home: part seven

It's a basic conversation. As a woman who practiced law for years, even estate planning law, there should be nothing surprising here for me. Mom's lawyer fills us in about what happens when Mom dies, about how her assets are disposed, about what our responsibilities are as PRs. Everything's routine. And yet, it's not.

This is my mom we are talking about, mine and Eric's. Despite the disclaimers about--"not to be morbid," the language we prettily use to get around the fact that we are talking about an upcoming event both Eric and I dread, Mom's death--I can't help but feel the objecthood of Mom's body creeping in: how the business of death somehow necessitates the shift to a different terminology, one of practicality and assets and cash flow and death taxes. In the wake of this jargon, (these difficult topics ultimately) Mom's humanity disappears. This is so, despite our attempts to not have this happen.

Mom as a "thing," a nearly-inanimate body riddled with the aftermath of stroke, with the ongoing death of her brain cells from Alzheimer's, with the increasing risks of amyloid angiopathy. When does a body become a "thing," when does a "thing" become a revered object of mourning? If I was in my classroom, I'd say that women perpetually inhabit the simultaneous positions of subject and object: we are made into "things" and we allow ourselves to become "things." Are ailing bodies like Mom's the same?

Mom as a point of business conversation feels disloyal--all those years she drilled into me the idea that some things just aren't meant to be put into words. Death is one of them, as well as family "secrets," things like the disappearance of my brother Peter and his unlikely resurrection back into you family. (Oh, the treachery I have occasioned by my speaking out regarding Peter.) Lips should be sealed. Even when Mom finally consented to do her estate planning back in 2005 (unfortunately too late to be really useful), she still couldn't talk about her demise and what would happen next. She tells her attorney, the same one we speak with today, that "Eric and Christine can work all that out." Mom doesn't care that "working all that out" could put an impossible strain and our already difficult sibling relationship. We love each other, Eric and I, but have such different ideas at time. "You and I collide," as my theme song would say (if I could listen to it) at the worst possible times.

Mom's having a bad day at the Mirabella--four days of constipation due to her neurogenic bladder (and subsequent enema this morning), pain from OT, significant cognitive confusion, possibly suffering from a UTI (urinary tract infection): she is not herself, or at least the self that she's been for the last week or so (prior to the weekend). Multiple selves--Mom is many women and when I arrive at the Mirabella I am never sure who she will be. So I am thinking--am I this way too? Are we all this way? Is identity so difficult, painful that we shift ourselves unconsciously between versions of ourselves? I know what psych theory says--we form our identity in relation to what is around us; we are always in relation. And yet, I feel that Mom is taking this to a new dimension. She is literally different selves as the stroke plays havoc with the right frontal lobe of her brain--the place where all our emotions are stored, processed. She is unstable, erratic, even to herself. What must this be like--not to be able to depend on one's self?

Today we have planned a big outing--Jennifer (friend and OT) and I are taking Mom to the Pike Street Market. We've been talking about this for weeks, as it's taken weeks to plan: procuring a doctor's order for a therapeutic outing, getting wheelchair transport so that we can get Mom and her caregiver and ourselves down to Pike Street. The weather cooperates--it's a beautiful day--but Mom is not her best. Not at all.

When we get ourselves down to the lobby of the Mirabella, Larry is there with the van from Club 24. Larry is a peach--we have used him before for transporting Mom: kind and compassionate, he's a positive addition to our party. Standing by the lift at the rear of the van--the place where Mom's wheel chair will be hoisted-up to the level of the van's floor--Mom is at a stand still. She saying--

"I won't go....no....not go."

She's saying this loudly, emphatically--speaking louder than I've heard her speak in a long time.

I bend down to the ground, look her in the eyes and ask--"What's wrong Mom?" She answers with--"We can't go....without...you know...can't." 'Can't go without what, Mom?" I say back to her. She's sputtering and shaking her head by now, her eyes are darting, looking at everything but me and the van. I can see her agitation is rising, but I can't tell if it's because she can't say what she wants to communicate to me or if it's she just doesn't want to go on our outing.

I explain to her that we've planned this for weeks and that we are all looking forward to this. In response, she says something about--"He...she...needs to come." "Who, Mom?" I ask her. "Who needs to be here?" In my head, I'm thinking--Eric, Terry, Caroline? Who is she needing right now?" When I offer these three names to Mom, she shakes her head "No." The frustration is building--by now we are working on nearly ten minutes of steadily accelerating agitation and, to be honest, unpleasant anger. Just in case she's referring to my brother's family, I remind her that the three of them left for vacation this morning and won't be back until Sunday night. She shakes her head-- "No"--making it clear she's not looking for her family. My reminder of their absence, however, seems to agitate her further. I am at a loss as to what to say.

Finally, I say--Let's just get in the van and see if we can have some fun. We've been looking forward to this all week."

Mom turns to me then, looking me straight in the eye, and says, very loudly--loudly enough for Lorna and Larry to hear--and in a tone of voice that emphasizes each word and syllable, something I didn't think she was still capable of doing:

"You're an asshole!"

I am so stunned by her words, that I feel like I need to ask her to repeat it, just to make sure my ears have heard this correctly, but of course I don't. No one needs to hear this twice. "Asshole" is a word I've never heard Mom utter, not in my entire life, and it certainly isn't a word I would have thought she'd say to me. I would have bet money on that.

We sit here a moment in the quiet, in the empty wake of her words--neither of us talking. We are looking at each other. Saying nothing.

"Mom," I say. "Mom...that makes me want to cry." I work hard to keep the tears pooled in my lids rather than running down my face.

We sit here like this--me squatting uncomfortably on my heels and she slumped in her chair, her red shawl flapping in a lift-of-a-breeze as its fringe dangles down through the spokes of her wheels.

We sit for a very long time. The sun shines and the shadows creep like snakes through the elm leaves, flicking tails and tongues of lowering light across the concrete street and the cars parked to either side of Fairview Avenue. The world is still, but for us.

"Let's go," I say to Mom eventually. Mom says nothing.

At my cue, Lorna smiles for my camera and steers Mom's chair to the lift. Larry operates the lift, bringing Mom's chair to rest just inside the rear doors of the van. We all get in. Nobody says anything. Not a word.

We are all a long ways from home.

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

home: part six

The Bread Queen arrives at 5:15--Mom and I and Lorna have been waiting since 4:00, me knowing what delights are coming and Mom having no idea except for the fact that I've told her that something wonderful is arriving after 4:00 and that the daughter of a friend of mine is bringing this wonderfulness. When I get there at 3:50, Lorna has Mom decked out--her black skinny E. Fischer pants and her red shawl. She has black jet beads strung around her neck twice and she looks better than I've seen her in a long time.

Mom and I chit chat for a while...and I read to her bits of the day's newspaper. I tell her about the Nobel Prize being awarded to two women (and one man) for work with chromosomes; I try to explain about the "telomeres" (end caps on chromosomes) and that the research done illuminates how telomeres are lenghtened and shortened which then controls the life-span of a cell. For cancer cells, there is an unlimited life; for victims of certain diseases these telomeres are prematurely shortened. Mom nods at me, understanding very little of this, I imagine, but glad to be listening anyway.

All the while I'm nervous that by the time The Queen arrives Mom may be too tired to participate in our bread binge. Her eyes are drooping shut and her conversation is limited. There are many sentences begun but not finished and much of what she says makes no sense--"crazy talk," as she calls it in her more lucid moments. "Nobody's name for...the things...you know...not today...when we were...having..." Or, "We need a plot..." Or, "tune the telephone...we need to...she (Lorna) knows how to get things..." I have no idea what Mom is talking about and no amount of careful listening seems to make any difference. Her stroke and Alzheimer's have assumed control.

When finally there's a knock at the door, I see Hanna standing there--The Bread Queen" at last.

"Mom," I say, "this is Hanna, Deb Hedeen's daughter."

Mom lights up--beams a smile to Hanna like I haven't seen since I got here today.

"Hanna's brought you something," I continue, "she's brought you a loaf of homemade bread, still warm from her oven."

If Mom smiled before, now she's positively glowing--like she's radioactive. If I touch her, I might glow too--her excitement is contagious! Mom knows what bread is and she know how much she loves it, and how much she and I loved going in search of "good bread," wherever we were--in Firenza, Italy or Seattle, Washington. Bread is elemental to Mom, something that brings her home to her roots, home to me and my childhood and girlhood with Mom, before she decided I was an inadequate daughter and before she replaced me and my brothers with my brother Eric's children--younger (less flawed, at least for a time) embryonic versions of her own children, Peter, Eric and Christine. That these grandchildren are approximately the same ages apart as my brothers and I (and the same genders) never ceases to amaze me.

Hanna brings the loaf--a three pound extravaganza--in a cotton hand towel, the kind my mother's mother used: light, gauzy, embroidered and feeling like home. She's even come with napkins, bread knife and butter: we are ready for a feast. Mom is more than ready, all of her senses suddenly alert. Her hands are shaking and her eyes are darting from me to Hanna to the loaf of bread. I let her smell the loaf first, let the yeasty, olive-oil perfume her brain cells. She tells us then about her mother who made bread, in fact was an amazing baker, both in Norway and in Seattle. Mom talks about how her mother baked bread and she, Mom, would watch, intrigued. I wonder at where these bread recipes and this knowledge have gone, where the collective wisdom of such a woman as my grandmother Berentina has vanished to?

Hanna slices open the loaf, and the fresh-baked smells bleed from the crust, aerate our noses and palettes. When I butter the first slice Hanna hands me, I realize what a whopper this loaf is--a ten inch diameter of whole wheat/white floured rustic wonderfulness. Take note that Hanna's loaf is already half eaten by the time I snap the photo; in the excitement of the loaf's arrival I've forgotten to memorialize. I tear off a small buttered bite for Mom and hand it to her; she watches my hand intently, ready to grab what I offer her. When she works the snippet of bread to her lips, the fingers of her left hand charting a shaky course between fingers and teeth, I see a smile growing, one that can only be called a "bread grin." I catch Mom in the act, snapping three photos to memorialize this moment: the before (analyzing what's in her hand), the during (concentrating on consuming her hunk of bread) and the after (as the delicious bread morsel dissolves between her teeth and tongue). Mom's ecstatic!

We talk of ordinary things--what bread we like and why handmade bread tastes so different than mass produced, even when it's an "artisan" mass produced loaf. Hanna explains how she crafted this loaf--the hours that went into making the biga the night before, the flour and water and yeast mass that must be started and then left to sit for 12 hours. She tells us about the process of adding the flour and the water and the olive oil the next day (today)--how it takes patience to make these opposites congeal.

In the meantime, we are munching our bread--I've cut and buttered additional slices and we are all stuffing them into our mouths with wild abandon. Calories don't matter. Even Lorna is eating bread--the woman who disdains all bread in favor of rice. We are sure we have eaten nothing better, so sure that it's irrelevant that dinner will be here in a few minutes, fifteen to be exact. I see a mass of butter globbed on Mom's red shawl and there's crumbs of bread dribbled down both Mom's chest and my lap. Pigeons would have a hey day with our debris. We don't care.

Mom's engaged--she's asking about Hanna's job search, remembering that she has an interview on Friday, and I'm thinking, how can this be? Just minutes before Hanna came, Mom was disorientated and bleak, barely maintaining her equilibrium. Now, she's chatting away, smiling and cognizant in a way she hasn't been for the last three days. I'm afraid to say a word, afraid to cross or uncross my legs, afraid that anything I might do or say might disturb this hiatus of clarity. I want this to go on forever.

When I walk Hanna to the elevator, my voice threatens tears as I try to explain to her what she's done for my mom. She's twenty-two: she has a new husband and a Mom my age who's healthy and vital. Everything is in front of her. All of this experience with my own mom is beyond Hanna's life story. But someday it will be real, as it is for most everybody--perhaps then she will understand, perhaps then she can care-take her own mother's journey.

After Hanna leaves, I wrap up Mom's remaining loaf in the cotton hand towel Hanna has left for us; she will pick it up the same time next week when she will bring yet another loaf of fresh loveliness for my mom. Mom's bread looks like a large bun there warming on her lap, or a large egg to be hatched on the oven-like comfort of her thighs. Mom's two hands rest lightly in either side of the wrapped loaf, like she's sure her soon-to-be-born young-in is going to prematurely flee the nest if she doesn't make use of proper maternal measures. Her loaf remains there, hatching in her lap, till I get up to leave.

We are still aglow when dinner arrives: "Pork L'Orange with Buckwheat Noodles and Broccoli." While dinner smells inviting, Mom eats only half of it. This time, Lorna and I don't say a thing--Mom's tummy is already happy, with or without dinner. This is enough.

I look at Mom and ask--"Is your tum-tum happy?" Mom smiles at me and says--"So very happy."

Just after we've cleared away the remnants of dinner, my brother's family arrives--Terry, Eric and one of their son's Alexander. The energy in the room shifts immediately. It's show time now.

Terry immediately begins to chatter about what she's reading in her "425" magazine and Alexander settles back into the corner to read the paper. Terry and my brother carry on a lively conversation full of staccatos phrases and humor, all of which is way beyond my mom. I turn every now and then and watch her face: it's expectant and focused, like she's trying to follow the volley of what's being said only the nuances are beyond her grasp. Every now and then she'll start a sentence but, after a three of four words, her voice collapses and the conversation moves on around her, in spite of her--the sheer volume of my family's words swallow her own like a tide at ebb, leaving everything submerged in its wake.

I feel like a tourist or worse yet a voyeur--like I'm here but I'm really not. This is no longer Mom's room. This is no longer my mom.

When Terry and family get up to leave and say their goodbyes, Mom raises her left hand and says in an excited voice--"But we need to...to...you know...leave...go."

Terry stops mid-stride and comes back to Mom's chair. "Leave to go where Gamoo?"

"Home," she says, "to your home."

While Terry quickly says--"No, it's your home Gamoo," I think to myself, Mom is smarter then we think she is. This is not the first time she's referred to her own home as my sister-in-law's. Mom bought the home with her own money, furnished it with her own furnishings, pays for its upkeep (even now) with her own annuity, keeps it clean with the labor of her own caregivers, Lorna and Mulu. And yet, despite these obvious ownership ties, the house remains her daughter-in-law's because Terry and her family have claimed it as so. Mom feels like a visitor in her own home. This is unspeakably sad.

It's a fine October night when I kiss Mom goodbye and steer my Miata through the dark Seattle streets. There's a waning full moon, but, because of the buildings, I can't quite see it's glow. Once I pull onto Denny, I punch the "On" button for my CD player, wanting yet another repeat of the song I've been listening to for the last four weeks. I don't even know the song's title, only that it's from a homemade medley lovingly created by a friend of mine. Lora has carefully labeled the songs, but I can't find the CD case to check out the listings. All I know is that halfway through the chorus each time there's a refrain stating--"...we find out that you and I collide." I don't know why, but the sadness of this line is what I wait for--why I play this song all the way to and from the Mirabella. It's like a drug, something that keeps my mind in the stupor it needs to be in, both to see Mom and to leave her again each day. It takes a scant 3.5 minutes to get from beginning to end of the notes, so, you can imagine there's a lot of punching going on of the rewind button. It takes concentration to keep abreast of this constant need for repetition.

My commute is soon interrupted, however, when at the end of "you and I collide" my attempt to punch the rewind button leads to nothing. I punch again and again, thinking that perhaps in the dark I've missed the correct button. But when I take a glance down to the console, I can see that I've got my finger on the right spot. It's just stopped working! "Damn," I say into the night. "Of all the luck." Soon the disk is playing a completely different song, by a female recording artist, one that I realize I've never heard, as each time I get to this point in the CD I've already repeated the song before. "Rain, rain, rain," she belts out, "and then the telephone rings." I can't quite tell what she's singing about, the clatter from my tires running the road is too distracting, but this refrain seems fittingly sober. So I listen some more. Maybe this will do, I think. Just maybe. Soon, however, there's another song, something about "love makes me lie, love makes me fly," and I conclude--this is not working for me. I have no interest in the pernicious failings of love.

"Fuck you," I say aloud to the CD player just then, my hands slapping down hard on the steering wheel for emphasis, because I can--because no one else can hear my profanity. "Fuck you," I repeat again. All I want is to make my drive in the company of my song--the "Collide" song. Is this too much to ask? Why my CD player has decided not to work at this particular moment is more than I can know or accept. I JUST WANT MY SONG!

What I realize now is that the only thing I can control is whether the CD player is on or off; the music selections are beyond my keen. Since I want it "On" for safety reasons (keep myself alert), I am captive to what ever will appear next on the CD.

I feel my tears before I realize I'm crying--feels like rain on my cheeks, torrential, continuous rain, though the night is pavement-dry. And I am swept away with the flood. I cry for me, I cry for Mom. Big messy drops that surprise me in their volume, their wetness. I cry and cry--the cotton of my T-shirt stuck wet to my nipples, transparent with pain. My skin goosebumps in the urban night and still I cry. For the home Mom may not be able to return to. For the home that's not really hers to begin with. For everything there is to regret about how we got to this point. I cry for it all. Alone in my car with the night shrieking by me. My driver's window is wide open and by now I've got the CD ratcheted up--I no longer care what's being played. My CD's so loud I can't even hear the road racket, a sound that's (normally) incredibly invasive at all times. It hurts this much.

When the CD finally works its way around to the first song of Lora's selections, "Breathe" mercifully appears, a song that's nearly as effective as "Collide" in its mood stabilization possibilities. It occurs to me then what to do--each time "Breathe" comes to an end, I can punch the eject button, grab the CD as it's spit out of the player, and then shove it quickly back in, all the while remaining between the two white lines of my lane. "Breathe" will play again and again. Control has returned.

For the rest of my drive I eject and re-insert my CD. Between my sobs I try to breathe, long shaky gulps of air that fall short of the stress-reducing measure I regularly perform while at yoga. I breathe and breathe some more, taking in the exhaust-fumed night as it comes to me through my open window, because really this is all I can do.

Breathe.

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

home: part five

When I call Mom last night she says--"In a few minutes we're...you know...going there...we're going to leave...going to go there...there."

"Where?" I ask Mom.

"Home," she says. "Home...home."

"Where's that?" I ask, not sure if she's talking about her current home in Clyde Hill or her old home in Medina, the one she sold to the State.

Mom can't answer me. She remembers nothing of her day--who came to see her, what she had for lunch. She's sure that any minute now she and Mulu are going to "walk" out of the Mirabella (though she isn't clear of where she is right now) and go home. "Walk" is the word she's uses because she's sure that she can still walk even though last I checked she can hardly move her legs. And I think, maybe Mom's legs are her phantom limbs--her thinking self has yet to get caught up to her feeling self.

When I get to the Mirabella today, Mom's excited to tell me about what she did last night--she walked to the "bridge," presumably the SR520 bridge (the neighborhood where her home was located until March of this year), by herself at 10:00 at night. Mula wasn't there and Mom reports that she was afraid, being by herself. She tells me about how everything at the bridge is "different," though she can't tell me how exactly. When Mom's talking, she's certain that this really happened--this is not a dream, she lets me know. This is her life.

And, in fact, this is her life--the phantom life she lives when her mind is muddled because she's slipped back into her Alzheimer's world, the one where she is by herself and the rest of the world is at bay. For the six hours I am there today, Mom remains in her netherworld. We go to PT and she spends the entire hour with her eyelids shut--either it takes too much effort to keep them open or she's decided that the world of her making, her private "crazy" world, is more interesting and agreeable then the world that Beverly is trying to induct her into, the world where her muscles are of use and her eyes are necessary for locomotion. This world requires effort and pain--Mom's not sure she's up for this. Nonetheless, she manages to stay erect on the edge of the therapy bench for nearly half a minute--this is progress (note the photo of Mom balancing). When I take Mom outside to visit the Cascade Pea Patch again, her eyes continue to be shut. It's a fine sunny day, though Mom can barely acknowledge this--she's wrapped up tight in her red shawl, the one my brother gave her for Christmas last year. We sit on one of the gravel paths--me squatting and Mom in her chair--and watch for the brown-grey flotilla of mice to come out, to crawl over lettuce and rosemary, zucchini and tomatoes, scavenging for supper before dark. They must weigh very little, as their bodies hardly sway the plants that host their feast. We've been told there are thousands of these petite mice--their bodies no longer than two inches. They feast off of the community garden and are officially referred to as pests. Nonetheless, they provide a reason for looking, a reason for why Mom must open her eyes. I'm grateful.

"There's one," she says, and I'm surprised, this is the most alert she's been all day.

"Yes," I say, keeping a running tally for her--so far it's fourteen mice and we've been here ten minutes.

When we saunter back to the Mirabella, we pass by the elm trees again, out in front of the Mirabella lobby--their yellow haze of color has deepened since the last time we went for a "walk." "Look," I say to Mom, pointing to the color, and I'm surprised when she returns with clarity--"Yes...more yellow than before." 'Yes," I say, squeezing Mom's shoulder.

When we get Mom back to her room, she's exorbitantly tired--has been all day. But nevertheless she stops at the doorway before wheeling in and reads off the sign--"Dorin Schuler"--and I feel relieved: at least she knows where she is for this split-second moment. Mom didn't have much sleep last night--she woke up crying several times, her eyes puffy-red pin cushions. Sleep makes a difference for Mom--affects her moods. After easing her into bed, I sit on the edge of her duvet and watch her drift into sleep. Every now and then her eyelids flutter open, appraising her room, her situation. I tell her--"Mom, I'm here," and then she drifts off again, reassured.

Just before dinner--"Roasted Chicken w/ Olives, Roasted Beets, Quince Pilaf"--Lorna and I rouse her, coax Mom's eyes open so she can be alert enough to eat what's put in front of her. Nevertheless, her eyes remain shut, even through the meal, so Lorna must anticipate with her fork when Mom's mouth will open and close, lips pursing like a fish. Most of Mom's dinner goes untouched.

"Need something beautiful," she mumbles between bites, "but we need to go...walk to the...you know...to the....the bridge...okay...let's just go."

"Mom," I say back to her--"we have dinner to eat, before you go anywhere."

"Okay" she says quickly in response, ingesting a forkful of beets.

"I don't know where to get the..." she starts up again, half-way through her chew. "I think it's the best thing to do...is to walk, you know...walk up...when we...we need to make this thing much better...make it look like it's good."

Mom pauses then, as Lorna sneaks another forkful of chicken into her mouth. "Sneak" is the operative word. While Mom's too tired and disorientated to feed herself, she's sure that she wants nothing of her dinner. She has no problem communicating this.

"Come on, let's go," she resumes with an edge to voice, like she's tired of messing around and means business now. "Let's get going!"

"Where are we going, Mom?"

"Home," she says, "walk to the bridge...but it's different. I had something....well we have to straighten up this mess...I think you are spending too much time..."

As her voice trails off, I ask her--"what am I spending too much time at, Mom?"

She can't tell me. But I want to know. Desperately. I'm still her daughter.

"Let's get going," she resumes, "we're going to walk up to the...to the...let's get moving...no...no...not here...because have to be sure I am there...well I think....you know...I am way over my...you know...head...don't know how I got..."

Mom's confusion is disheartening. It's been a while since she's been this muddled. My mind begins to run through the options--what could be producing this level of confusion, something completely separate from her word-finding issues? Extreme exhaustion? Dehydration? Urinary Track Infection? Mom hasn't been drinking much since she got here--one to two glasses of fluid per day, as compared to eight to ten when she's home. Mom's urine is clear, however, so maybe there is nothing wrong at all. But again maybe there is. So I go track down the floor nurse, Anne, and ask for a catheter order to do a urine sample, just in case. All of this will take time. In the meantime, Mom needs her sleep, so I order her meds early.

When I leave, Mom can't acknowledge my going. I say "goodbye" twice and she doesn't turn her head. When I smack my lips against hers, she doesn't kiss back. I remind her of the surprise I have brewing for her tomorrow late afternoon, after class--something I've been talking about all afternoon, though the details of which I have left for a surprise. Anticipation is good medicine for the blues.

My last view of Mom is the color of her cheeks, blanched the color of her sheets: how her skin recedes into her linens like those camouflage moths, the ones where life depends on a seamlessness between beating-wing and host. From a distance--the distance between my two able feet and her two disabled ones--Mom could be any body. Any old body a long ways from home.

Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifwithmom.com

home: part four

Today, I've been doing simple things--clipping flowers to welcome inside my kitchen space, going for my run, grilling a burger, showering catnip on my cats, writing two more query letters to accompany stories that are going out the door tomorrow. Everyday sort of things. I feel fortunate to have them to do, to have made the time to do them. But what I really know is this: that I'm avoiding getting into my Miata and driving to see Mom. It's not Mom that's keeping me away, but rather the growing sense that I have lost my life and I need to find it again. I want to be home again.

I keep a mermaid in my home--really I do. A life size talisman, reclining on my sideboard. She's ancient, some eighty-years old, but her paint's still intact, for the most part. Black beaded eyes, lips red, nipples brown and protruding, thighs and tail iridescent with scales of green and maroon. Having lived for all but the last year in a sailor's house on the Maine coast, she's a traveler, accustomed to breathing in the sea and what adventures can be found there. I wonder at times if she's bored with the tame life I can offer her here on the lake where there's just me and my cats and my written words. She's keeps company with my Kenneth Callahan--a horse and rider painting from the 1940s belonging long ago to my father; I have my naked horseback rider cozied up next to her, two nudists at heart. Mostly they are quiet together. But when she speaks, it's spectacular. Sometimes, when I come home, shuck off my shoes, I'm suddenly subsumed with her corporeal presence: there's a faint whiff of cinders and smoke that emits from her wooden limbs, seeing how she spent so many years gracing a sailor's fireplace mantel. This cinder and smoke travels my home, a small pocket of fire that's never in the same place twice, always shifting, always ephemeral. She's my ghosted woman. My pillar of fire. My cosmic genii of well-being. My home.

My Lady watches over me, and I over her. When I type at my keyboard, there she is, casting a glare at my near-dyslexic misspellings--how many times can I type "jsut" rather than "just." Infinite, it appears. She's there when I stay up long into the night, writing a blog, typing an email, grading a paper. Just there. Her fire smokes, my synapses fire.

Next to my computer is a growing pile of artifacts, small "pieces" of my mother's life. Random evidence. I can't help myself--their collection has become essential, obsessive even. True north on my compass, if ever I'm to get home.

One
My oldest brother Peter's baby anklet from Swedish hospital--blue beads with the name "Peter" printed in black letters on slightly larger white beads--I can't believe Mom still has this but didn't keep the other two, for Eric and I. Or maybe hospitals no longer used bead-work by the time we were born?

Two
A "good luck" charm made of tin, about the size of a silver dollar. There's a military star on the front with an American flag flying and inscribed around the circumference are both my mother and my father's names. On the back it says "Good Luck." I have no idea of its origins, except for the fact that it was loose in a box containing my father's armed forces memorabilia--his dog tag from WWII, his military ID card with his finger prints inscribed, his honorable discharge papers, his veterans administration paperwork, letters written between my parents during the war (and at least one of which is signed "Darling," one from my father, suggesting that perhaps they were not as disconnected as my mother would have me think). So I'm thinking this "good luck" medal was made during the war, perhaps when my father is on leave--a piece of fancy, of sentiment (uncharacteristic for my father?). He must have loved her then, don't you think, to have engraved her name with his?

Three
The original "Promissory Note" between my father and the sellers, G. Allen Henderson and Gladys L. Henderson, for the purchase of our family home in Medina (or rather the land) in 1951. It's signed by both my parents--they're married by then--and records the amount of $1600.00 being owed to the sellers, to be paid off at the rate of $50.00 per month. Handwritten, in the G. A. Henderson's hand, is a notation of "paid in full" on March 16, 1956--the date my parents retired the note. This document is the beginning of home for my family, a geography I will always associate with the best of Mom and me.

Four
Three letters from someone named Eva Anderson, who signs her name as "Your Anderson Friend" and "Good Luck From One Anderson To Another," presumably because Mom's maiden name is also Anderson. Eva lives in Chelan, Washington, an isolated spot back in 1945, when the letters date to. From looking through Mom's scrapbook, I discover that Eva is affiliated with the Associated Women's Students on the UW campus, though it could be that she is just invited as a speaker to one of their banquets, and not really a veteran member. Mom seems to have contacted her because they need a speaker; Eva agrees to speak about "Tomorrow's Woman is Here Now" for the 1945/46 Scholarship Banquet. While Mom claims she can't remember Eva, it appears from the letters that there was an ongoing relationship--a reciprocal admiration that flowed between them. Eva writes about everyday things--going to Spokane to "bring back a second-hand car that my man just bought over there." And she writes of her affection for Mom--"I kept wishing as I sat there [at the banquet] that I had a lovely girl like you, and I know that your mom is justly proud of you." Mom's mother must have died shortly after this. As a postscript to her letter dated January 18, 1945, Eva writes to Mom about the title she's chosen for her talk, explaining that "The scope of the job may change but the woman herself, emerging from war participation, has shown that she's equal to any emergency. Also, that she is perfectly capable of coping with men in any field of her talent and choice." Eva is a liberated woman, it appears--a PhD (her name appears as "Dr." on the program) and a (childless) working woman teaching in the Wenatchee school district. I want to know what Mom thinks of her, but the name continues to mean nothing to Mom, despite my asking. Did Mom admire Eva--was she a role model? If so, why did Mom give up her job so quickly when she became pregnant with Peter, particularly since money was so short (and she does remind me of this almost daily when we talk--that she and Dad had nothing and how hard this was)? Why did Mom work so hard in college--all the high grades and the scholarship recognition--just to spend the rest of her married life as housewife and mother? Not that mothering was a bad choice, I'm grateful for it...but rather that she seems to have closed the door to the outside world after having my oldest brother. Home is all she knows. No one is allowed in. She looses track of her friends, becomes Mrs. Paul Schuler, just as so many women were expected to do. Was Mom as conventional as this? Will I ever know?

Five
The white ribbon bow from Mom's wedding bouquet--definitely yellowed and worse for the wear. The beginnings of her "home" with my father.

Six
A small slip of paper with the following typed on its face: "Anderson, Dorin, 3915--39 Ave. S.W. Seattle." Was this the address for the Sigma Kappa house off campus--mom's home during college days? Or was this the address for her family home in West Seattle?

Seven
A very small business card--1"x 3"--with the name of Dr. J. Edward Clark printed on its face: "Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat." This must be the eye specialist Mom takes me to see annually from the time I am seven--the only doctor she can find who will equip her daughter with contacts at such a young age. Every morning and evening Mom and I stand at the scrummy blue counter in the back bathroom (the bathroom us kids are relegated to), Mom leaning in close behind me, her breasts and belly snug to my back. With her fingers carefully affixed to the lids of my eyes, we blink the hard disks of plastic in and out of my eyes. I remember the feel of her breath sailing the nape of my neck--damply intimate, flooding with moisture. Her body seems comfortable, necessary to me, like just-slept-in-sheets or a favorite T-shirt that doesn't get washed often enough. My home. And I think, we are always meant to be this way--skin-tight, umbilical. Just the two of us. Sometimes I cry. Always I question the need for these uncomfortable procedures, even while knowing Mom will never give up. Mom is determined. Always has been. No daughter of hers will wear glasses in third grade, no matter what anybody says. And I'm grateful. Now, I no longer wear contacts. I love my glasses in fact--have eight pairs--and only curse them when I can't read the fine print on a bottle of Tylenol, which is more often now than I can admit.

I've been collecting "pieces" of Mom, broken off artifacts that could become my mother's life if I can scavenge enough of them. If there's enough time. I feel like a thief--Mom doesn't know I'm gleaning the rubble of her life. And I'm not going to tell her.

"Thief?" I blurt out, all of a sudden, a question for my mermaid muse. I'm trying the deceit on for size, wondering if it fits.

My Lady's silent, not even a smoke of a breath.

There's some things Mom doesn't need to know.
Some things I just can't explain.

So, I'll shut down my laptop, nuzzle goodbye my cats--Cougar and Lexie--and turn the key in my ignition. It seems I can't stay away after all.

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

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--

home: part two

This morning, washing the floor, I fall. Not enough to break but enough to bruise. Washing the white tile of my house is something I hate--I believe the tile hates me back, or at least it appears this way. After mopping there's a slick of water shimmering the tile, just enough to set my bare feet rolling like I'm slip-sliding on ball bearings. My fall is harder than I could have imagined. My hand bears the mark of my impatience: in a hurry to see Mom, in a hurry to get home again. "Home" has become memory for me, I spend so little time at my kitchen counter, in my bed, smooching my cats. Without home as a point of reference, my life's all about Mom.

When I get to the Mirabella--a feat considering the stop and go traffic between my home and her "home"--I am met with a barrage of bodies: my sister-in-law's, Lisa's (the care manager), Lisa's (the ST). Mom becomes simply a fixed object around which all these other bodies rotate. I fight the impulse to leave.

When everyone but my sister-in-law has retreated from Mom's world, Mom starts to become less an object and more her human self. My sister-in-law holds tight to Mom's hand for at least the next twenty minutes. I fight the urge to rip her hand from grasping Mom's. "She's not your mother!" I want to shout, but of course don't. Uncharitable thoughts, I realize--time for a more mature attitude, time for a re-frame. My sister-in-law thinks she knows best for my mom, but she doesn't. She has no right, legal or otherwise, to be making decisions for Mom. At the very least, she's an interested party (with a conflict of interest)--for her, much depends on whether Mom returns "home."

"Listen to this," I say, once everyone else has left Mom. "Ever heard of "Le Troisieme Age?" I'm reading to Mom from the Mirabella Monthly Newsletter. There's an article here about "the third age"--old age--which makes an argument that this phase of life can be the most rewarding, as we feel most at home inside our skin. I ask Mom what she thinks about this--does she feel "at home" with herself?

"It's like..." she says...."you know...our visit...what we said."

I'm thinking hard about who "our" is and which "visit" she's referring to and am initially stumped, as I sometimes am, by Mom's shorthand methods of communication. "Which visit?" I say back to her. Mom struggles again to make me understand--"our visit," she repeats, without further illumination. But then, as we both stare at each other with frustration, it comes to me, that Mom's referring to our chat with Paul, her nephew, and particularly our discussion several days ago about liking ourselves.

"Do you mean Paul, Mom?"

"Yes...yes...that's it," she sputters, as if this has been apparent all along. Inwardly I marvel. How could Mom have remembered this discussion all these days latter.

"Is this true for you, Mom," I then ask her "that you feel more comfortable in your own skin, more confident in your 'third age'"?"

She doesn't answer, and so there is silence as her eyelids close down like flags at half-mast. I am reminded that she didn't really answer my question that night with Paul either. I believe her response was--"I don't remember thinking about things like this when I was younger." Her befuddlement causes me to ask another question, a question I've been wanting to discuss for quite some time.

"Do you know, Mom, when you are, you know, clear and when you are less clear?"

This question has haunted me for months, years, as it has everything to do with whether Mom is processing her own mental decline.

"Yes," she says without much of a pause. We are sitting so close on her bed now that I can feel her body's heat like it's radiating from my own. Our thighs are pressed tight, skin and muscles cleaving, leaving little room for anything else. When she answers "yes" I don't know whether to be glad because she is cognizant enough to understand and answer my question or saddened because she too (like me) is experiencing the grief of losing her brain, her thinking self, her emotive self.

"Have you noticed," I continue, emboldened by Mom's honesty, "that you seem clearer when you are here at Mirabella? Same's true for your stint at Evergreen Acute Rehab."

Before Mom can answer, however, Lorna sails into the room, announcing that, if Mom and I want, we can go to the Activity Room and partake in an Avon sales event. I can't think of anything I'd less rather do. Mom agrees to, as she shakes her head. Both of us are wishing that Lorna will step back out of the room. Nothing against Lorna--she's Mom's best friend--and I am grateful to her, but I want to hear what comes next, what new treasure Mom may next let loose from her lips. Things she may not say it in front of Lorna.

Thankfully, Lorna does have an interest in Avon and she subsequently goes to find herself a screaming deal with make-up and skin products. Lorna is the best shopper I know--knows how to find the best deals. $100.00 purses for $15.00 dollars at Penney's, pants for $10.00 at the Macy's sale. I'm sure she''ll find Avon lipstick and hand cream for a remarkable price.

Nevertheless, I am relieved when she exits again, leaving the silence to open like a flower for Mom and me alone.

"Yes," Mom then says, referring back to my question about where she feels clear and where she feels less clear. "Yes....I know this," she says again, just to make sure I hear what she's saying. "What should we...you know...should we...do?"

I don't know how to answer Mom, because there are somethings I just can't say. Not yet. Like... "you're going to die Mom, sooner then we think, and I want you as clear as you can be--I want this for me, and I want it for you." Or..."please don't go home Mom...I just can't bear to lose you again, can't bear to see your mind wither away sooner than it needs to--please give us more time." But I say neither of these. Maybe never will.

"I'm not sure what time we have left," I venture carefully instead, afraid for how close we are now to talking of death, her death--not something Mom likes to think about much less talk about.

"You and I," Mom begins and then sobs, "you and I...what we have...here. You know, what we've been doing."

I'm crying now too, as I recognize what Mom is saying--how she wants me to acknowledge what we have been doing these past three weeks--coming home to each other, despite all the ways we've left home behind. Where is "home" for Mom? I'm beginning to think that home is where I am, where she is. It's the meaningful iteration of relationship.

Later in the afternoon, Mom and I and Lorna take a trip to the "Cascade Pea Patch" just down the street from the Mirabella on John Street. As always, the wheelchair is an impediment in the loose wood-chip paths of the community garden. I wonder to myself--what can she be thinking, as we laboriously make our way uphill through the carrots and calendula, the red leaf lettuce and the zucchini, the dinner plate dahlias and the Double Delight roses? I offer a parade of smells to her--fresh snippets of rosemary, mint, sage, lavender, alysum and calendula (note my photo montage of the fresh herbs along with elm and oak leaves turning color on Mom's red blanketed lap). Mom swallows each of these smells greedily. We are grateful to be here, grateful to be alive, despite the circumstances of Mom's stoke and dementia.

Some things are just that good--like the smokey bite of sage to our nostrils or the October sun radiating a "pea patch" and its visitors in the middle of a late afternoon in south Lake Union. So good they stick. Forever. Mom and I are this way except for the times when we forget how to get back to each other. All the ways we learn to get lost, stray from home.

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

home

Mom and I are reading Sherman Alexie--he's a favorite of ours, mine since before I can remember and her's since 2003 when Alexie spoke his usual ironic, biting wisdom at my graduation. Usually I do the reading and both Mom and I listen. Alexie's words come at us like bullets--how they enter the skin a neat, clean piercing and then explode there among our capillaries, leaving nothing untouched, unchanged.

Of late, we are reading Alexie's "Gentrification" from his new collection of poems, Face (2009). "Let us remember the wasps/" Alexie begins, "that hibernated in the walls/ of the house next door." The beginning--"let us remember"--gives me goosebumps. Mom too, I can see her shiver under her gazillion blankets. As it turns out, Alexie's wasps both are and are not the topic of his poem. "Gentrification" is about the loss of home--about a penniless and neglected father who dies and a penniless and neglected son left behind and siblings who quickly sell the home "because it was only a home." "For months" Alexie writes, "that drunk and displaced son/appeared on our street like a ghost/Distraught, he sat in his car and wept/because nobody else had wept/enough for his father, whose ghost/took the form of ten thousand wasps."

"Gentrification" is about home, about the meanings we assign to inanimate structures and how grief becomes what binds us to these structures. "That's the lesson of this poem/" Alexie writes,"Grief is as dangerous and unpredictable/as a twenty pound nest of wasps/ Or this: houses are haunted/not by the dead. So let us pray/for the living/Let us pray for the wasps and the sons who haunt us." (Alexie's emphasis.)

I keep thinking about Alexie's conclusion--how "houses are haunted" but "not by the dead."

Mom doesn't talk about her "home" often. Back just before the stroke, there were three to four weeks where, in her Alzheimer's confusion, she kept demanding to be taken home, so such so that we had to turn to sedation (an anti-anxiety medication) as a way to deal with her weeping and screaming and near-violence with her caregivers. Dr Addison, her GP, prescribed Lorazepan, a quick acting drug which works well on the spot but only of administered before the anxiety gets too pronounced. Here at Mirabella she continues to take this drug, but not as often--maybe this is a victory? Instead, she's on 15 mg of Remeron at bedtime (helps with the incessant crying) and .5 mg of Risperdal every 12 hours (anti-depressant). When written down, these medications seem like a lot, but then again, if I was Mom, near the end of her life, trying to recover from a stroke and away from her home I imagine I would be just as depressed and anxious as her. The irony is, of course, that Mom is not a believer--she doesn't have a bit of patience for psych medications or what she terms "psycho-babble." This is one of Mom's blind spots, places she refuses to see clearly, despite being a smart, well-educated woman.

Yesterday, as I nested down into her bed, taking our usual postures--me leaning against the back rail of her bed with my feet resting by Mom's waist and Mom propped up by her pillows at the head of her bed, I ask her, "Are you cozy Mom?"

She gets this euphoric grin on her face and begins generating guttural sounds which remind of me of my dog, Beau, when he'd began to circle his chosen spot--three times at least, spinning head to tail--until he decided it was a good enough spot to nestle down for a nap. My Mom is doing a nesting dance, like Beau--she's gyrating her arms around in circles at waist-level and she's trying to accustom herself to her environment. Trying to be safe, comfortable. This is not an easy task under the circumstances.

"Almost," she answers me finally. "Almost."

"What do you need Mom?" I ask her."

More guttural noises, something like--"grrr...mmm...umm...grrr."And then this--"Just tell me about...you know...about...about."

"About what, Mom?" I ask her.

"About...you know...what you...what you...you know...did."

I'm thinking hard now, trying to figure out what she needs. What I did...what could she mean? And then it comes to me--my dinner with Kathy on Monday evening at the Trellis in Kirkland. Kathy is a long time friend of our family and a confident of my father before he died. She wants to know about this, about what Kathy and I talked about, laughed about. I'm surprised, both by the fact that she's remembered I went to dinner with Kathy and by the fact that she wants, or rather she needs to know. She's looking for something--for intimacy perhaps? She's wanting a confidence, a sense that there's something flowing between her and I beside medical decisions and therapy appointments and "how do you like your meal Mom?" In short, she wants the feeling again that we are sisters, friends, sharing secrets and experiences, even if hers are significantly limited at the present. She wants to feel home.

I am intrigued by this revelation. What is home for Mom? Where is home?

These questions have assumed significance for me of late as my brother and I are trying to discern where Mom can go once she has finished her rehabilitation at the Mirabella. "Home" has always been the goal but lately I have begin to wonder. Where is home for Mom? If I had to answer right now, I'd say home is not her house in Clyde Hill. That house is occupied by her daughter-in-law and Mom's grandchildren (two of whom are over the age of twenty). That house has never been Mom's, as ever since she moved in during the month of March her daughter-in-law and family have occupied this space. This is a complicated arrangement as Mom bought the house in February 2009 and the family live there by mutual agreement because my sister-in-law feels she doesn't have the economic resources to rent a place of her own, despite the fact that her job yielded her an income four times as much as I earn as a professor at Seattle University. Mom seems to agree, as she has with all of her children: economic independence has never been a trait nurtured by my mother. To be fair, my sister-in-law means no harm--she's just trapped by the economics of her life--a husband who is absent and contributes little towards the support of the family. Many people share this problem. Mom has supported my brother and sister-in-law for the duration of their marriage, so it's not surprising that they would expect that support to continue: this is Mom's issue perhaps even more so than it's their own. The ethical viability of this arrangement changed, however, once Mom became incapacitated by Alzheimer's and her financial resources dried up several years ago. As power of attorney, my brother and I have a new fiduciary role regarding Mom's well being. Spending Mom's money and living in her house rent-free are not designated or sanctioned activities, no matter how long Mom has funded their lifestyle. Mom is very short on funds but is not cognizant enough to understand that she is.

The reality is that her new house on Clyde Hill is not Mom's house, as it has none of the things Mom needs at present: a space where events and happenings revolve around Mom; a space where there is the quiet that Mom needs, freedom from the incessant comings and goings and needs of my brother's family; a space where there is reliable medical oversight because Mom has recurring and complex medical issues; a place where Mom can get the therapy and medical interventions she needs when she needs them and not when it's convenient. Chaos and neglect is how I would describe that household (however well intentioned) and these are not what Mom needs.

And yet, Mom must surely want to go home. Wouldn't anybody? Isn't home better than an institution like Mirabella or a "home" setting like an adult family home, two of the possibilities for Mom? The reality is, however, that Mom can't even return to the chaos of her house at present if she wanted because she is a two person assist, meaning that it takes two people to turn her, change her, lift her from bed to wheelchair and back again. For sixteen thousand dollars a month, Mom cannot pay for this level of care, care requiring two private pay caregivers. Compromises will need to be made.

I don't know how to talk to Mom about this, don't know how to tell her that "home" might not be the real estate she owns in Clyde Hill. So I wait, hoping that everything will become clear in time. It usually does.

But really what I think is this: home is not a geography, not a four walls we call our own. Home is more ephemeral--it's the things that bind us to each other. It's the son who lost his father in Alexie's poem--it's the words and the weeping, the loss and the joy that keep us aligned with those we love, whether these loved ones are breathing or ghosted. It's not the real estate we grab a hold of, not the walls that buzz with wasps.

Today was not one of Mom's best days. She slept through OT, whereas yesterday she batted yellow balls with all her might, sending them sailing across the room. Today she fell asleep with her scrapbook bowing open on her chest, where as yesterday we scoured everything from library cards and Seattle Public Library "Book Journey's for Virginia Anderson" to report cards from James Madison Junior High. On her report cards, Mom scored high in everything but "reading without lip movement or pointing when reading silently," "maintains good posture--stands and walks well," "takes care of wraps and uses them when the either the weather or room temperature requires" and "shows an interest in natural beauty and protecting useful plants and animal life." We laughed long and hard at these "deficits"--jiggling our bellies like we were watching Rowlin and Martin's "Laugh-In" when really it's just some old yellowed pamphlets, all signed, poignantly, by Mom's soon-to-be-dead mother, "Mrs. Eilert Anderson." The "reading without lip movement" got us howling particularly crazily--I mean how exactly do these qualities equate to good student performance? After this laugh, Mom even had energy to listen to Strauss and Liszt at the Oktoberfest celebration Mirabella staged late afternoon yesterday---notice the partially eaten pretzel and the toy German flag affixed to Mom's red shawl. Mom greedily ate the freshly baked pretzel (as I did) but refused the "beer"--saying it was "yuk" even though I assured her it was non-alchoholic.

Today Mom had visitors at noon and at 3:30 and by 4:00 Mom is asleep in her chair, her mouth open and lolling. There's nothing left of her but sleep. I rest with her on her bed, letting my legs curl and align themselves with the curvature of Mom's. I say nothing for at least an hour, except for when she groans or forces her face into a grimace. "Mom," I say, "are you alright?" She mumbles back to me incoherence, what I call "crazy talk"--"If I get later, I'll go...yah...I think it's enough...this is enough and then...I think it's more...and if we can get this...figure this out..." I can make no sense of this, but don't ask Mom for clarification--I'd rather she rest, even if it's an incomplete rest, a rest without REM sleep. Mom's face is not peaceful when she "sleeps." There's pain and confusion--she looks wounded, or at least this is what I see when I review her features (note the first photo of Mom).Every now and then she yawns and her eyes flutter open. I stare at her then, greedy for what I can see, as there's nothing else I'm doing here tonight but being here with Mom. No newspaper, no book, no scrapbook albums, no student papers. Just being.

I can hear rumblings in the hallway outside her door--the whirl of wheels rolling by and voices shouting partial truths like "this is too much...don't want her to be mad at me...good, good, good...push it, push it, push it." I have no idea what stories these witness, what lives they engage, what destinations they allude to.

When I do finally peel myself away from Mom's bed to retrieve some Tylenol for Mom's leg pain, I overhear Mom's nurse, Anne, conversing with a black-suited man at her station, someone sorely out of place due to both his attire and his formality. Who is this man? But it doesn't take long to discern--he's a representative from the funeral home, Bonney-Watson; one of the Mirabella patients died last night in Room HC 209 , two doors away from Mom's. I am reminded that there is more than one way to exit the Mirabella. Mom is a "lucky lady," as Lorna (Mom's caregiver) tells Mom, often but to no effect. Mom is fortunate, but I can see how this might be difficult to appreciate in Mom's present situation.

Just before dinner arrives--spare ribs with garlic mashed potatoes (something Mom will refuse to eat, yet again)--she opens her lids and says to me: "Like having everything here...here...you know...for us." She pauses then, letting me soak this in, and then finishes--"Feels like...you know...home." I smile, glad there is something I can give Mom.

Where is "home" for Mom? And how will Eric and I decide? For years he and I have struggled to resist Mom's emotional whims, her mercurial angers and reprimands, however well intended. Who can say what is best for Mom? And what if Mom doesn't agree? Can "home" be what we make it to be? Is home where Mom is, irrespective of the surroundings?

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