proud to have a sister like you

It's Halloween and Mom and I are looking through boxes. Earlier today, I went to her house there on Clyde Hill and sorted through what felt like hundreds of boxes but which were really more like thirty in number, all stored in Mom's closet. Some of them my brother and I rescued from her attic, kept them safe from the dumpster upon dumpster of garbage the exited Mom's house after she moved. There's a smell of damp or mildew about these boxes and the things contained within. They've been stored for so long back at Mom's old house in Medina that they have a particular odor. It's age and neglect that greet my nose--how objects smell when they've been bruised and forgotten. Like earth but not quite because there's the whiff of human consumption, human need--how we gather, save, forget the myriad of objects that grace our lives. It takes me three hours to sort through and find which boxes Mom might want. I'm hunting for memorabilia of Mom's life and of our life together. Evidence that there was a "her" and a "we" before my conscious memory, a memory that is partial and incomplete of late. She's labeled some of the boxes with sticky-notes that say "keepsakes" or "not sorted" or "keep" but I have to go through all of them, just to make sure. It's become essential, obsessive even, this need to retrieve.

So by 4:30 in the afternoon, I pile the back of my car with eleven banker boxes. Two of them I transfer to Mom's room; the rest will wait in my garage until we are ready for them.

By the time I get to Mom's it's late, later than I intend. We chat for a few minutes, me asking about her day and Mom nodding and saying a few words. When there's a lull I ask her--"Do you want to see what's in these boxes?" Mom nods "Yes," so I open the lid to the one that has gotten my attention, an ordinary banker box except for the extraordinary wealth within. There's a pink-and-brown-checkerboard-of-a-box sitting right on top--three inches deep and about eight inches across. There's a tasteful label on the box's side which reads--"The Topper Shop, West Seattle."

"What's this?" I ask Mom, showing her the pink and brown box from to so many years ago. Mom shakes her head, "No," apparently not remembering the box or its contents. But I know what's inside, or at least a glimmer of it's contents, as I peaked when I was at Mom's house sorting earlier today.

"Let's see, shall we?" I say to Mom, because I can't wait any longer, can't keep myself from knowing what might be inside. As I slide off the lid, the first thing that we see is a ballet program, hand painted, from the Cornish School of Ballet. Lettered on the front is "Ballet Festival, 1964" along with the painting of a dark haired woman in a soft green net tutu, ankle length, with a red rose pinned across her bosom. It's a program from one of my early dance recitals--I am part of the corps from "Waltz from Faust." I feel the paper between my fingers, grainy, fragile--as old as it looks. Nowadays who would paint a program, who has the time or the sensibility? I remember the many ballets I danced at Cornish. For a period of twelve years, my friend Gretchen and I danced seriously and madly and gloriously the demanding rigors of classical ballet. Twice a week our mothers transported us to Seattle, just off Broadway, for our lessons. We saw ourselves as premier ballerinas and had hopes of dancing our way to Balanchine's New York City Ballet, nirvana for every young girl's dreams. Fortunately, some dreams don't come true.

Next there's a silk-screened announcement for my birth--"Peter and Eric are pleased and proud...a new baby sister has joined our 'crowd.'" There's my name in pink paint, "Christine Leiren" and my birthing information; "arrived April 1oth weighing 8 pounds 7 ounces." It's signed "Dorin and Paul." There's nine pink paint flowers scatted over the heavy stock paper and right beside my brothers' names is a dried pink flower, glued to each of the invitations.

"How did you have time to make these Mom?" I ask her. "They're beautiful." I try to imagine myself as several weeks old--what I saw, who I loved. I wonder, at fourteen days do we already know who we love, who to cleave to? Mom grasps hold of the thick creamy paper, bending the grain between her thumb and forefinger as she attempts to keep a hold of it, keep it from falling to the floor.

I dig down deeper into the box, and I find a pair of pink (much-used) ballet flats, about five inches long. The leather's cracked, scaled like a snake skin, but the imprint of my foot is still there--the big toe, the place where my four-year-old heel wore down the back. They look painted really, as the pink color is flaking off, leaving a scrim of residue on my hands and pants. "Look Mom," I say, "look how these were dyed...or maybe painted." Ballet costuming was all about innovation--how to hand sew, hand paint to create the illusions of luxury, beauty. Mom holds out her palm to grasp the shoe, now almost flat as a piece of leather, but for the elastic ankle strap, what every Mom sewed on assiduously to her daughter's shoes. Press down the heel of the shoe, I am remembering, and sew the elastic beginning right at the edge of where the folded heel meets the side of the shoe. It was a formula for success, how to avoid sewing the elastic band too far forward. On this particular pair, my elastic is way to close to the toe--I must have hated this, I think. Must have been embarrassed, looked like a dork.

I dig deeper still. There's the hospital announcement card, "Room 307," it reads, "Compliments of Pet Milk Company." It states my weight, my length--"30 inches"--and the fact that at this point I am known as "Girl Schuler, Sex F." Interestingly enough, it also states my time of birth, something Mom has been unable to remember--3:25 am." Mom shakes her head "No" at this, insisting that I was not born in the middle of the night, but hospital records don't lie, at least not usually. There's my birth announcement in the Seattle Times--"Mr and Mrs. Paul A. Schuler have a daughter, Christine Leiren Schuler, born Sunday, April 10th, at Swedish Hospital." In the second paragraph the announcement reveals--"At the Schuler home on Evergreen Point, two brothers, Peter, seven, and Eric, five, welcome their first sister." Third paragraphs reads--"Maternal grandfather, Mr. Eilert Anderson, lives with them. Paternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. A. A. Schuler, reside in Portland, Oregon." A lot of information, I'm thinking, for just the record of one baby's birth. I wonder if this is still done--the publication of births and the details about a family's existence. There's even a button in Mom's box, round and pink with a fat-cheeked (ugly) girl baby grinning madly, the button reading--"It's a girl." On the reverse side of the button is--"Complements of SWIFT'S MEATS FOR BABIES." Lot's of commercialism going on here in the baby birthing business. When we get to the hospital anklet, I almost cry--a misshapen plastic band that has my sex, weight and doctor's name (Dr. Rice) written in blue ink. It's about the size of quarter. I don't remember being this small, this helpless. So in need of my mom.

Then we find progress reports from "Bellevue Children's Clinic" and a 'Dr. D. W. Boisseau" recording my physical achievements over a period of 3 1/2 years, how at 2 1/2 weeks, for example, I weigh 8 pounds 15 ounces (only a measly gain of 8 pounds from birth) and have a recorded height of 21 3/4 inches (have I shrunk from my 30 inches recorded at Swedish?). There's a formula written down--10 evap. 18 ou water, 1-2 sugar"--so I wonder if Mom's being told to step up the feeding. I'm to be fed "6 bottles at 4 1/2 ounces" each as well as "Gerber Rice Cereal."

"Mom," I say, "did you not breast feed?" She looks startled at my question and says--"Well I tried..and...'" "Tried what?" I ask. "Tried, you know..." But I can't get her to say what the issue was--did she not really want to breast feed, was there no milk, did I not want to latch on?

By 8 1/2 weeks I weigh 12 pounds and my condition is reported as "excellent." But on the back of the doctor's script is an admonition to make sure I have "no eggs, oranges, tomatoes or chocolate." When I ask Mom why, she can't remember. I wonder...what can be wrong with these food....was I allergic, because I don't remember having food allergies as a child?

Then we find a dozen cards or so, some of them congratulation cards for my birth, some of them birthday cards for my first and second year birthday celebrations. "For a very nice Girl," one predictably reads. Or "Hear that your new baby Has turned out to be a Daughter--Bet you're mighty pleased and proud And happy that you've got'er!" I've forgotten how ridiculous traditional greeting cards can be--"poetry" at its finest. There's even a card from the Sigma Kappa Alumni Association (my mom's sorority at the UW)--'The members of the Seattle Alumnae Association of Sigma Kappa extend best wishes you you on the birth of your daughter. We hope she too will someday wear this ribbon and will come to know and enjoy Sigma Kappa as we have." Dream On, I'm thinking--I tried that sorority route and didn't find it to my liking. I was not a sorority girl at heart.

Our favorite card, though, is one that reads--"A New Little 'Crooner' 'pon my soul." When you turn the card over, it finishes with--"Now you'll really ROCK 'N ROLL Congratulations." When I read this one out loud, Mulu and I burst into laughter, the kind of combustible sound that explodes from a rifle, leaving a patter of shot to fall to the ground. The image on the front flap is as tacky as it gets--a diapered baby strumming a ukulele. Inside are a husband and wife, presumably, kicking up their heels. Mom reaches for the card, wanting to understand where the humor lies. With the help of her reading glasses, she is able to see what amuses Mulu and me. Finally she laughs along too. We need this laughter, amidst the grimness of diapers, doctors, declining mental functioning.

At the bottom of the box are petals from a shriveled red rose, and a small (dirty) white pom pom ball. There's even a supply of pink four cent stamps, what Mom used to mail my birth announcements.

And there's something else there too, resting on the bottom of Mom's "Topper Shop" box--a small, hand penciled envelope declaring "Peter to Cristine." There are five Christmas stamps stuck to the top fold of the envelope with the date 1960. The white envelope itself has yellowed, almost to the color of noodles before they are boiled. When my fingers close around the envelope's edges, I can hardly breathe. In 1960, my brother would have been seven. He was still beautiful, dutiful, not yet missing. I sit there, in Mom's room at the Mirabella, with Peter's letter between my fingers. I sit for seconds, maybe almost a minute. Mom and Mulu haven't noticed, as they are still busily looking at the ukulele greeting card. I sit and feel my skin goose pimple, shrink to chicken-skin, as Mom would call this. There's a shudder of cold that starts at my toes and moves up slowly towards my brain--I could swear there's an ice flue in my veins, something steadily turning my body numb, senseless.

When I gather the courage to open the flap, I find there' s a half-sheet of ruled paper--off white with straight green lines and holes pre-punched like we had in grade school. Lettered in pencil is the greeting "Dear Cristine" (misspelling of my name, but never mind) followed by: "I love you. I am proud to have a nice sister like you." He signs his letter, "Love Peter."

My tears are what get Mulu and Mom's attention, that and the way my body shakes in my chair. I can't stop weeping, shivering. And I can't explain why. When I read Peter's greeting out loud, Mom cries right along with me. At least we are not alone in this.

When I get home, all I want are my cats. To love and be loved. I check my text messages, something I'd forgotten to do earlier. There's two from Lora, my girlfriend-turned-detective--"Call me," she texts, "and be sitting down." Her second message just has three words-- "I found him."

My brother is no longer missing.

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

three musketeers

When Beverly, Mom's PT, walks through the door, she asks Mom in a cheerful, bouncy voice--"How are you today?" I am always intrigued by questions such as these, confused at times how they should be answered. What is it the questioner wants to know? The truth or some sugared version of the "truth"? When confronted with inquires such as these, Mom often says intriguing, amazing things--bits of truth that escape her lips, despite the dementia. So, I listen carefully for Mom's answer, not wanting to miss a revelation.

"I'm here," Mom says, with no smile whatsoever. Beverly and I both laugh--we see the bones of fact bared within Mom's brief reply. She is still here and, at this point, this is probably all she expects. Mom's reality talk sinks in, makes me ponder my own expectations, what I think I will encounter when I walk through her door. I can remember from one day to the next how Mom was, what she said, what she did--I keep notes of this, in fact, just to make sure I can remember, Mom, on the other hand, feels no such compulsion to plot her own story, find continuity from one day to the next. It's me, her daughter, who can't help but keep track of the threads that run through Mom's life--her ups and downs playing pick-up with brightly colored cones, the number of minutes she can balance at the side of her bed, the meals she eats or decides not to, the bowl movements she has or doesn't, the temperatures and aches and muscle spasms she takes Tylenol for, the clarity or confusion in her thinking, her speech. All of these things get charted by her caregiver, Lorna, and by me in my note taking. We are all watching, waiting, worrying. And Mom, she is just being. Existing. Her view of the world shifts by necessity from one day to the next, without expectation. When she wakes up, the only think she looks for is Lorna. Beyond this, everything is a mystery or, perhaps more accurately, a clean slate.

Today is not a good day for Mom. The minute I come through the door, she asks me where she is. I say "Seattle, Mom, you know this, right?" Instead of accepting my rescue, she continues to register her disbelief--"Hmm...I really didn't know this." I continue with--"You're at the Mirabella, right?" And she says--"No...no...I don't think so....they sold this." While I'm not sure what "this" is, I continue with the assumption that Mom is talking about the Mirabella and I assure her that the building she is in was just opened in the last year and that no one is selling anything. I wonder, however, at where she's gotten this information from and why it resonates with her.Mom's question confirms for me what I've been wondering all along--how aware is Mom of her surroundings? Several days ago, she turns to me and says--"what is that noise out there....voices" and I think--holy cow, Mom is hallucinating voices now? "What voices?" I ask her. "You know," she says, "that...that...talking." As she says this, Mom points towards the partially-cracked door. "Mom," I answer her, "no one's talking her, it's just Lorna and me in your room." She says--"No...no...hear that." And as Lorna and I listen again, we realize she's talking about the commotion in the hallway, the low clatter of voices and dinner trays and medical appliances on wheels that accompanies a facility such as this--doctors and nurse's aids and activity coordinators and food science managers and therapists all taking stock of their patients and determining their next course of action, their next agenda item. "Mom," I say, "it's just the nurse's aids talking outside in the hall." "Oh," she says. "Oh....I forgot." "Forgot what Mom?" I ask her. " "Thought I was...you know...there." "Where Mom?" "Home," she says after a pause, a word she utters with a bit of exasperation, like how could I be so dense as not to know she's home or thinks she's home. We are silent then, as I take in her answer. Her words confirm for me what I have suspected--that Mom is not exactly aware that she is not "home." Course where "home" is may not be entirely clear. Lately, I've begun to wonder whether anywhere can be home for her, as she continues to miss her old residence in Medina--the one the State purchased from her in a condemnation during this last year. She calls our now-demolished family homestead in Medina "home home," meaning her real home. Her other more recent purchase--the "home" where daughter-in-law and family reside in Clyde Hill--is "Terry's home" or "your home." Not Mom's home.

Despite our rocky start, I'm determined Mom and I will have a good time, as today is the day that thirty to forty second and third graders from Spruce Street School are coming to the Medical Center at the Mirabella to "trick or treat." Mom and I have been planning for this--yesterday I asked her--"What should we be?" And she says--"the three...you know...the three..." "Oh you mean the three musketeers?" I ask her. "Yes...yes" she says, nodding vigorously, or as vigorously as she can considering her limited neck mobility. Then ensues a complicated conversation (full of many irretrievable words and pauses) where Mom tries to communicate what we three should wear--Lorna, Mom and me. I think about red handkerchiefs, you know the ones like what cowboys wore in the movies. Then I think--I don't have any of these--got rid of them when my horse-owning days were over back in the 80s and early 90s. And where would I get something as mundane as red handkerchiefs? Nothing comes to mind. It's only later that night that I think of what to do--I'm so excited I call Mom, though I don't tell her what my brainstorm is, as I want it to be a surprise. Instead, I say over the phone--"I have it figured out Mom...our 'costumes'" "Oh" she says in a vague voice, and I can tell she hasn't remembered our earlier dilemma of how to dress for Halloween. But this doesn't matter--I just explain it to her again and then remind her that I have purchased the treats--Reece's Peanut Butter Cups and Kit-Kats. As I get off the phone, I can hardly wait for tomorrow when I can surprise Mom with my idea.

So, once we've gotten over the issues of where Mom is at the moment I get right to the point. I haul out the candy--two large plastic bags full of chocolate and sugar--the smell is almost nauseating. When I trick or treated as a child I never ate my own candy. I just liked the challenge of collecting it. My brothers got the sugar shock and the cavities, as I readily gave them my caloric hauls. Mom is suitably excited as she fingers the miniature bars as well as the suckers the Mirabella has provided. We place them in a large Tupperware bowl and leave them there for our guests. Next, I take out the plastic UW bookstore bag that stores our 'costumes'. "Close your eyes," I tell Mom. "Here it comes." The closing her eyes part is easy, as it takes work for Mom to open her lids and keep them open these days. When I reach into my bag, Mom's eyes are wide open, waiting. "Ta...Da!" I say like a magician. "Here they are." Mom laughs with glee as I pull out of my bag the orange trimmed hats we bought at the Pike Street Market, as well as a third furry winter turban I rounded up from my dresser drawer for Lorna. "The three musketeers ride again," I giggle with Mom. She gets it--the three hats and the three musketeers. Mom is supremely happy, just for this moment at least.

When the children come to our room, we're ready. We can hear their boisterous voices long before they arrive. It's a sound of bubbling good humor that is not often heard in our corridor. Their teacher supervisors send them to us in groups of two and three, so the tricking and treating goes on for some time. Mom is thrilled! While I do most of the talking, I am looking over to Mom every few minutes, making sure she's engaged, watching. I ask each one of them--"Tell me about your mask," as they each have come with a handmade mask that replicates an animal of their choice. The variety and imagination is amazing--giraffes, tigers, lions, five different renditions of cats, penguins, rattle snakes, crocodiles, panda bears....even a gecko (this last one is my favorite). No two are the same. The kids have covered their masks with construction paper, paint, feathers, pom pom balls of different sizes. We are stunned and can't help ooing and ahing over the masks as each present themselves to us. Mom is fascinated too, and she keeps moving her lips, uttering sounds like--"My...my" or "Oh...oh. "

It takes a good half an hour to greet all our guests, talk with them, offer them their treats. When we are done, Mom and I just sit there, huge smiles in our faces. We are satiated and filled with good humor.

Soon, Lisa, Mom's speech therapist, comes for her visit. Mom is eager to tell Lisa about our masked adventure. Lisa asks Mom lots of questions about the masks Mom saw and the candy the kids choose. Mom works hard to try and tell her our story, how we've spent our last thirty minutes. When she's finished with her answers, Lisa asks her--"Can you list the kinds of costumes people dress up in for Halloween?" Lisa is working on the listing game--having Mom come up with objects that are all part of the same grouping. This is something Mom has done many times before, but just not with Halloween costumes. Mom starts to answer quickly, telling Lisa about "masks" and the various animals the children replicated. Lisa says--"But what about costume in general, Dorin, what kinds of costumes do people wear for Halloween." Mom looks at her and begins again with the "masks" and the animals. It's as if she's telling Lisa for the first time. This happens once more and I realize then that Mom cannot cognitively distinguish between Lisa's questions about Halloween costumes and her recent experiences with the masks. Lisa realizes this too, and soon turns to a different task, describing objects on the table until Lisa can guess what the objects are. This goes poorly also, as Mom is calling the "things" on her table "boys" and "girls" and suggesting that Dixie cups are edible like candy. It's heartbreaking. Really more than I can hear. I busy myself with looking through Mom's cards stored in a leather box, cards collected from the last twenty to thirty years. But even this task can't completely distract me from the confusions at hand. When Lisa leaves, silence is a relief.

This is how Mom's been--moments of clarity and connection and then dry spells of heartbreaking confusion, sometimes all within the same hour. I know this is so and I know to expect this. Only knowing and expecting seems to make no difference for me. It hurts all the same. I know what I need to do--shift my perspective, just allow Mom to be who she is on any given day. I need to walk through her door each day and meander with the current, being grateful for whatever there is left of Mom, being grateful for the gift of my Mom--the fact that she and I have another day to sojourn here together in her room, in the four walls of our making.

Before I leave, I help Mom with dinner--"Red Snapper with Lemon and Yams" which again she is not interested in eating. When we get to the ice cream, she grins though, sporting her cream mustache. All memories of her earlier frustrations and confusions are wiped clean. Just before Lorna reaches to napkin her mustache away, I say--"No....wait please"--and snap a photo. This is what I want to remember about our day--to be here, present...content with the joy given.

My mother is a gift, each day the most precious gift received.

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

wonder

We go to SAM today, a planned outing. Jennifer, Lorna, Mom and me. It's one of those blustery almost-winter days. While Mom refuses to wear her hat when inside the foyer of the Mirabella, she readily consents once she feels the blast of cold we encounter once outside the automated glass doors. Larry, our driver, is ready, more than ready actually, as I arrived a few minutes late and then there was the ubiquitous taking of pictures--my insistence that these final days of Mom will go recorded, as best I can.

Mom is in good spirits today, not like the rocky start on our last adventure to the Pike Street Market. While it's just been several weeks since the market visit, it's remarkable how the season has changed--how we are bundled up in our wools rather than sporting shirt sleeves. We stall for a minute while Larry adjusts Mom's wheel chair for its rocket ride up to car deck level. Mom is use to this. She doesn't say a word. Neither do we. We are all pros here.

While Jennifer and I are kibitzing over the best route to get to 1st and University, the address of SAM, I am taking in the streets--the cars darting and honking and turning at will through the busy afternoon Seattle streets. I am thinking about all the times that Mom and I drove ourselves to downtown, making stops at F&N, Isadora's, Maggie's Shoes, even Le Panier. Always the issue of where to park and how much this parking will cost us. Should we park on the street (it's cheap, as in several dime's worth) or do we give in to luxury and park in the Diamond lots (convenient but pricey--several dollars then but presently they are twenty dollars for two hours)? Now, none of this is a worry. Larry makes the decisions about how to avoid the traffic, where to turn, where to double park for the off load of Mom's chair. It feels decadent in its convenience and yet all the time I know that the reason for our convenience is Mom, her leaving me--day by day, hour by hour. What is here of her today, will not be the same pieces of her that are here tomorrow. Deception--how the skin hides these transformations, makes it appear as if all is the same, all is well, when in fact nothing is okay about any of this.

The first thing we see when we enter SAM is a gigantic, life-size exhibit of Ford cars, six Ford Taurus automobiles to be exact, suspended from the ceiling by a sculptor who specializes in live fireworks displays. I can see the connection, as jutting out from every possible angle from these hanging cars are streaks of multi-colored lights attached to rods of varying sizes. The effect is mesmerizing. We stand and strain our necks for the longest time, words like "ooo, look at this" or "wow, can you believe this" leaving our tongues. Even Mom is intrigued, though her range of movement for her upturned head is more limited than ours. There's a pattern to these lights, and Jennifer and I try to interpret what they are meant to suggest--the yellow, green and red of stop lights blinking on and off, perhaps? But really, I just think the artist is playing with us, fascinated with the whimsy of light bursts against the sheen of white paint on Ford aluminum and steel.

After using the elevator to gain another floor, we find ourselves confronted with a spectacular "tapete"--a traditional Mexican sand painting spreading across the floor of the museum entrance. The painting has been done in honor of the upcoming Day of the Dead celebration (El Dia de los Muertos). The painting's sand is brilliant, primary--our eyes are fixed to the flourish of color. There's texture too, a nap really, in fact so much texture that we are sure the "painting" is a carpet, that is until Jennifer confirms with her hand that indeed it's sand not carpet pile there on the floor. Her touch leaves a mark, or a blemish rather, and we giggle to ourselves both in embarrassment for the blemish and in dis-ease, the concern that someone may have noticed and we might get out hands rapped with a ruler, so to speak. This is just the first of our many "transgressions," to be quickly followed by an admonition by the ticket taker to "check" my water bottle at the front desk--apparently water bottles are not allowed. Instead, Jennifer just stuffs my bottle inside her purse; purses are still allowed. Jennifer and I are now one for one. It appears to have been a long time since Jennifer and I have been to a museum. We don't know how to behave. We learn soon enough.

Up two more floors and we find ourselves in an exhibit of tribal masks--fantastic wooden carvings that seem as if they would crush the head that would wear them, with sheer weight alone. One particularly interesting exhibit is a fertility mask of huge proportions with breasts, neck, head and some sort of fantastical outcroppings on her brain--judging from the size, it must weigh at least twenty-five pounds. There's just too narrow slits to allow the wearer to see where she is going. It looks punitive rather than celebratory. I'm fascinated by the juxtaposition of tribal carvings with modern day clothing--how they have the mask-wearing mannequins outfitted with fabrics full of stripes and plaids and pok-a-dots--an eye-full of texture and color. There's even a mixed media artist from Ghana included in this exhibit, a sculptor who creates "personal coffins"--coffins that are made of wood and paint and reflect the life and interests of the deceased. I raise my camera for a (non-flash) photo of the "limo" coffin and several of the masked mannequins, before I hear--"Miss, miss, put that camera away now." Apparently no photos are allowed. Verboten! Jennifer and I speculate that it must be an issue of marketing--keeping control of who is allowed an image of what, just in case we feel compelled to take home something of what we've seen. After all, there's a fine museum shop down two floors ready and willing to take our money, if we so chose. We don't.

Next we amble towards the direction of what we've come to see-- "Michelangelo: Public and Private." But before we get shunted down the long hallway that leads to the exhibit, we are arrested by several life-size sculptures by artist Nick Cave. What intrigues us is that his "people" are made of thrift store sweaters, fascinating creations which have twists and knots and swells and dips as Cave sews together the color coordinated wools. One figure in particular is made of sweaters and human hair, a shaggy mane of reddish-bronze hair falling in waves from the figure's neck and shoulders. The effect is stunning, I mean literally we are too stunned to speak. Cave speaks for us; he writes--"I believe that the familiar must move towards the fantastic." And indeed, Cave has taken the ordinary, the familiar, the discarded and created something that completely captures our fancy. Wonder is what I'd call this.

There's even a Stephen Greenblatt quote, inserted into this portion of Cave's exhibit--taken from one of my favorite books of his, "Marvelous Possessions." Greenblatt writes--The expression of wonder stands for all that cannot be understood, that can scarcely be believed. It calls attention to the problem of credibility and at the same time insists upon the undeniability, the exigency of experience." The quote is so arresting, that I decide to write it down and have borrowed a pen from Jennifer to do so. I'm scribbling quickly, not wanting to keep the others waiting and, as I do ,I hear--"Miss, miss, no pens allowed." A short stubby (and dull) "library" pencil is then presented to me, as the museum employee watches me put the pen safely away in the pocket of my coat--no longer a dangerous weapon, apparently, when cloaked from sight. There's to be no airport-style confiscation. I'm relieved. Our fourth transgression is now over and done with.

Through all of these fantastical displays--the colored sand, the tribal masks, the sweatered figures--Mom is quiet, but she appears to be looking, attending. We talk with Mom, touch her sleeve, bend down and engage her at eye level--we are determined that Mom enjoy this outing as her outing--at her pace and for her purposes. Every now and then Jennifer and I check to see if she is engaged, if she is awake. At one point Mom appears to be sleeping and Jennifer riles her with--"Rumor has it that you, Dorin, are notorious for falling asleep at plays, ballets, movies." Mom laughs then--a loud injudicious laugh that I am almost sure will get us busted for "too much noise." There's glee in that laugh and I am glad to hear it--the first genuine emotion I have seen from her since we entered the museum. Lorna offers Mom gum--something to help keep her alert--and just as Mom is opening her mouth like a baby bird, taking the gum from mother Lorna's fingers, we hear--"No gum allowed, sorry." Now we all laugh--it's just too funny, our errant ways. The museum representative looks sharply at our combustible noise but says nothing more. We are all relieved.

Once we get inside the exhibit, Mom seems entranced. I stop at each of the placards, explain what they mean. While Mom can still read, comprehension is an issue. I'm a tour guide, a magician, conjuring for Mom the past trips she and I took--how we made our migrations to the mecca of art--Florence, Rome, Sienna, Pisa--to see the work of Michelangelo and others. I was an art history major at the time, so I took on our travels as an assignment: we were determined to see everything! I made lists from my art history textbooks, from slides I'd seen in class. This was a serious matter, something we both believed. As we stare at the full-size portrait of Michelangelo, done contemporary with many of the drawings we've been viewing, I wonder at what she's thinking. This very same painting we have seen before, at least twenty-five years ago, in Florence. And here we are now, a place I never could have imagined, anticipated--Mom in a wheelchair incapacitated through Alzheimer's and a stroke and me battling with my brother and soon to be family-less. What if I had known, could have seen this future moment, would I have done anything differently? I want to ask Mom this, but she is far away at present, her eyes staring off towards the next exhibition room. I think she's getting tired. "Where are you Mom?" I want to ask. I feel alone in the space opened now between us, despite our close proximity. We are at different places in our lives, different ages--I am coming into my own and she is letting go of what she has been. Where do we meet in this?

Just when we are deciding whether to cut the exhibit short to take in a meal at "Taste," SAM's first floor diner, we hear--"Hello Dorin" and are greeted with a delighted smile from my cousin, Mark, and his daughter, Elizabeth. Unbeknown to us, Mark and Elizabeth had gone to the Mirabella after we'd left; they'd come to visit before going to the museum. Serendipity. Mom is ecstatic! Haven't seen her engaged this much during our whole museum visit. We talk for quite some time, Mark talking about his potential move, Elizabeth talking about her current art major at the UW and her dream to move to L.A. to work in the public/community art industry. Mom's listening to every word. This is very good. All the while, Jennifer and I are looking around furtively, wondering if Mark's elbow on the glass case or our loudish talking voices will draw the attention of yet one more reprimand. It does not. We are relieved.

When Mark and Elizabeth leave to feed their parking meter (not having the luxury of Larry's door-to-door service) we take the elevator down to the first floor to be seated for "Happy Hour" at Taste. Mom's tired and we've all had enough looking. The menu at Taste is fascinating--a cheese platter with candied walnuts, fig preserves, pickled cherries, three kinds (one of them unpasteurized) of cheeses I've never heard of, and raisin-rye bread toasted. There's also a flat-bread with pork rind and sauteed onions as well as a grilled cheese sandwich with Gruyere cheese. We are enchanted and order one of each to share. While Lorna, Jennifer and I greedily eat our fill, Mom pulls her--"I'm not eating this" routine. Lorna cajoles, reminding her that she her own plate is full (so Mom can't say that she won't eat so that Lorna can eat instead). Jennifer whispers to me--"Take some of the food off her plate--maybe the amount of it sitting there is alarming." I try this, but still Mom won't eat. I know when we return to the Mirabelle for dinner Mom will say--"I already ate at the museum." But I will know that she didn't. But despite Mom's food war, we converse happily enough until it's time for Larry to pick us up at 4:30.

When we get back to Mom's room, I ditch my earlier plan to leave right away. Somehow, sitting here with Mom with such a lovely adventure just done, is soothing. I want more of Mom, more of the old Mom that laughed and went to museums and ate heartily at delicious little hole-in-the-walls. I wonder at where this has gone.

I don't have my usual bag of trick--the day's newspaper, the book of poems we are reading, the latest photos we are reviewing. I left my bag in my car, knowing at least one thing about museums--that large bags are verboten. So we just sit here together. Lorna is off in the staff kitchen rustling up her dinner. So it's just the two of us.

"You are..." Mom begins and the stops.

"I am what?" I ask her.

"You are...you know...you are...different."

"In what way?" I ask, my curiosity piqued.

"You are..." and then she points to my clothing with her left hand, making it shake with her effort.

"What am I Mom?" Now I'm really needing to know--I want to know what Mom thinks of me, how she see me, what she thinks of when she sees me.

"Hoops," she says and I wonder--what is she talking about?

She points then to my feet and I think--heels, she means heels. I feel disappointment then, thinking that all she means is that my somewhat higher heels have created a different effect. So I say--

"You mean that I'm wearing higher heels today?"

"No," she says firmly. "Not that."

We struggle like this for several minutes. Lorna comes and goes from our room. Still Mom can't say what she means. We are both frustrated. The best she can offer is--"different." So I must take what is given, and ponder this for what she might mean. It's all I have. This is happening more and more frequently--Mom's inability to get the gist of what she's saying across and my inability to decipher the nuances of her abbreviated speech. Sometimes the words just aren't there but other time the wrong words present themselves--like "hoops' instead of "heels." This frightens me, because it suggests a further decline. Gone are the weeks last month where Mom was clear thinking and nearly clear speaking. Where has she gone?

I stay for nearly two hours longer, helping Mom to eat her dinner--"Sweet and Savory Beef Stew, Fresh Potato Salad and Succotash" (not sure what this latter grain is)--talking about whatever comes into our heads. But there's no more soul searching, tongue twisting for just the right word, nothing further about "different." So I am left suspended with Mom's aborted thought--some utterance that I am sure would have been significant, would have told me something about how Mom sees herself in relation to me.

Greenblatt has it right, I think, the juxtaposition of the "undeniability, the exigency of experience" with the "wonder" of what can't be understood. Every day with Mom embodies this combination of wonder and exigency. Everyday I learn about Mom and I learn what I can never know or understand about Mom. It's a constant collision of the practical--changing Mom, turning Mom, getting Mom to therapy, getting Mom to eat--with the wonder of what might still be here for the two of us--what discoveries we might make, what reconciliations we might permit, what grace we might embrace.

Wonder and what can scarcely be believed.

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

forgotten woman

On Sunday evening, July 29th, 1945, Mom writes--"Mother has been quite ill for several months and over two weeks ago we took her to the hospital." She writes these words to my father while he's serving in the South Pacific on the U.S.S.LAWS. The letter is handwritten in Mom's even penmanship, the thing she lost control off years ago. I have heartbreaking samples of her foolscap from two, three years ago. Writing has been difficult for Mom for quite some time.

This letter is one of four letters I have from her during this time--letters to my father that were promised in whispers and tears just before Dad was inducted into the Navy on July 15, 1942. She promises that she will write "every other night" and, per her report, Dad promises to "write often." It's impossible to tell how well they followed this bargain prior to February 18, 1944 (my father's birthday, by the way), as the years 1942-1944 go unmarked, unrecorded by letters in Mom's archives. By February 1944, however, Mom is on the warpath. They aren't married, but Mom reminds Dad that they have an understanding--what she refers to as "all these dreams for the future which we've been counting on." Her letters are full of "honey" and "darling" and "Paul, dear." Obviously she loved him. Mom's report is that Dad has turned her into a "forgotten woman...the little forgotten brunette who lives in the white house on 39th" (Letter dated Feb 13, 1945). She chastises Dad resoundingly in every letter I read. In her February 13th letter, she writes that she hasn't heard from him in three months and that "you certainly can't think that our love will last under conditions like that can you?" On February 18, 1944 she pleads petulantly--"Maybe you think letters are unimportant, trivial matters but they mean an awful lot to me. I can't help thinking that if you don't take the few minutes that are necessary to write a letter to me, you really can't think of me much or care for me at all." Whatever has gone on, it's clear by early 1944 that Mom has had enough.

None of Dad's letters survive, so I can't know just often he wrote; all I have is Mom's report about scant numbers of letters written and then the silences when the letters don't come. And what I also have is the knowledge that Dad was really rather busy while Mom is complaining about the lack of letters. Dad kept a war diary, or rather a war record on paper so thin it's translucent. He's typed every entry and there are no mistakes, a feat considering the absence of PCs at the time. Painstakingly he lists out every place they went in the U.S.S. LAWS, every battle they were in, every ship that was lost, every plane that was incinerated, every "bogey" they "shot down." The detail is breathtaking. So, for example, on July 29, 1945--the day Mom is writing about her mother's illness (and also adding a jab to Dad that it's been two months since she's heard from him and hence "I just don't rate")--Dad is in his destroyer off of Okinawa and has been on picket duty for over a month. He writes of "being under attack" and of rescuing ninety men from the Callaghan, a ship which "exploded" and "went down shortly." Several weeks before, he'd been to an island where they'd had a "recreation party on the beach" but where they'd seen "dead Japs" who "smelled something terrible."'Saw what was left of a few of them," he reports.

It's hard to imagine what such experiences were like for my father, even with his diary, as there's little personal commentary. And then to juxtapose these scenes of gore, destruction and fear with Mom's scoldings about why he isn't writing. Really, they just lived in different worlds, not connected by much of anything except memory and an ephemeral future. From Mom's perspective, life was moving on, despite Dad being in the war. Mothers were getting very ill and university classes were being attended and hearts were being broken. All of these seemed "real" to my mother in a way that stinking bodies could not, even if she knew about these bodies, which she didn't.

And then there's the fact that Dad's Mom, Mona, did get letters from Dad...and Mom knew about these, as she kept in contact with both Mona and Dad's sister Lu. Why did Dad chose to write regularly to his mother but not to Mom? There was some down town, time to write a letter or two. For example, on February 18, 1944, the date of Mom's scolding, Dad is on "liberty in Honolulu." He types that he "was somewhat disappointed" but that he "saw many nice looking natives, though." What does this mean--"nice natives"? A euphemism for nice looking women?

Over the course of the four letters I have from Mom, her scoldings turn into warnings and I can't help but wonder what Dad thought of these no-longer-veiled threats. Mom writes on February 13, 1945 that "Honestly Paul, I think the situation is far more serious than you think it is...you certainly can't think that our love will last under conditions like that can you?" And then--"I'm pleading with you to write for I know what will happen if you don't start writing and writing often." What can she mean? Is she going to dump my father for someone else, despite their "dreams for the future"? Perhaps this is when she's dating "Bob," the serviceman from Minnesota who attends the UW during part of the war. There's no evidence of him in her letters or her cards she's saved....there's just the dance cards she kept from her sorority functions where "Bob" appears frequently and then disappears entirely. Bob is Mom's second marriage proposal. My father has yet to propose to her; this doesn't happen until 1948. Mom's report of this time is--"We didn't write much...you know...in the war" suggesting that somehow Uncle Sam's monitoring of the mail is responsible for their lack of correspondence. But, as it turns out, Mom does write, and so does Dad...and her letters are everything but impersonal. They are full of love and reproach and perhaps unreasonable expectation. They are the words of a lover for her beloved. This is the story Mom has yet to tell me, the words that probably won't ever slip free from between her lips and teeth, bound as they are to her shame. Something in Mom feels utter shame in regards to Dad's courting of her--first Tommy and then Bob, the two men who proposed but who were refused. Mom held out for Dad--that should mean something, despite the fact that she seems to have been a tease, seems to have dated more than one man at a time. Shame is how she sees it. Not something that can be uttered out loud. Not fit for public consumption.

But of all her words in the war letters, what keeps my attention is what Mom says about her mom, just days before what turns out to be Berentina's death in early August of 1945. Mom writes: "Our doctor," the infamous quack Mom resents even to this day, "still does not know exactly what is wrong, but they have taken a number of laboratory tests, from which we should have results soon." Mom then reveals her worry--"Mother is very sick and each day is a little worse." While she doesn't say this in the letter, Mom tells me often how regretful she is about how little time she spent there with her mother. And yet, I wonder if it's entirely the quantity and perhaps more about the quality, as Mom reveals that "They have her drugged up quite a lot. I spent the entire day with her, doing a number of things to make her feel a little better. She isn't aware of very much because of the narcotics they giver her." So during what time she did spend with her mother during those hospital weeks, she did not really have access to her mother. Berentina was a stranger, someone who looked like her mother but whose essential self was already someplace else.

Mom is confronting death, like my father, only their geographies are different. Dad is fighting for survival while surveying "dead Japs" who "smell something terrible." Mom is watching her own life collapse as her mother drifts into death: "If she has what the doctor thinks she has there is nothing they can do for her." Mom is inconsolable and writes to my father that "Believe me, it's awful hard to sit with her hours and hours watching her suffer...She's lost a great deal of weight and doesn't have interest in anything." Mom almost chastises Dad that "you'll never be able to know just how discouraged we have all been. Nothing seems very important any more." The irony here is poignant--my mother watching her mother die, alone without my father, and my father wondering if he is going die, amidst the carnage of the war in the Pacific.

Mom current bitterness over Berentina's death perhaps stems from what Mom saw (and still sees) as the injustice of her mother's death. She writes--"Mother doesn't deserve being so sick, cause she's always doing something for someone else." But what mother does deserve to die and what daughter could wish to be motherless?

My mother's words haunt me, particularly when she writes that "It's awful hard to sit with her hour after hour watching her suffer as she does." It occurs to me that this is something Mom and I share, bearing witness to our mother's passing. There is nothing easy about this, nothing "natural" despite how people quip about death being part of life. Platitudes. Watching your mother leave you brain cell by brain cell is gruesome, at best. And now I know that Mom did this too, watched her own mother leave through a haze of morphine, a drug stealing away Berentina's thinking self before her body was ready to be gone. Berenetina's consciousness was long gone before her body passed in early August of 1945. There is grief in this, I know.

Two images--A young nineteen-or-twenty-year-old Mom anxiously watching the postman approach her white Craftsman-style house on 39th street in West Seattle, willing a letter from my father. She writes with a bit of bitter humor on February 12, 1945--"Our mailman isn't being worked hard enough." Instead, she "come[s] home from school day after day expecting to find a letter" only to be disappointed. And then this--A twenty-one year old Mom waiting for her mother to die amidst the clatter of summer school, sorority life, a lover (my father) who rarely writes. Before her is her mother but she's hardly recognizable--emaciated, drugged, barely breathing with the fluid in her lungs. I wonder at how she found her way through, how Mom willed a new life for herself, post-war, post-dead-mother. My father was never a sure thing for my mother. Not then, and not later, after they married. He left her too--suddenly in 1979 and again with no explanation. My mother was the one left standing.

A woman who is everything but forgotten.

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

run out of words

I've run out of words or rather words have run out of me. I have nothing positive or optimistic to say, no good report to make--not about my family nor my mom and certainly not myself. No wisdom to impart, no poignancy to reveal. Instead of words there's silence, the kind that comes after death. I remember when Dad died, how the quiet in our house felt empty for the first time, like it didn't matter how much I shouted or screamed or wept because none of these sounds could add up to anything but more silence. A deafness of sorts, only the rest of the world clattered on--cars that needed gas, cable bills that needed payment, shoes that needed new soles. It was just me who was mute, motionless.

And inside this soundless sound is the worst kind of lonely. How I feel right now--wordless and lonely. Brotherless. Fatherless. Very soon to be motherless. How my oldest brother Peter has existed for a very long time.

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

welcome to your new home

When I get to the Mirabella today I see through new eyes the freshly lacquered trim, the carefully chosen fabrics. As I walk Mom back from OT, I point out to her the wood (not vinyl) ten inch baseboards--extravagantly lovely--and the subtle grained carpet that lies under our feet instead of the usual institutional linoleum one finds in a skilled nursing facility. I stop and maneuver her chair to examine the pumpkin upholstery (a scrumptious deep umber brocade) that covers the occasional chairs in the game room. I say to her--"This is something I would have chosen, Mom"--referring to the quality of taste used in selecting the furnishings for her new "home." And I think to myself--who am I trying to convince--Mom or me? The answer's not clear.

This is not a good day for Mom--she seems to have acquired a cold, a development which causes me great alarm. Any kind of respiratory issues at this point in my mom's life are serious. When I arrive, she has a fever of 99.8; a dose of Tylenol seems to bring this down just a bit. Her voice remains rough and sore, however, and her cough persists. Becky, her PT, refers to Mom's vocalizations as her "Betty Davis voice" seeing how it's several octaves lower than Mom's normal voice. She sounds somber and more ponderous, like a Shakespearean rendition of my mom. We laugh at this, Mom getting a kick out of thinking of herself as glamorous Betty.

During OT Mom is less than focused, so much so Becky and I try to rearrange her wheelchair at the table so that she is not within eye shot of the other five residents who are receiving therapy in this same room at the same time. The noise level is deafening--even I have a difficult time focusing on Mom's progress rather than on what the other residents are doing with their balls and bicycles and walkers.

Becky tries a new task out on Mom today--scooping beans out of one bowl and sliding this scoop of beans into another bowl. For the first two times, Mom seems to understand the task and moves the measuring cup with relative ease from one bowl to the other. On her third attempt, however, Mom gets stymied, cannot seem to move her left hand (with the measuring cup) out of the bowl it is mired in. We sit there for five minutes, watching Mom's hand teeter back and forth on the brink of the bowl. Becky says encouraging things like--"Okay, now you can carry the scoop over here Dorin," trying to guide Mom's hand from the first bowl to the second. Instead, Mom's hand remains fixed at the edge of the first bowl. Frozen. Full of tone. "Are your eyes open, Mom?" I ask her, because I can't tell from where I am sitting whether she's actually looking at her left hand or not; sometimes Mom's eyes are just open a fraction, just enough to let a splinter of light in but not enough to actually see what she's doing. As Becky explains, looking at her task is crucial for Mom as it helps to make up for the fact that (due to her Alzheimer's) she has little understanding of where her limbs are spatially, meaning that she may not be aware that her left hand is resting on the side of the plastic bowl, unless she's actually looking at that hand. Mom's eyes flicker open just a fraction as I hear her say with a bit of a snap--"Yes, yes....I'm looking" when in fact she wasn't. All the while I'm wondering--how will Becky be writing about this later: "Patient unable to complete task" or "Spatial sensation significantly impaired for patent's left hand." Whatever it is, it can't be good.

When we get back to Mom's room, we are both hopelessly tired. Mom opts for the bed, lying inert, while I slump in her occasional chair. We are both beyond conversation. I ask her at one point--"What are you thinking Mom?" She says--"I don't know." And I wonder to myself--what must this be like to not know what's going through your own head?

I can't seem to muster the energy to read the newspaper to Mom (I have two stored up from earlier this week) nor can I think of a question to ask or a conversation to start. Not even the flat screen TV is on. In short, I don't have the energy to be positive and cheery nor serious and attentive. It's an accumulative thing, this exhaustion of mine--46 days of frantic worry about Mom, of rush hour driving to see Mom, of care-taking Mom's changing medical issues have taken their toll. All I can do is just be.

And it occurs to me then that this is what life must be like for Mom: having only the presence of mind to exist in this one particular moment. No energy to wonder about why this is so or what's to come next. Nothing more. Just be.

After checking with Mom's nurse, Ann, to make sure Mom's gets her next dose of Tylenol after I leave, I make my way down the wide freeway corridors of the Mirabella, Mom's new "home." There's panic in my gut, the kind that churns one's intestines till nothing but a long bout on a commode can rectify. I've begun to clench my jaw, a leftover of TMJ after an auto accident back in 1992. It's not really a jaw clenching but rather a subconscious tightening of all the small muscles in my neck and throat. I can't feel myself clenching, but I can feel the muscles painfully taunt, so taunt in fact that soon these pulled tissues will start to alter my voice, like Mom's. For several years post accident, my voice came out low and gravelly--a Betty Davis voice--and sometimes nothing came out at all.

I'm being warned, I know. Pay attention, my body scolds me, or maybe it's more of a scream. Something loud enough to get my attention. I believe in this, you see--that my body speaks, has a timber of its own, an inaudible symphony of sound only I can hear. Perhaps it's an issue of recognition--choosing to hear or not. No one likes to be warned, to be told--continue on this course and there will be consequences to bear. Sometimes we listen. Sometimes we don't.

Sometimes all we can do is just be.

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

someone else's mother

A decision is reached today--what will happen to Mom once Medicare will no longer fund her rehabilitation. It's far less acrimonious than I'd imagined, as everyone at the table seems in agreement that the only medically feasible alternative is for Mom to remain in skilled nursing--her medical oversight issue are too great, not to mention that she continues to be a two person assist, meaning that it takes two people for bed mobility and for transfers from bed to chair to commode and back again. Eric and I listen as Mercedes (Director of Nursing) discusses Mom's medical needs--while Mom has stabilized she still needs constant monitoring for her ongoing neurogenic bladder and UTIs. Her doctor, Dr. Kuong, discusses the reality that Mom's internal organs will continue to decline, an issue that will produce further medical interventions. Lisa Mayfield, Mom's care manager, talks about the difficulties of getting proper medical oversight at home. Jennifer, Mom's friend and OT, chimes in with the fact that Mom's cognitive abilities typically go downhill as soon as she returns home--she needs the psychosocial stimulation of being in a setting such as the Mirabella. Even Ellen, the manager of Mom's 24/7 caregivers (the person Terry designated to talk in her place as Terry is too busy to attend) seems convinced. We talk for two hours. A decision is reached. We leave.

Once I get to my car I drive up Denny and then swing onto Broadway before turning onto 12th and eventually onto campus. I sit there in the parking lot for fifty minutes. Not talking on the phone, not listening to music, not grading papers. My driver's window's open and while the yellow halo of the elm tree just beyond my windshield is arresting, I really don't even see it. I just sit, trying to let this knowledge come to me--that Mom will not be going home, that Mom is now a permanent resident of skilled nursing. But it doesn't come--this acceptance--it just sits there instead on the perimeters of my skin, festering ugly and contagious, a cankerous sore I want to cut out from my skin, amputate, because it's so far from the truth I need to hear. It doesn't matter that I was expecting this or even that I think this is "best." No, it's the fact that it is horrific, unimaginable.

This cannot be my mother, I cannot be this woman's daughter.

When I arrive at Mom's room at the Mirabella (it's after class--late in the day) I see a woman in loud blue plaid pants, clam digger length and loose with an elastic band--something Lorna kindly picked up for Mom at the recent JC Penney's twelve hour sale. I'm thinking, these pants have got to be as far as possible from Mom's E. Fisher black cigarette pants and her Baby & Co. wrap sweater. On the bed are five cotton "tops" Lorna has picked up for Mom--fuchsia, cobalt and emerald green--not colors Mom has ever worn before nor even displayed in her house; they are not her palate. Mom is a black-and-white kind of dresser, with an occasional contrasting color. Very chic, very Channel. Blue plaid beach pants are about as far as she can get from her own personal style. When Lorna shows these tops to me, I nod "yes" and mutter things like--"perfect," "groovy" and "lovely"--trying to cover my tracks, erase my irrational dislike of Mom's new "style." All the while, I keep looking at Mom, trying to focus my gaze, trying to decide if I recognize her or not, underneath the neon plaid of her pants. For $2.67 a shirt and $6.32 for each of the pants its hard to object to Lorna's value-driven shopping choices.

This cannot be my mother, I cannot be this woman's daughter.

When Lisa comes to Mom's room for speech therapy, I turn away from Mom, close my eyes to just a squint, and listen to what Mom says, how she converses with Lisa. Lisa's coaxing her into supplying descriptive sentences. She asks, "Tell me about the objects I name for you. I'll say the object Dorin and you can give me three attributes for each."

Mom says--"okay," but soon it's clear she hasn't quite processed Lisa's request. "Shoe" Lisa says, a statement that curiously triggers a long, confusing story from Mom about seeing an old movie, one that Mom can't name until I remind her of the title--I guess correctly because Mom supplies one of the actress's names in the movie--Sonja Henie. But what does "Sun Valley Serenade" have to do with "shoes"? Mom struggles with this, rambling into extravagant sentences that make no sense to either Lisa or myself. "Two black shoes" she says, and then finishes with--"I can't do it...the name...two of them. I realize then that Mom is referring to one of the more dubious aspects of the 1937 film--how it reflects the racist ideas of the time, that a young black man's place in life is to tap dance to Chattanooga Choo-Choo. Mom's quest to explain the movie to Lisa goes on and on, and the longer she talks the more worried I get. "Let's go," she says, "let's get going." "Where do you want to go Mom" I ask her" "To see the movie...have you seen it," she asks Lisa. I silently will Mom to slow down and think more clearly and deliberately about what she's saying. Mom's talking nonsense and I don't want Lisa to hear this--I want Lisa's reports to be positive, encouraging. I just do. Mom's babbling lips are not my mother's, not the woman I've been visiting for the past five weeks.

She's someone else's mother.

Not even a visit from the Bread Queen shortly after Lisa leaves can restore Mom to herself, to me. We stuff fat, still-warm slices of Ciambatta bread into our mouths and giggle at how full we are getting but she is still not my Mom. "I want to make it...tell me...there's time for this today...let's get started'" she mutters to Hanna, suggesting something that will be never possible--Mom having the reasoning capacities and the physical dexterity to make a loaf of handmade bread.

Who are you Mom? Tell me please because I'm certain I can't stand it, can't stand what it will take to watch you lose yourself even further, become yet another woman who is not my mother.

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

baking pies

I've been waiting all day for the call backs--from the Vineyard Church, from the Dixons, but apparently they are uninterested in helping me find my brother. I consider this appalling, seeing how I laid myself bare, explaining that "our mother is dying." Yes, I actually spoke these words to the recordings--their intimacy felt strange on my tongue, both the inclusiveness of the "our" (how many years has it been since I have thought of my brother Peter and I as a "we") and the reality of Mom in conjunction with death. Both thoughts are sobering.

I bring Mom a leaf bouquet--red and gold remnants from my morning run. Sumac, maple, birch, ornamental cherry. As I collect them, their branches begin to feel awkward in my left hand, weigh me down, soon I am going at half my usual pace. All in the name of fall color. When Mom sees the leaves, she brightens up--her face miraculously transforms from a flaccid stupor to engagement within two seconds. I wish I had a magical leaf wand for every day.

Just when we get done admiring the leaf colors, Becky (Mom's OT) walks in with a gift in her hand, something she helped her seniors make during a workshop today: a petite pumpkin that is stabbed with six toothpicks full of basil, mozzarella and tomato. Mom is charmed. When I pop one of these kabobs into her mouth, she grins, letting the mozzarella slip to the front of her teeth exposing a half moon of white cheese between her lips. Mulu and I laugh, so hard in fact that I can barely keep my camera still as I photograph Mom's cheesy grin. The effect is hilarious! Soon after, dinner comes, one of Mom's favorite--"Roasted Chicken with Olives, Sauteed Zucchini and Baked Potato." Mom has no excuse to avoid eating and she does eat, every last bite. It's miraculous!

For our mutual entertainment, I read aloud to Mom from the Ladies Home Journal for November (something my sister-in-law brought)--an anachronism I didn't even know still existed. Near the end of the issue is a spread about pies, delicious decadent pies. I read Mom the recipe for "Pear Frangipane Crostata" which sounds divine to us--Mom and I love almond paste....anything with almond paste in it, or almond flavoring for that matter, is a "yes." This particular recipe is intriguing--you make the "pie" on a baking sheet rather than in a pie pan. Pears sit on top of an almond paste creme that's been spread over a circle of pie dough. Mom talks about how she and I can make this...about how we will use a blender for the filling because Mom doesn't have a food processor and how we will cut the almond paste into small bits, to aid with getting the ingredients to congeal. We'll have to watch the oven though, she reminds me, as it cooks food irregularly, often burns one side or the other. The level of detail she provides is stunning! But then I realize she's talking about her old kitchen, the one at her Medina house--what she calls her "home home." My heart aches for her, for the "home home" she had to leave behind, for the pies we will no longer bake together. I feel sad enough to weep.

"Your Mom made pie, didn't she?" I ask Mom, to divert my tears.

"Oh yes," she says, smiling. "Mom made lots of pie."

"What kind, Mom?"

"Oh every kind," Mom answers but then doesn't give me any particulars, so I decide to prompt her.

"Cherry? Banana Cream? Pumpkin?"

"Oh yes," she says again.

"What about berry?" I ask her, and it's here where she takes off, listing off a gazillion pies--blackberry, blueberry, raspberry, strawberry...even gooseberry, though she admits that she can't remember what gooseberries look like.

"What about prune pie?" I ask her, remembering how Mom would sit in the Italian prune tree in her backyard eating green prunes until the fruit was ripe enough to pick for pie--she just couldn't wait.

I ask her, "What does prune pie taste like?" not being able to imagine the texture of cooked prunes inside a pie crust.

Instead of answering, she wanders into nonsense at this point, something about "we have to do a bit of..." and "these things are over there..." Mom's "crazy talk" continues as Heidi "the pill lady" comes in to give Mom her pills. The antibiotic for her UTI is ground into a white paste--it looks particularly uninviting. Mom makes a face as three painfully bitter spoonfuls are slung down her throat between mouth fulls of applesauce. I marvel at Mom's patience--how she must endure many such assaults to her body's integrity every day, as people make decisions for her about what she will eat, how much she will eat, what medications she will take, when her diaper will be changed, what time she will have therapy. All important events, crucial to her health, but they happen on a timeline that Mom has no control over. What must this be like? I get annoyed when even the smallest thing flutters out of my control--like horrendous traffic on I-5, for example, causing me to rearrange my arrival time to the Mirabella by a half and hour.

After Heidi leaves, I pick up our pie talk, asking where Berentina got fruit for the pies, knowing there wasn't much money. Mom says--"Japanese farmers" and I think, but how can that be, they were mercilessly interned during the war and their farm land in the Kent and Puyallup valley confiscated? And then I remember--Berentina stopped making pies in 1945, the year she died--this would be the end of Mom's pie memories.

"What happened to the recipes?" I ask her, curious about where all that cooking wisdom has gone as I have none of these recipes, only ones from the old country for things like Krume Kake and Berliner.

Instead of an answer, however, Mom bursts into tears, wailing--"There are so many things I didn't do...can't stand it...terrible...just terrible." As I rub her hand and periodically wipe tears from her eyes with a corner of her sheet, I'm thinking, what things can she mean? And then it comes to me--she's talking about the suddenness of Berentina's death--how one minute she's rolling our pie dough onto her Formica counter in West Seattle and the next she's drowning in her own lungs inside a Seattle hospital. During this time Mom is a busy college girl, going to summer school, working her marketing internship. No time to learn Berentina's pastry secrets, no time to collect her recipes. Just gone. Mom is inconsolable, continuing to wail about that--"bad bad man"--referring to the doctor who did not warn them of Berentina's eminent death. And I regret bringing up the pie baking, not imagining the grief it would lead to.

"Is it like Dad?" I say to her then, thinking of something to calm her, some experience I can share that will make her grief feel less intense. "Like how he died" I finish, "so suddenly...and there was no time to say goodbye?"

She nods her head "yes" but then launches into another tirade of tears, this time talking about what a "good man" Dad was, and I'm thinking--oh how interesting, as I've never heard Mom talk about her husband in this way. Never.

But soon I realize she's talking about her Dad, Deda, and not my father. This is something that happens often--the strange juxtapositions Mom makes in her speech, her thinking, leaping from one topic to another seemingly unrelated one--from my father Paul to her father Deda. Synapses firing at incongruous moments. Similarly, she's begun to substitute words, saying "picnic" instead of "pill," for example, or "letter" instead of "leaf." Peculiar "synonyms" that suggest her Alzheimer's is still alive and well. The world scrambled according to Mom.

"I should go to bed," Mom says unexpectedly, an acknowledgment that she's tired and beyond her coping limits. I'm relieved, as I don't know what to do with her, how to ease her grief. Her weeping makes me anxious. As I gather my things, I realize I have yet to tell her about my difficulties in finding her son. I consider telling her now but decide to wait--maybe I can solve this mystery, maybe Mom will not need to be worried by the tribulations of my hunt. Maybe a happy ending is still possible?

But I don't believe in happy endings. It's only Mom who insists they're still real.

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