It's a new year and yet really it isn't. The same problems that dog us in 2009 are still present when the clock rolls around to 2010. Mom's the same, teaching's the same, the weather's the same, my body's physical needs are the same, the economy's the same. But why should it be otherwise? A hopeful (or serious;y demented) driver sports a bumper sticker on his rear window as I drive to class on Tuesday--"What would Nixon do?" I can't decide if this is a hopeful sign, in that we are so far beyond Nixon in our national greed and political intrigue that Nixon has become irrelevant? Or maybe it's a depressing sign of the time--that people or at least this one driver is so desperate that even Nixon's impeachable answers would be welcome. In any event, the sticker starts a laugh for me, one that carries me well through my drive past Boeing Field till I get to the parking lot of Seattle University. Then the sameness of my life interrupts. These may be new students but I'm not so new. I'm really still the same. So I'm trusting intellect and innovation to prevail once I walk into PGT 309. Usually is does. Today is no exception.
This week at the Mirabella, the first of the new year, Mom has been relatively good. She's sleeping well. She's eating her meals on the whole (meaning she skips most of dinner but eats everything else). In fact, she's eating so much that one of the aides, Salvadore, comments--"Dorin, you were such a little thing when you came....and look at your now." I'm hoping Mom didn't catch the quip, seeing how sensitive she is about her weight. Her skin's a good color. Her brain's engaged with what is happening around her. What's not so good is her inability to communicate--speech evades her consistently now--and her lower body has become nearly frozen. Not even therapist Michael's daily remonstrations can keep her limbs moving.
On Wednesday afternoon we make flash cards, a project Jennifer spearheads. She's photocopied color prints of scenes from sunny blue sky Arizona. Lorna's job is to cut these pictures from the photocopied sheet and Mom's job is to glue them to the white cardboard Jennifer has provided. Jennifer positions Mom so she's propped on the edge of the bed. A month ago, Mom would have been able to sit there, unaided for forty minutes under Beverly's encouragement. Now, she can't stay erect for more than second. Jennifer props pillows and an off-white plushy teddy bear behind Mom's back so she won't fall backwards. Soon we realize gluing is too complex of a task--Mom can't manipulate the glue stick without considerable assistance from Jennifer. So, we retool and give Mom the task of holding down the corner of the pictures so Jennifer can smear glue from the glue stick onto their edges. Both of them press down hard on the surfaces of the print, affixing the glue--Jennifer presses the hardest and Mom lightly rolls her fingertips.
The photos are amazing. Cholla cacti, with their aggressive asexual reproduction. We all get a laugh over this one as Jennifer explains how these cacti reproduce by affixing pieces of themselves to whatever happens along, hoping there won't be need for genetic variation. Saint Mary's Basilica--a mission style church that contrasts dramatically with the modernity of downtown Phoenix. Parry's penstamon, flowers that elicit a long conversation about when and where Mom and I have encountered penstamon on our hikes. Mom comes out with the word "purple,"a seemingly random verbal contribution until I realize she's talking about the color of penstamon we've seen in the wild--all of them having been purple. Fifth Street Fountain in downtown Scottsdale where bronze horses splash and cavort dramatically in pools of cascading water. And then our favorite--sand dunes in Monument Valley. The blue is bluer than any sky I've seen and the dunes roll and ungulate like a tide has gone out recently, the suctioning away of the sea from the sand leaving a pattern of ripples and dips you might find at the beach.
When we've finished making the cards, Jennifer tries to interest Mom in a matching game, asking her to find each card's mate. She places each set side by side, so all Mom has to do is figure out which appurtenant card goes with which. Mom finds this task difficult, if not impossible. We stick with it for fifteen minutes, encouraging Mom to choose photos that both have cactus, both have prancing horses, both have penstemon. Mom's exhausted.
When I leave for the day, I ask Mom and Lorna--"Do you have new year's wishes?" We've just watched King Five News where the anchor people are laughing about new year's resolutions. According to their on-air guest, these best wishes rarely stick as we fail to change our patterns, fail to recognize how we make choices based on who we are, the things we believe, the patterns we've established. As the guest so aptly put this--isn't the definition of insanity to do the same thing again and again and expecting a different result? So I wonder what Mom can wish for the new year? What does an eighty-five year old woman with Alzheimer's and recent stroke hope for?
No one says anything at first, and then Lorna says, shaking her head--"I don't believe in new year's resolutions my dear."
Mom listens to this, appears to take it in, but still there is silence.
"Be happy," Mom says finally. "Be happy....not sad."
Wow, I think to myself. She knows, she's aware. There's so little time left, why waste it with crying.
I think about my own wish, not a resolution for the new year per say, but rather a wish I'd hung on a wishing tree, an international project Yoko Ono is overseeing. When in Idaho, I'd participated in the gallery exhibition for "Speak for the Trees" and the wishes hung on the tree would be forwarded to Yoko Ono, joining many other such wishes from around the world. I'd been overwhelmed at first, not sure of what direction to take with my wish. Surely there were far too many things to wish for. I'd thought about better health for Mom, an end to the economic crisis, an end to the war in the Afghanistan and Iraq. And yet these all seemed well beyond my personal reach. What are wishes for? Are they prayers? Are they calls for action? Do we really need to be able to address them within the the smallness of our own lives?
What I decided is this--wishes become significant only if we can take some small step to bring about their occurrence. Otherwise, they are just imagination, like astrology--something people grab a hold of to feel better about the randomness and chaos of their lives. So, I have little control over Mom's health, no control over economics and war, but what I can do is make a decision about myself, within the constraints of my own little pedestrian world.
My wish: to be myself and to be fully present. Always. In the face of a dying parent, a dwindling income, a fledgling career as a novelist, a dysfunctional pain-inflicted family, a vanished brother, I can still be me as completely as possible. I can still be present. This is something I can do.
Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifewithmom--
Friday, January 8, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
Cousin Christine,
And a wise and challenging wish, indeed.
Bravo!
Dan
Well....it sounds good enough on paper but to actually do this? I imagine your life is also posed with this challenge. Living deliberately and in the here and now becomes difficult when there are griefs to carry, deaths to handle. I'm not sure we ever reach that present tense completely...the point seems to be the awareness, the trying. C.
This was the first year that I contemplated before it began that it really doesn't matter. The new year doesn't matter because nothing is going to change, and if it does, it's usually for the worse. 2009 was worse than 2008, 2008 was worse than 2007, and 2007 was worse than 2006. How did I become so cynical? Every new year I felt like I could make myself over again. Be better than I was, that life would be better than it was. But, I was always the same girl as the year before, just a year older. Your wish is inspiring. I think so many people don't feel fully present in their own lives; so busy that they become mechanical, or lazy to the point that they simply don't live their lives, but vicariously through reality tv and facebook. There are so many things I want to do, but don't know if I'll get around to them. All these things that life has to offer. And not just your wish is inspiring, but you are inspiring. You used to be a dancer, you're a lawyer, a doctor, a professor at a private university, and you help women's issues by teaching it in your class to inspire others to take action. You may not be new to you, but you're new to your students with every coming quarter (unless they had to withdraw from your class and take it again). You have a lot to offer, and by teaching you influence innumerous young people who will become the next generation of leaders, the "doers" of the country.
I forgot to add writer.
Amanda; I just read your entry...It's funny to hear these things said about me as life seems very ordinary to me right now, particularly recently as so much of life has been reduced to a sort of survivalist challenge. Thanks for the different perspective. And I hear you about the idea that we make these attempts to live the new year differently and instead just end up being more of ourselves...I guess because we are ourselves, aren't we. All the time, whether we want to see this or not. C.
Life usually is ordinary to those living it - your life doesn't seem ordinary to me. Your past or your present. We all need a different perspective of ourselves sometimes. I've been so grateful when certain individuals told me that I'm not just an ordinary girl, because I feel very ordinary or even below it, trying to reach ordinary. Don't forget about your wish.
Okay...I will purpose to do this. C.
Marvelous. (I never use that word, but I love it!) Read more of SWW when you have the opportunity. "Eat mangoes naked." (I've never done that myself, but it does sound succulent, doesn't it?) I am grateful that our paths crossed, at such a time in our lives too, when your mother and my grandmother are both ailing of almost the same things, at close to the same age, and share almost the same name. Coincidence, or fate?
Post a Comment