang in the balance with her answer. Why she never tries to get in touch with Peter, why she never seems to cry over him but can cry in a second over the very mention of her mother who's been dead since 1945, why she never talks about him as one of "her sons," why she disinherited him from her will. I listen and I wait. And then, in reward for my patience, Mom says it, the thing that explains Mom, makes visible what lies on the inside of her skin, and I'm almost sorry that I've heard, sorry that I've asked.

"He's not there," she says carefully, thinking this explains it all.

"What do you mean "not there," I say angrily, wishing myself a long ways away from this bed, from this dysfunctional woman who simply cannot be my mother. "He's s-o-m-e-w-h-e-r-e, Mom, living with a wife called Susan. We just don't know where."

"No," she says emphatically. "He's not...he's not the person...you know...not who...who he was."

Mom's words feel dangerous, terrible to me. Why? What is there here that I don't already know? Perhaps there is really nothing new...but her answer confirms things I haven't wanted to think about my mom, renews insight into how my mother handles those who make choices she cannot sanction. For Mom, Peter has literally gone missing with no return possible. Whatever parts of him that remain in Phoenix or Ketchum or Tacoma or Butte or wherever else he might be are not recognizable to her, and hence simply cannot be him. The "real" Peter, for Mom, is what she refers to as her "purely nice boy," not the man who shunned her, grieved her, refused to attend his own father's funeral and then disappeared for good. No other facts can exist if they don't fit with her "purely nice" knowledge.

The things we tell ourselves to be okay with present pain. The Alzheimer's bodies we prefer not to see, the sons we prefer not to recognize, the daughters we prefer not to speak to--all of these in the name of coping with unimaginable loss.

I look at my mother, prostrate in her bed, and consider what I can allow myself to know. Is this really my mother? Isn't this someone else's mother? It must be, because the body before me diverges so far from my memory of Mom as a lively, fit, intelligent woman. And yet, this ravaged self must be my mother, there's no doubt. I recognize the age-loosened curl of her cheek, the mole on the side of her neck that blends into a smattering of sunspots all from too many years worshiping the heat, the breasts that sag beneath her white cotton T-shirt. Her Alzheimer's stroke-damaged self must be what is real for me, despite what is missing. To say otherwise is to leave grief unresolved.

This is all that's left of Mom.

This is my mother!

Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifewithmom--

missing: part one

"Do you miss Peter?" I ask Mom.

I wait for her reply with careful attention as I honestly don't know what she'll say. We are sitting together in her room at Mirabella--I'm in a straight-backed chair with arms that's pulled up snug to her wheelchair, close enough that I can wiper my fingertips across the creases on Mom's face, in case she gets the weeps. It's late afternoon, and dinner will be brought in about a half-an-hour. Mom's having "Spencer Steak with Pomme Frites and zucchini saute." So there's about a thirty minute span of time here to do what we collectively call "talking stories" before Mom's attention shifts to her eating. Usually we look at pictures, concrete articles that prompt her memory. But lately these photos haven't produced much of anything but tears. So, we are talking without pictures, instead. I am writing furiously, not wanting to miss a word.

We've been talking about my dad, Paul Arnold Schuler, as I've asked her about his growing up. "Didn't he live in the poorest part of West Seattle?" I ask Mom, hoping to prompt her into a story about Dad's hard-luck beginnings. I already know one of these stories--how he started his own paper route when he was seven and never stopped being the entrepreneur ever since.

When all she says is "yes" in reply, without further explanation, I think of a new tact. "What was he like when Peter (my mother's first child) was born? Did he help you with caring for Peter?" Again, I have no idea what she will say, as Mom and I have never talked about Peter as a young boy.

"No," she says quickly, "not at all...but he loved Peter all the same." I fill in a few details here, knowing that Dad was bonkers about Peter--he loved that boy as much as Mom loved me: a disproportionate attraction that, in retrospect, did more harm than good.

My questions to Mom come at the end of a discouraging day--Mom's speech seems to have slipped backwards, as she's having significant word finding problems once again and her body has given in to a major slump, so much so that her shoulders and torso are nearly horizontal as she leans into her right side. Lorna and I keep reaching to straighten her neck and shoulders but to no avail. At PT today, Mom gave little assistance to her therapist, Kim, someone new Mom has never seen before. Why Mirabella can't keep Mom seeing the same therapists has become a point of frustration for me--learning to be comfortable and work with new people takes a lot out of Mom; it's one of the reasons why today's therapy session doesn't go so well. Mom is unable to demonstrate her ability to sit for one-and-a-half minutes on the edge of the therapy bench. The most she can do is several seconds before she slumps to the the rear of the bench. Is Mom tired? Is she unable to follow directions? Are her core muscles so flaccid that she cannot consistently keep herself erect? Kim asks me at some point--is this the way she always is? And I don't quite know how to answer her--there is no "always" as each day varies. But I can say that today is not one of her best performances.

So, when we return to Mom's room after therapy, Mom sits for a while in her chair--I read her the Seattle Times. Together we read the titles in bold print and decide which articles sound interesting. There's something about Boeing's termination of its "anything goes" education policy...and something about the Andrew Wyeth exhibit at SAM (Mom loves Wyeth). We talk about maybe planning an excursion to SAM, if Mom feels up to it--the exhibition ends October 18th. Mom's voice picks the vowels and consonants in the titles--her reading is still intact, if we are patient enough. Her thinking, however, seems a bit off, sentences that start out of nowhere, others that go nowhere. I have to think on my toes, trying to figure out where Mom is going, where she has been with her words.

The topic of my brother Peter is something I want to talk to Mom about--I came here today interested in generating a discussion about what Peter means to Mom, but not sure of how it might come up. My brother was born in 1953 to a mother who wanted nothing more than to start a family. Her career as a fashion advertiser at Frederick 'n Nelson paled in comparison: she quit this soon enough. When I ask Mom whether Dad was excited about the baby, she replies with--"He was very excited because he had yet to find meaningful work."

This last comment is a bomb shell--I never thought of dad as not having worked out the issue of meaningful labor. He was a planner and successful strategist--whatever he touched turned to platinum.

As we talk about my father and then Peter, however, M0m's words miraculously become clearer, without much hesitation--like an engine warming itself before shifting into gear. I am surprised how her consonants and vowels come tumbling out, despite the fact that I know this discussion has the potential to add to her anxiety and unrest. Conversations about the past tend to have this emotional effect of late.

"I can think more clearly now," Mom blurts out all of a sudden, "in this place," she finishes with a broad gesture to her surroundings...more clearly than when I was...home." Mom's revelation is stunning, as this is one of the rare times when she is cognitively able to look at herself with perspective and comment on what she sees. I haven't asked her about this--she's offered it to me.

"What did it feel like Mom, to not be clear-thinking?"

Mom raises her eyes then, and looks at me directly, making sure I am listening, which I am. Her eyes are black-brown, so dark in fact that it's hard to read the language of her eyes...but her words say it all. "It's terrible," she says. "like being buried inside...inside one's own body."

I don't know what to say to Mom--her words make my spine shiver, my skin crawl with nerves, expectation.

"I thought I'd lost them all," she continues. I'm thinking--what's "them"? And then she explains, without my even asking--"All those memories, you know. But here...here they are again." She sighs then with relief, a smile working up the corners of her lips where before there had been tears or at least the rumor of tears. "I'd thought they'd gone missing," she emphasizes again. "Poof!"

So many ways to lose oneself, I think to myself.

Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifewithmom--

sisters

"There's my sister," Mom says, as I come into her room. She's sitting with her ST, Lisa, and Lisa says--"Now, Dorin, she really isn't your sister, is she?" Mom smiles a little complicit grin, and lets a second or two go by before saying--"True...true...she's not."

I feel suddenly relieved, as Mom's confusion over family members is something that distresses me--her constant references to her grandsons as her "sons" and to my sister-in-law as her "mother." This last one truly bothers me, nothing against my sister-in-law, it's just that I know how much my mom loved her mother and I know how much she mourned her (still mourns her) dying when Mom was twenty-one. Mom's sister, on the other hand, was not whisper close to Mom. Last week, when I asked her about Marguerite, I said--"Were you close like best friends?" She waited just a bit to answer, and then said--"No...we weren't....but I loved her nonetheless."

I keep trying to figure out Mom's complicated network of family relationships--why is Terry "mother" and why am I the "sister"? I'm the one here every day living her therapy, her meals, her boredom with her. While I know such transpositions are common with Alzheimer's patients, experiencing these missteps is another thing altogether.

"Oh...I love my sons," I can just hear Mom saying to Lisa--her voice is clear, confident, almost loud, takes me out of my musings and back into this room, Mom's room here at the Mirabella. "They are so delicious." While I'm trying to "not be present," to not interfere with the therapy session, I can't help but turn my attention to Mom just now. I can't wait to hear what she loves about her sons. Last I heard, one of them, Peter, was living defiantly somewhere in Arizona, though I have not been able to track him down through phone books and the Internet--it's been twenty-nine years since he left. The other son, Eric, Mom of course loves--but I wouldn't call him "delicious." He's more bristly and sometimes irreverently funny. As it turns out, Mom is really talking about her grandsons, Alex and Nick, but slips easily back and forth between these two generations as if thirty years is a matter of little concern. While Mom is time traveling, I am anxiously sitting on the side of Lorna's bed, wondering if Mom is going to pull this one off--wondering if today is the day Lisa is going to figure out just how confused Mom really is. I know I shouldn't be thinking this, but I feel afraid, not wanting Lisa or any of Mom's other therapists to decide that Mom is "too far gone" mentally or physically to rehabilitate.

I've never had a sister--two older brothers, yes, brothers so distant in age that I have always felt deprived of a blood-closeness, what I imagine it must be to have siblings you might depend on, confide in. My brothers and I have never been this way. But I do have sisters of another kind, better than blood because we associate by choice, by need, rather than by paternity. Lora and Laura, Cindy and Sara, Bonnie and Jilly. When we need each other, the bond is there. I feel fortunate about this. They are my family, along with my tabby cats.

Today is a difficult day--not just the first day of classes but also the date of Mom's first Care Conference at Mirabella. I am here, along with Lisa (Mom's private pay care manager), Jennifer (Mom's private pay OT), Marla (the social worker for Mirabella), Andrew (RN), Lisa (ST), Johna (OT) and Beverly (PT). We all at here around an oval table and ready to converse about Mom. Johna wants Mom here at the conference, but I just can't do it, can't expose Mom to the kind of frank dialogue I am imagining we will have. Does Mom really need to hear the long term projections her therapist make about her inability to regain use of her legs? Maybe she does, after she's done what she can, maybe then she needs to know. But for now, there are already enough tears getting in the way of her ability to focus on her rehabilitation.

I appreciate the honesty here in this room--how the collective wisdom of Mom's therapists is that we need to focus on Mom enjoying the next few months, years rather than spending it on therapy that is not likely to go anywhere. The idea seems to be that some gains will be made but significant progress is unlikely. In other words, we--the family--need to get our priorities straight.

Mom's PT, Beverly, reports that Mom has made strides in regaining some control of her torso--now she can sit for a minute-and-a-half on the edge of the therapy bench without falling over to the front or the back. This seems amazing to me--just three days ago all she could do was sit for two seconds before tumbling to her side. Mom's right leg is very "spastic" and will require a brace to keep the muscles from tightening to a point where Mom would no longer be able to move her leg. Mom is still very much a full transfer, full assist, an issue that requires two caregivers at present to handle.

Mom's OT, Johna, reports that she is still working on pre-steps with Mom--those preparatory movements we use to do such things as dressing, bathing, grooming. She is able to pick up twelve ounce bottle of water (with gravity), however, and pass it off (a short distance) to Johna. This is amazing--I saw it for myself several days ago. However, Mom continues to have what Johna refers to as the "windswept look," meaning that Mom's body remains contorted in a twist of neck, back and hip stiffness and "tone," resembling a tortured "s." Mom's body mechanics are poor for this reason; she has a long ways to go to get her body back to "mid-line." Johna spends most of her time working with Mom on simply gross motor functions like sitting up straight, leaning forward and back, etc.

Lisa. Mom's ST, reports that Mom has significant word finding issues and concentration issues--neither of these is new to me or to Mom, as she was this way before the stroke. Despite the temporary decrease in Mom's swallowing and chewing capabilities last week, Lisa plans to observe Mom for several more meals and then, if all goes well. bump her up from soft mechanical back to a regular diet.

Andrew, the RN, reports that Mom's affect seems "smiley"--a big improvement over how she was last week and the week before. As he puts it, there are no longer "thunder clouds everywhere." Mom's Remeron (for depression and poor appetite) has been increased from 22.5 to 30 mg. Mom's other anti-depressant, Celexa, has been increased to 40 mg. Mom is still crying quite a bit, so much so that her sleep is interrupted during the night. Mom still has available to her oxycodone for pain, Risperdal and Lorazepam for anxiety. Other drugs she is taking are Fosomax (70 mg) for bone density (Mom has significant osteoporosis), Namenda (for her Alzheimer's, though it's doubtful this drug is doing any good as Mom's too far along in the downward curve of the disease) and Docusate Sodium (for her recurrent constipation maybe due to a neurogenic bladder). Should I be worried about so many drugs in her system?

Finally, Marla, the social worker for Mirabella, reports that we, the family, need to be thinking about "what to do with Mom," as Marla puts it, as Mom will be released most likely in about five weeks. Her total stay here will be about two months. "What to do with Mom" is a difficult issue, as no one option at present seems ideal. Returning home has always been the goal, but Mom requires two caregivers now--turning her in bed for a change, cleaning her bottom, transferring her in and out of bed, in and out of her wheelchair, all prove more than what Lorna or Mulu can do by themselves. Unless Mom should vastly exceed the expectations of her therapists, this is not likely to change in the next five weeks. On the other hand, Mom can't qualify for assisted living, even with a caregiver, as Mom is a two person assist; assisted living situations are "standby assistance" facilities only, meaning they are at the ready in case something happens but cannot help in ordinary daily event like transfers, feedings, etc. An adult family home is an option, but I just have a difficult time seeing here there--she is such a private person, a recluse almost. Mom has few friends--its always been this way. For having lived 85 years, she has acquired little continuity of connection, aside from her family. And even here her track record is not great: one son who shuns her; another who has disengaged, choosing to live a long ways away in voluntary isolation; and a daughter who Mom has had a push-pull relationship with for years. Is this how all families end up?

The atmosphere around this conference table feels tense, especially at the beginning. Do these people not get along? At the same time, everyone seem to genuinely like Mom and want to continue working with her. I am relieved to find this out--I have been worrying she's likely to be "evicted" soon. But all the while, as I am listening to Mom's therapists talk, I'm worrying a pointless thought--this can't be my mom, this woman who will never regain use of her legs, who will be lucky of she can re-learn how to put on her own shirt, much less feed herself. She must be someone else's mother. It will be difficult to find dignity in this.

Later, after class, when we go to the market, Mom is subdued. It's a beautiful blue autumn day, not quite as warm as last week, but nice all the same. Mom's dressed in her black coat, because my sister-in-law has Mom's red shawl, the one Mom wore the last time we went. When we get outside of the building I notice the elm trees lined up on Fairview, in front of the Mirabella. "Look Mom," I say, "the trees are turning gold." Mom is tilting or rather sagging to her right in her chair, so it's a struggle for her to see the trees, but she does. She's the one, in fact, who tells me they are "elms"--something that surprises me: both that she knows and that she can recall the botanical name. And it's also a struggle for her to smile once we get to the market. She's watching her feet or maybe other people's feet, because of the way her body is leaning. I wonder what she's hearing, what she's thinking--maybe this excursion is just too much for her this day. When I ask to take a picture of her with her $10.00 bouquet of flowers ($5.00 more than last week), Mom complies, but her smile is half-hearted. There's none of that spontaneous joy that occasionally marked her days this past week. When we learn this will be the last week for the market this year, she hardly seems to notice.

Back in the room, she refuses to taste her booty--the apple strudel we got from "Little Prague," the pumpkin ice cream from Whideby Island Ice Cream Company, the rainbow grape tomatoes from the Vietnamese grocer. They stay intact in her bags. I miss my "little piggy Mom" and the gusto in which we attacked last week's treasures.

Where has my mother gone?

I give up trying to interest her in a spoonful of pumpkin ice cream or a nose-full of Dahlia and marigolds (even though they may not smell, they do give off a clean, end-of-summer sort of perfume). Instead, we just sit, soaking in the absence of hustle-and-bustle, soaking in the place we have arrived, the two of us together.

Maybe she's just tired, I reassure myself.

Maybe I'm tired too.

Am I my mother's sister? I ask this of myself as I kiss Mom goodbye on the forehead and cheeks, her skin feels cool, papery to my touch...not quite living. I leave her to her newly arrived company, her nephew, Paul--Marguerite's son; she's not got much left to give him. I think of Mom there, prone, her striped boat shirt tucked beneath her sheets for sleep when really it's a long time before lights out. She's got her jet beads wrapped twice around her neck, a small vestige to beauty, to the woman who use to design and sew all of her own clothes from fashion photos in Vogue and never arrive anywhere without her hair coiffed and her fingers and neck bejeweled. Now, her hands and neck are devoid of treasure. Instead, the fingers of her right hand claw the top edge of her blanket, bent together at an angle not likely to be of functional use. This image of Mom is gripping, sticky in my head.

Other sleeping images of pain come to my mind--my grandfather Gus, Dad's Dad, right before he died in 1980, curled up into a fetal ball, disconnected from the world. My uncle, Court (Marguerite's husband), quivering with pain in a sleepless sleep, wishing for death. My aunt, Marguerite, in her pink and baby blue velor sweat suits, "sleeping" through her days in an Alzheimer's stupor, my mom nearby, tears running her cheeks.

By now Mom's tired and tearful--what happens most days by the end of the day. I wonder how she'd be if she'd been told the real story--that she's never going to regain use of most of her body. Maybe the tears would never stop? But then again, maybe she already knows--isn't this a good enough reason to weep?

As I wait for the elevator, I am imagining her eyes shut, her brain slowed to a point just shy of sleep--just the way I saw her when I left. Nothing that happens in her room will reach her now. She's traveling somewhere else, somewhere not even a sister or a mother or a daughter can go. Are we "friends for life" like sisters are "suppose to be"? Are we sisters in a common struggle--equal partners in a venture called Mom's health? What kind of sisterhood are we?

In the end, I will take whatever Mom has to give--sister or daughter or nothing at all. Whatever we are, this will have to be enough. Living in our present, making no claims for a common future. What other option do we have?

Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifewithmom--

her daughter's shoes

There's a place I go, at least twice a year, sometimes with Mom and sometimes not. It's a mountain place and boots are required--stiff, waterproof kind-of-shoes, like what Mom would procure from REI every three to four years. I see it as a rite of passage--a place to observe the giving over of spring into summer and summer into fall. Not a difficult passage--seven miles round trip, with a point of departure from the parking lot at Alpental, Snowqualmie Pass. I make this passage once in the late spring and once every fall--it's essential.

Today I come because I'm transitioning myself, from a summer of writing to a fall of teaching. And I make this passage because Mom cannot--I'm walking these miles for her because it's something we've done so many times, something she'd like to be doing right now but cannot. I have the proper shoes; she no longer does.

After registering with the Forest Service--a scant piece of paper that announces where I am going and when I'm returning--I take on the trail as it moves steeply up the side of the hill overlooking Alpental. The woods are thick, deeply damp, despite our September drought. I can see the evidences of spring--the Queen's Cup still throbbing green, it's rabbit-eared leaves blooming even if the delicate lily-flower is not. And the Solomon Seal and Trillium are still blazing-on, though yellowed and crisp around the edges and soon to be turning towards the earth for winter. As I get higher, vine maples line the trail, already blushing maroon with the evening chill that's been coming on the past few weeks. The only flowers still visible are the "pussy toes"--what my brothers and I called these humble balls of white fluff when hiking as children. They're hardly flowers at all.

Soon, too soon, the trail moves out and away from the woods, leaving me to face full on the 80 degree sun (even at this time of day) and the thick dust scrimming the fields of moraine cascading down the hill to my right. The rocks around and on this trail are prolific. I spend the next thirty minutes looking down intently at the trail, as I mount switchback after switchback, trying to ignore the heat. And in my looking I am searching persistently for an uncommon stone--a rock that announces itself as not just beautiful but also endemic to the landscape. This is something Mom and I would do--search for stones to transport home as a record of where we'd been. For mom, this habit becomes an obsession, yielding basket upon basket of grey-to-black rocks, their origins long-since lost from memory. Whatever boyfriend I had at the time would be enlisted to help Mom carry "her rocks" home to safety, the weight of them sometimes exceeding ten pounds or more.

After thirty minutes, I give up the search, sure that there will be no uncommon stones. So, instead, I bend over and pick up a rather common grey rock, common but unaccountably smooth to the touch on both sides and embedded into the soil like paver-stones anchored in mortar. I turn the stone between my fingers, feeling it's heat and it's well-worn edges--thousands of feet have travailed over this particular rock. It's very commonness, I decide, produces an uncommon appeal. It's the perfect stone to bring back to Mom.

The trail to Snow Lake is a freeway of a trail--one has to be careful about when to summit to the lake in order to avoid what can only be called a rush-hour traffic jam. Reminds me of the trails out of Denver in the Rocky Mountain National Park, where the persistent traffic apparently warranted paving the trails into a concrete forest. Amazing really. Snow Lake is nearly this frequented, but it's path remains, thankfully, soil and rock and veined with root. So I compensate by choosing to travel at less popular times--such as during the week and after 5:00pm, both of which describe the geography of my journey today.

It's been a long day at Mirabella--so the allure of Snow Lake is accentuated: an opportunity to cram a seven mile hike into one-and-a-half hours so as to beat the dark. I revel in the challenge of it. Today, I walked Mom through OT and PT, observing without comment as Mom tries to do what the therapists require. Much of time she's staring off into space, seemingly oblivious to what is being asked. During ST, Mom takes twenty minutes to name five states--as it is, she only gets four--Oregon, Idaho, Washington and Montana. Lisa has the patience of Job, consistently redirecting Mom back to the question at hand, instead of attending to other more present matters, like the man she thinks she sees crouching in the corner of her room, a hallucination that neither Lisa nor I can make sense of. On the electrical exercise bike, Mom's legs (with E-stem electrodes attached to them) go around and round, without her in-put at all. I touch her on the shoulder and say--"Mom, look at your feet....push the pedals down as they come around." Her eyes are closed, so it takes a few second before her lids open. Startled, he looks first at me and then down at her feet. She says "yes," her standard response to all her therapists' requests, but then stares off into space again, nonrepsonsive. "What are you thinking , Mom?" I want to ask her. "What can't you attend to what's at hand?" But I say none of this, because I already know the answers. All the while I worry, incessantly, about whether Mom is doing enough, about whether her Alzheimer's will prevent her from making enough "progress" from her stroke for purposes of Medicare.

Mom's friend Jennifer (who is also her private-pay OT from before the stroke) said to me yesterday--"Your mother's world is the sensuality of the present...that's all she knows." Jennifer is right--Mom is caught up in present happenings, whether that be a person just entering the room or a sound she hears down the hall--all of these interrupt her ability to concentrate. They become what is "real." These "interruptions," these present events and sounds and emotions, are not interruptions at all but rather the entirety of Mom's world. This is what she knows and, as Jennifer points out, this is what I can be giving her. Right now. The present. Mom has but a small grasp on the past--events and people move in and out of focus, without her will, despite the reminders of photographs and memorabilia. And the future? Well, your guess is as good as mine as to what happens next--she's not able to think beyond the here and now. I need to get use to this, to stop wanting something otherwise. I can lay no claims on her beyond the present moment. Instead, she's my present tense and I am hers. And this will be enough. It will have to be.

When I summit to the lake, I expect elation but instead find myself aching and dull, lonely with the thought that I am here and Mom is there in her bed at Mirabella. There's no changing this. Mom is in her own "rite of passage"--where the body takes us before leaving us to do whatever is next. The lake looks its usual blue, the edges trimmed by pine trees and wild huckleberry. Along the far side, fields of stone tumble into the lake's immense depth and a sheer wall of rock rises from the lake's bottom to extend up to Gem and Wildcat Lakes high above and not yet visible to the eye. For this moment, there is no one here--no voices to interrupt what should be my calm. I guess no one is foolish enough to hike to this lake just before dark. If Mom were here, she'd be getting antsy, packing up her rucksack, getting out her flashlight, mumbling something about "danger" and the "dark." I do none of these things, as I am comfortable with the moment, despite the trail and the rocks and impinging night. I know this trail, even at this time of twilight.

Tomorrow I will gather up my syllabi for my students and drive to where I teach--Seattle University. It's the first day of class. I will talk the talk--tell them why they need this class and what a meaningful journey we will have together. And we will, I am sure of it, whether I feel this way right now or not, because this is something I know how to do and it matters to me, what my students learn, what they think about. And all the while, I will feel my mother there in her room, feel her grief and her anguish and her broken resolve. I will live her present tense just as I live my own, hoping that there are enough days left to be her daughter and for her to be my mother.

Later, after class, I will place that stone--the common rock from the Snow Lake trail--in her hand and I will tell her about my journey. I will use the most vivid words I know and I will work hard to join her in her present tense of sensuality, expectations put aside. It won't matter that tomorrow all of this will be forgotten--she won't even remember that I was there. The present is what she knows--the sweet curl of pear she juices between her lips...the lips we smack together in love before I leave. The present is what sustains her, moves her.

And I am her present.

Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifewithmom--

My Mother's Shoes

Mom has a lot of shoes, or rather she use to. So do I. Mom's shoes are different though, because at least half of them are in boxes, unworn and unloved (and I do think of shoes as being loved--even if this makes me a freak). Mom has 67 pairs. I have 29. I know this about Mom's shoes because I had the job of sorting them and deciding what to do with them when my brother and I moved Mom out of her house last March. Mom and my father bought that land in Medina back before it was cool and swank to live in Medina. They bought the land in 1949 when it was thought to be inconvenient if not gauche to live in Bellevue. Because they were short on funds, they bought the land and subdivided, selling off half to pay for the price of their own lot. Then they placed a prefab house on their piece of the land, a humble structure that my father added onto over the years with the work of his own hands. Now, Medina is the land of mega-homes, what my brother and I call the Bellevue Burgers. It's also the land of the techies, as Bill Gates led the way for this inundation with his high security mansion just seven or eight properties up from Mom's.

Mom had to move because the State is widening the SR520 bridge--Mom's property as well as several other neighbors' is just what the State needs to turn that bridge into gigantic sky-way to Seattle. My father would be incredulous, never having imagined that this sleepy suburb of Seattle would become such a hot topic.

So, Mom and her things had to be moved...only not all of her things. Her new house in Clyde Hill just wasn't/isn't big enough to hold it all. Paring down on everything, including shoes, was an imperative. The only problem was that Mom didn't see it this way. For Mom, her "things" were her world--her safety, her protection against senility, loss, old-age and death. Only, if you think about it, "things" are pretty powerless; being objects, they go the way of all possessions--easily disposable, non-permanent, easily alienable and lost.

I've been reading about "compulsive hoarding"--it's for my new book, the novel I am writing about Vinny the vintage collector who has a problem with "things" (she has too many of them and can't stop accumulating). Per the self-help book Overcoming Compulsive Hoarding, people who hoard acquire and save items having little value and then have a very difficult time discarding them. This isn't to say hoarders acquire only valueless things. Rather, hoarders accumulate both the valueless and the valuable and cannot distinguish between. Associated with this characteristic are other unpleasant issues like--fear of running out of things, social isolation, loss of functional space inside the house, gross disorganization--the list goes on.

My mother is/was a compulsive hoarder. If there ever was a doubt, cleaning out her Medina house was the litmus test. 160 boxes of unused stationary. 545 unused greeting cards. 123 unused picture frames, not even taken out of their boxes. Closets full of clothes with price tags still attached. Three entire rooms loaded from floor to ceiling with old newspapers and magazines, all saved with the idea that she would get to them soon. And, as the authors of Overcoming Compulsive Hoarding suggest, all this saving of newspapers/magazines derives out of a fear of accidentally throwing something out of value (e.g. information that one may need to retrieve). While it could be argued that any one of these items has value, at some point the sheer numbers of them begin to be concerning. When my brother, Eric, and I got to the attic, we found our concerns confirmed: Mom had the 3500 foot attic stacked to the ceiling with dusty, dirty rat-infested boxes. Inside each box was an incomprehensible collection of treasure and junk: Mom's wedding scrapbook, for example, along side a filthy rag and a stack of yellowed newspapers and the discards from a junk drawer (items like rubber bands, paper clips, looses change, match books, etc). What could she have been thinking? The juxtapositions of valuable and worthless were dizzying.

Parting a hoarder from her things is a fraught activity, and heartbreaking. Much resentment accumulates. For my mom, this was treacherous ground, as she saw no need to lighten her load, not even if it meant that her "things" would be given to those who needed them more, as one tactful mover remarked. My mother, an unusually compassionate woman, could not see the value in this--she saw her own need for these things as outweighing any others' need for these same things.

My brother and I resorted to subterfuge, something that my mother resented then as now. To this day, she still refers to us as "those people" who "stole" her things. I feel bad about this--aren't we all entitled to dignity in old age? So while I can understand her point, hoarding is a mental illness. Someone who hoards has little to no self-insight about their obsessions. We can't expect Mom to understand her issues, particularly as Alzheimer's had a role in her failure to call it what it is--compulsive hoarding rather than the simple act of collecting what is valuable and precious.

So, Mom's shoes. They are all I can think about just now. There's plenty of other things that happened today besides Mom's shoes. She has OT, where Johna told her she's "making good progress"--the magic words that Medicare needs to hear. She has her hair done with plenty of curls--I'm there this time and make sure that she leaves with gazillions of micro curls dangling from her scalp (notice the photo--Mom is smiling because she just looked in the mirror and, once we get her to open her eyes, she too can see that curls are the coif-du-jour). She has lunch for the first time in the dining room today rather than isolated in her room--it's cheerful in the dining room, lots of sunlight, lots of life. But despite these three milestones, I'm still thinking of Mom's shoes because it occurs to me, as I look at Mom in her chair waiting for her OT, with her feet swollen and skewed at odd angles on the foot rests of her wheelchair, that shoes are the last thing she needs. Most of the time Mom just has socks on her feet. When she does need shoes (and one could ague that she doesn't need them at all as she doesn't walk or even attempt to walk), like when she is transported to therapy, her caregiver, with difficulty, works her running shoes onto her sausage feet, laces them up and off she goes. The irony of this--running shoes for a woman who struggles to sit up much less walk.

This fact of--not needing shoes--strikes me as inexplicable sad, considering how Mom and I have always been terribly interested in shoes. Some women like dresses or coats or pants--Mom and I just love shoes. Really love shoes. When I cleaned out her shoe closets last March, separating her shoes into piles for the estate sale, I couldn't help myself from saving (not hoarding) some of Mom's beautiful unworn shoes. It's not that I will wear them--even as my feet have aged and gotten broader and longer, they still can't fill a size 8 1/2 narrow. These shoes feel familiar, however, as every shoe Mom imported from Europe, I imported the same pair too, only I no longer have mine. My feet expanded a half-a-size, meaning that I long since donated (as in 20 years ago) my shoes to a better cause: battered women who need beautiful shoes to find a job and a new life. So I have these samplings of Mom's shoes in a cloth bag, the kind of bag that commemorates events, conferences, businesses. Inside this rather plain off-white bag with "Washington Mutual" on the side are seven pairs of her shoes. I remember their origins--Paris ("Robert Clergerie"), London ("Next"and "Rider"), New York ("Perry Ellis" and "Ralph Lauren"), Florence (Tivo and Beltrami). I can even remember the uneven streets we pounded everyday till our sore feet were what we referred to as "bloody stumps," all in search of new shoe or culinary or artistic delights. Running my fingers over their expensive leather sides, sniffing my nose into their decorative tooled uppers, is a journey of experience, a sniff of memory--mine and Mom's. The leathers are still soft, pungent...an uncommon pleasure, like what happens when uncorking a good bottle of wine and something delicious escapes for the nose even before the tongue is indulged. I swear, it's like we just walked out of Beltrami's last week with shopping bags in hand. It's a snapshot of who we were together back in the 1980s. A museum piece of sort. And like all museum displays, these shoes are an imperfect representation of Mom, extracted as they are from their context. They lack the love of beauty, the exuberance of discovery that coursed between Mom and I on our adventures. They are, in the end, just consumable objects, "things" Mom has no need for; not now and not later when she travels to another life. The shoes stay here. Mom "walks" away without them.

Still, I'm keeping these shoes, no matter what anyone says. Sometimes "things" do matter.

Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifewithmom--