home: part three

I'm trying to remember which modernist poet wrote --"Things Fall Apart." It's been haunting me for days, both the name and why I can't remember it. I want to reread these lines, see if my memory's clear at least about what the poem concerns. In a recent Denver Quarterly, I find a different poem, "'future in the past'" by Kate Greenstreet, and read this to Mom instead. The opening lines are a show stopper: "Breaking things/because I couldn't hold onto them." As I'm reading, I'm thinking about Greenstreet's choice of words here--"couldn't" as opposed to "wouldn't." I think to myself--how many things have I let go, because I wouldn't hold on? When I get to the end of the poem, the last two sentences are magnificent. Greenstreet writes--"People often ask me why my photographs are torn/The purpose would be/to learn. To represent life." While I know Mom's heard me, I can tell she's not following these last lines--I'm not surprised, as poetry requires the kinds of abstract synapse firings Mom can no longer manage. I decide to explain and as I do I feel like the teacher I am, helping students to struggle through stanzas of material they are sure they have no interest in understanding--"So Mom," I begin, "the writer is trying to explain that life is "torn," that she sees it this way, and that looking at these breaks, these torn remnants, helps her to learn." I look up from the text and see that I still have not connected with Mom's cranium. I try again--"She's a photographer, Mom, and she's telling us why she's torn her images (though I am not at all certain Greenstreet means literally "torn"--this could be a metaphor for seeing life broken, but I'm not going to get into this with Mom). With this second explanation, Mom's eyes light with recognition. "Pieces", she says. "Yes, pieces," I reply, relieved that at last we have a meeting of the minds.

Looking at life as "pieces" is something I have always done, more so the older I get. Life does seem "torn" to me--partial and damaged--whereas for my mom it has seemed entirely otherwise: whole and as intended. Her dignity depended on this. What Mom does with the disparity between what she thinks and what she sees (or experiences) is not something I've been privy to knowing. This is part of Mom's secret self, the closely guarded self that is not open for inspection.

Of late, however, Mom seems otherwise--more transparent. She's changing, I'm sure of it. Each day I arrive at Mirabella I wonder what "pieces" I will see of my mom. Her usual Pollyanna view of life is shrinking, perhaps in the face of illness, dying. Mom actually cries now, quite a bit--something she has almost never done, not even when my father died. And she admits her pain, so much so that sometimes I wonder just how much pain she really is having. Truly, does she have a concept of "real" pain if all it takes is two tablets of Tylenol--not oxycodone, not morphine--to relieve what ails her? My mother's pain gets her crying and once crying she's hard to stop. What I've decided is this: Mom's pain is compensatory. She's crying for all the years that she didn't...she's feeling pain for all the years she could never see or admit her brokenness. She's got a lot of catching up to do, a lot of compensation. There's an urgency to her quest. Life is "pieces" whether we choose to see this or not.

When I get to Mirabella this afternoon, it's later than I usually arrive. I spent the morning trying to "get things done"--attack those projects that keep slipping out of reach. The one I worked on today is getting more of my short stories out the door to literary magazines. It takes time to draft the query letters and time to research which journals to send them to. I spend hours working on this to finally emerge with five letters, five stories to release into the world of letters. All the while, I'm thinking that I should be grading papers instead--but there's still time, several more days before these papers need to be returned. Nonetheless, my guilt remains strong.

Once I get to Mom's room, I can see that she's had a long day too--she's laying in bed and her body is crimped to the right, head nearly resting on her bed rail. Not even my bouquet of fall color can rally her. I get a report about PT--that Mom was able to "stand," with full leg braces and her arms resting on the parallel bars and her body fully supported by a gait-belt, for about 20 seconds--better than the two seconds from several days ago. Mom has a long ways to go. When I sit down on the side of her bed, Mom is eager to tell me something, but her words are garbled--it takes work to decipher what she's trying to say.

"Chris was here," she says to me. Lately, Mom's been calling Terry "Chris," not to her face but when referencing my sister-in-law in her absence. I find the substitution alarming, as there's nothing about my sister-in-law that I want Mom to confuse with myself.

"We did...we did...all of it...no, you just need to see....go home and see."

Go home and see what," I ask Mom, ignoring her confusion of where "home" might be. My mind is working overtime, trying to imagine what Terry did with Mom. Did she look through recipes? Did she scour photos? What?

After several minutes of this muddle I deduce that Mom and Terry looked at Mom's scrapbooks today, though Mom can't retrieve the word "scrapbook" no matter how hard we try. There are four of these ancient albums here in her room. But Mom's really excited about this particular review of her past, like she's never seen these scrapbooks before. I'm stunned because Mom and I have been looking at these memories all week.

"We looked at these several days ago," I can't help myself from saying, miffed that Mom has attached so much importance to looking at these albums with Terry when Mom and I saw the same ones earlier in the week. "Do you remember Mom?"

"No," she says, "No...I haven't seen these. Don't remember...not ever...not ever seeing these."

"But you made these scrapbooks, right?"

"Yes....yes...but I don't...you see....this. I can't...you know...recall."

I let this go, change the subject, as I haven't the energy to sort through this particular muddle with Mom's memory. We begin to leaf through her college scrapbook, a particularly musty album that has chalky black mold dangerously encroaching the inside of the front cover and the first several inches of each page (the effect of having been neglected in a musty attic for 65 years). Many items are unstuck and drowning, loose between the pages. I turn pages carefully, trying not to dislodge the limited order that remains.

She's got pamphlets and letters and invitations for every organization she belonged to, participated in or was honored by during her college career. There are twelve of them. University of Washington High Scholarship and Honors Society, Sigma Epsilon Sigma (sophomore women's scholastic honorary society), Beta Gamma Sigma (economics and business fraternity), Gamma Alpha Chi (advertising honors society), Phi Bet Kappa, W-Key (underclass women's service honorary), Totem, Mortar Board, YWCA cabinet, Alpha of Theta Sigma Phi (journalism women of achievement), AWS (association of women scholars) and Sigma Kappa (Mom is the president her senior year). How Mom found the time to manage all of these activities and retain high grades she can't explain. Nor can I understand.

There's a pamphlet (looks hand produced) pasted in to the scrapbook, put out by the Panhellenic Board, aimed especially at women and their study habits--it's called "Sue's Studies Solved." I thumb through the categories for concern and find myself laughing heartily--all of the tips for a successful academic career are written in rhyme. The illustrations are corny caricatures of a college-age "girl."

"Listen to this," I chuckle to Mom. "She (Sue's) a good little worker.and sure tries her best/ to evade the persuasiveness of S.O.S."

"What's "S.O.S?" I ask Mom. Mom shakes her head "no"; she's as bewildered as I am.

Then I see the explanation--"It is Sue's Other Self and a devil she is," Mom's pamphlet reads (note the semi-blurred caricature of "Sue" with her scarlet "SOS" emblazoned to her chest). "Devil" activities include things like going an a date when there's homework to be done or sneaking off to the "Ave" for a cigarette break. "It's an awful temptation/" the pamphlet concludes, "to go out and have fun/But she keeps right on studying 'till her/homework is done/She gets as much out of school as she can/Trying to maintain the/best possible plan."

By the time I'm done reading this aloud to Mom we are both howling (note the picture of Mom's face ablaze with laughter). It's a loud, myopic kind of laughter--one that speaks only of the present not the future. Inside I'm thinking--"Sue" is/was my mom...and this is the kind of woman Mom taught me to be. Now, so may years later, all we can glean is the parade of Mom's achievements--everything else is lost: the effort these achievements cost, the disappointments of things attempted but failed along the way. All that is left are these "pieces," literally snippets of paper--some of them handwritten and some of them typed or printed...many of them are faded or molded beyond recognition. Neither Mom nor I can manufacture a context for them to breathe in: me, because I wasn't born yet, and Mom, because her Alzheimer's has taken away this part of her brain.

The closest we come to a "real" memory, a personal glimpse of Mom's past, are her dance cards--small decorative program books that lay out the events of a dance evening as well as the people she plans to dance with. (I can't believe she's saved all of these--there are nineteen of them.) I open each one carefully, afraid that my touch will set one loose from it's glue-stuck position on the page, place this memory in peril of being lost. Greedily, I want all of these scraps in tact, want to gather them like an archive--a way to access my mother's long-since obliterated past since she herself cannot bring it within reach. In one dance book, plain but consisting of vellum, she writes: "1. Bob 2. Joe and Hal 3. Bob 4. Mary and Davis 5. Pat and Fred 6. Bob 7. Bob 8. Joe and Hal 9. Dick and Dot 10. Mary Jean Turnbull 11. Bob 12. Bob." (And I do wonder about the girlfriends and couples listed on her dance card--what can this mean, as Mom is unable to illuminate?) By 1945/46, however, the year Mom graduates, her dance cards have shifted: "Bob" no longer appears and, instead, there's a mysterious "Us": "6. Us 7. Us 8. Helen 9. Pat and Helen 10. Louise 11. Joe and Dan 12. Us." When I ask Mom about the "Us," she shrugs and says--your father...you know...he came home." So, Mom dates Bob until the war is over and then, when she refuses to marry him, she becomes Dad's sweetheart when he returns from the war. As it turns out, Mom and Dad just miss attending the same university before Mom graduates in 1946, with honors in economics and business. Mom's mother dies in 1945. She marries my father in 1948. Things fall apart.

Dinner comes now--"Butternut Squash ravioli and seared zucchini"--so we put the scrapbook away. Mom's tired. She hasn't the energy to handle her own fork and spoon. Mulu, with her fabulous new head of beauty salon curls, feeds Mom--a mother robin feeding her young--one beak-ful at a time. Mom's mouth lies open, slack, waiting for what will come. Mulu's fork dive-bombs for Mom's mouth, a safety measure just to make sure food gets in before Mom's jaws clamp shut. Caregivers are taught this technique, as their number one job is to get the food into a client's mouth and then quickly swallowed. Meals happen quickly, if Mulu and Lorna have anything to say about it.

When I leave Mom tonight, she looks frail, despite the laughter we've had over "Sue's Studies Solved" and Mom's eager-beaver college self. She's translucent, see-through, like I can see past her skin to her capillaries, her ligaments, her osteoporosis bones. Secrets revealed. In short, she looks nothing like my mother and this frightens me. I've spent so many years fearing Mom, even while loving her, that being presented with so many of the forgotten "pieces" feels dangerous, untrue.

Life is broken because, as Greenstreet reminds us, we can't hold onto the "pieces." In the end, however, I wonder if it's a matter of faith--how many "pieces" we are brave enough to let go of. In this respect, my mother is/was not a woman of faith. Like everything else in her home, she hoarded her "pieces." No matter what.

Perhaps Greenstreet is on to something with her "torn" photographs. Living is about sight--how much brokenness we can allow ourselves to see, recover from, learn from, move on from. There doesn't seem to be a limit.

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