rapprochement: part three

It's the day after rain, rain so thick I was sure the air was a river, a flood moving from sky to ground, without heed for the damage water can occasion. Driving in my car was an act of levitation, my tires more often planing the wet freeway cement than securely spinning on the ground. But now, the sky is empty, but for the clouds that have yet to decide whether to stay put or rain to the ground. On my run this morning, I see leaves scuttle ahead of me--wide, sloppy maple fronds that lift with the wind, filling like sails on the reach. I speed up my stride, to see if I can out run the leaves, catch the wind, but always they flutter ahead of me, drawn on by the wind's invisible breath. Each time my shoes hit the cement, water streams up from the ground, feels like showers from a sprinkler, what my brothers and I use to do as children--running helter-skelter into the spray from Mom's backyard RainBird, screaming with each dousing as if this was water torture rather than heaven on a hot, sultry summer afternoon.

I've just picked the last of my garden--Leander and Queen Elizabeth roses, white anemones, purple monkshood, "hotlips" salvia. They look lovely, ornamental in their orange "California" vase, an anachronism of summer considering the weather we've been having. They'll be something to look forward to, something to welcome me home when I return tonight after seeing Mom.

Soon I will need to leave, to load up my car with ice chest (filled with an exorbitant amount of ice and one very cold Diet-Coke) and my carpet bag (literally made from a carpet and given to me by an East Indian-American friend of mine) where I bring with me the essentials--digital camera and extra batteries, note-taking paper, the day's newspaper (to read to Mom, including the day's crossword puzzle to share with Lorna) and a collection of poetry books (in case Mom wants to be read to) and three quarts of cold water. I bring the same thing every day, not ever knowing what I will need, what Mom may need from me. There's something comforting in this regime, suggesting that if I just get up each morning and do this very same thing, Mom will be there for me at the Mirabella, waiting. Without fail.

And soon, I will need to tell Mom what I have learned--that Peter's association with the Vineyard Church of North Phoenix is a matter of history. The information my cousin provided me with is three years old. I call to the church's directory reveals that Peter is no longer affiliated with the church. When I discover this I can't discern how I feel. Disappointment? Relief? Fear? Maybe all of these. But above all, I experience dread, knowing that Mom will be disappointed--so much seems to depend for her on finding my lost brother. It doesn't take me long to dial the number for the "Adult Group Home" associated with Peter's name. No one answers--it's Sunday morning and probably everyone is at church--but a message machine indicates that I have reached the number for "Steven and Linda Dixon." I don't hesitate one second before leaving a long winded message that I am desperately seeking Peter. "Will you hep me?" I implore. "Will you help me find my long lost brother?" I have no idea why Peter left or if there is any reason why "Steven and Linda' and the Vineyard Church would decide to help me or not. These are just words on a tape or symbols on a digital recording. I've left them there, on a stranger's phone, and there is nothing else I can do. Either they will call me back or not, help me or not. It's now in someone else's hands.

Rapprochement...to seek connection, to re-connect after separation. What I've been doing for a very long time.

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

rapprochement: part two

When I tell Mom about Peter, she is stunned, speechless. I do this over the phone because I'm so excited when I read cousin Dan's email. I say--"Mom, I think I've found Peter, or rather cousin Dan has found Peter." There's silence then, at least ten seconds of it. I say--"Mom are you still there? " More silence and then she says--"You have?" as a question, like she's not sure she heard me right or can't believe I actually did what I said I would do--find my lost brother. "Yes, Mom," I assure her, "I know where he lives."

When I get to the Mirabella, Mom's tired--she's had a hard day, but really no harder than other days--PT and OT and sometimes ST. But for some reason Mom is exhausted. Her neck is crooked to the right dramatically--and when I try to tilt it back to a "normal" position it won't budge, it's frozen in this bent position. Two rounds of Tylenol don't seem to help with the pain. In PT she does well, despite having no energy. Beverly is full of praise as Mom begins to turn the foot pedals of the bicycle partially on her own. Now, instead of her right and left foot doing none of the work, she's doing 29% of the work of spinning with her left foot and 45% with her right foot. Her effort is excruciating. Nonetheless, this is progress! I can't help but form a comparison in my mind, however, with my own spinning earlier this morning--30 minutes of sweating and panting on a bicycle in a music-filled room for a total of 12 miles and 410 calories. I may have gone farther than Mom but we've both worked hard. Then Mom attempts to do her standing drill--Beverly lines her up with the parallel bars and begins to work to get Mom to tilt forward out of her seat. It takes ten minutes to get her to the place where she is couching-half standing, with Beverly carrying most of the weight. It's a good thing Beverly is a strong woman. From the sidelines it's hard to tell whether this is a success or a step backwards or more of the same. I ask Beverly--"So how is she doing?" Beverly says--"Well, she stood for 20 seconds with just one assist this time....as opposed to standing a minute with a two-person assist last week....so I'd say this is progress." I feel relieved--but there was nothing about Mom's struggle with gravity and paralysis that looked easy or successful. Sometimes sight is deceiving.

Back in HC 201, Mom continues to slump with exhaustion in her wheel chair. I ask her if she wants to lie down, she says--"No." I ask her if she wants to watch a movie, she says--"No." Finally, after sitting there for a few minutes, I show Mom the document Dan sent me. She's quiet, saying nothing. I ask her--"What do you want me to do?"

When she doesn't answer, I give her some choices: "I can call him...or help you call him...or we could write a letter together....or we can do nothing at all."

Finally she says--"I don't want to...you know...scare him...scare him away." Her answer is stunning. I think--after all this time, she's still afraid of losing him for good, losing him to place where she can never find him. But isn't this where he's been for years? Somewhere she can't find him?

And then Mom says the thing that I can't get out of my head, the thing that makes me want to burn these four sheets of paper from the Vineyard Church and never think of Peter again: "A letter won't work," she says, "we need to come with it." With what, Mom?" I ask her. "You know....with it." No, I don't know Mom. Tell me." "It," she nearly screams at me, rubbing her fingers together of her left hand, an age-old gesture of want, of greed. And I get it then--money. She's saying that "we" will need to come with money if he's going to talk with her at all. And I think--this is not a son. This is a monster.

By now Mom is staring straight ahead and slightly up, not looking me in the eye. Her breathing is hard, like she just labored up a steep hill without adequate breath or water. The fingers of both her hands are laboring the trim of her coverlet again. She's working the fabric like the beads of a rosary--her customary worry mode ingrained from her childhood where she helped her best friend, Mary Margarete, say Catholic penance for her weekly sins. Like the good Catholic that she isn't but could have been, Mom's hoping that somehow, someway a "happy" ending can be found, no matter how much damage, how many "sins" have been occasioned. Everything can be forgiven, with the right words, the right amount of money. Anything is possible.

It takes work not to react to her, not to tell her what I really think about Peter and "the money." So instead of saying--stop worrying about the fucking money and focus on the man--I ask her calmly what she wants to know about him, what she wants to say to him.

Mom responds with--"I want to tell you about things...things you need to know."

I realize now that Mom is dictating a letter, the one she wants me to send to Peter.

"Should we start with 'Dear Peter' I ask her? "'Dear Son'"?

Mom nods her head to both of these, something she's been doing of late--when I give her a choice she assents to all the options, leaving me the burden of discerning what she really wants, needs.

"I'm dying," she resumes. Mom's words stop me, as I can hardly believe the word "dying" has left her lips. It's not something Mom has directly admitted to me. "And I want to tell you things" she continues, "things you know...you need to know."

After this amazing bit of clarity, Mom's speech begins to falter: "He'll say...want to know...won't come without it." "What do you mean Mom?" I ask her. "Want to know these things," she repeats. But I continue to be stumped. "What things Mom?" She replies--"What I say" and when she gets these words out she's grinding her vocal cords with the effort, her frustration is that great. We're both quiet for a minute, each collecting our thoughts, our emotions.

"I think it's time you gave some respect to your mother," she resumes smoothly, like the previous minutes of frustrations had never happened. Parental "respect," I'm thinking, is not something my oldest brother is known for.

"And how would he 'demonstrate' this Mom?"

"By sitting down and talking to me," she says quickly, like this should be an obvious thing.

"I am making a study," she continues, but then corrects herself--"I have taken some effort to find you and it will make me very..."

"Very 'what', Mom?"

"Make me..." she repeats again but cannot seem to finish her sentence. By this time I'm as frustrated as Mom. I simply have to know what emotion she will feel, as I couldn't guess at this point as to what her emotions are about my brother. She's both cynical and childishly hopeful. Both hurt and angry. Both victimized and victimizing. What will she feel? But instead of an answer, there's more of my mom's half-finished sentences--"I'd like to...I don't know what...How can we get..."

"What is it that you want Mom," I ask her again. "Tell me what."

Mom says nothing. My powers as a physiogamist fail me. Into our silence, Mom passes gas, a noisy uncomfortable fart. "I'm so sorry," she says with a small smile of apology, "I've been making a racket." With both giggle with this, glad perhaps for the diversion from the task at hand. "It's okay Mom," I tell her, "I can handle it." I then see her face scrunch with effort, becoming wrinkled and creased like an apple left to sweeten too long on the tree, as she attempts to collect herself, her thoughts.

"I would like to give you," Mom resumes, "if we had been able to have time..." And I'm thinking--not "the money" again. I just can't listen to her talk of the money. "You do remember," I interrupt her, "that you gave him an annuity trust, to be set up upon your death." Mom nods "Yes" but I suspect she doesn't remember, though she doesn't let on.

"I need to explain things," she continues, "if you could have been involved along the way..." Mom's voice trails off but then resumes again. "I'm sure there are times when you needed things," she says, "but you never let me know." And I'm thinking--this is flat out wrong. He did let you know but you said "No" out of necessity as you had so little cash yourself. But I say none of this to her. What's the point?

At this moment, Mom stops talking as Lorna comes back into the room with a JC Penney's flier open in her hands. "My dear, look at this," Lorna says with enthusiasm, oblivious to the weighty conversation we've been having--"one curtain thirty d-o-l-l-a-r-s and the second eighty-eight cents." She's pointing with her right hand excitedly, wanting Mom and I to see the amazing deals advertised in the "HUGE" sale at JC Penney's. Lorna is a shopper, a frugal shopper. She knows how to find good things for cheap. Shopping for value is her skill, I think, not something Mom ever learned to do. Despite Lorna's talents, however, curtains hold no interest for Mom or me.

After Lorna's JC Penney's extravaganza, Mom is distracted, incommunicable. It's not Lorna's fault, her timing's just unfortunate. I realize there will be no more conversation about Peter tonight.

As I busy myself to leave, Mom has slipped into a fog of confusion, her sentences jumbled beyond deciphering. "I'm going to there," she says, then follows this up with--"I haven't moved in yet." And I'm thinking--where does she think she is, where does she think she's moving to?

I never know how much weight to place on Mom's words, as language is not her friend. In fact, words are her least reliable communication. And yet words are what I desperately need from Mom, after having made do with so few for so long.

Mom's a desert of pure feeling, no language in sight.

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

rapprochement

Dan, my cousin, is the one who found it--the address for my brother, or at least someone I think is my brother. I've been searching for days with no avail. But Dan emails me this morning with a four page document entitled: "The Vineyard Church North Phoenix Guide to SMALL GROUPS." Pages one to three detail what a "small group" is (apparently a study grouped around specific church issues in an intimate environment). Page four, however, is what interests me--four "Adult Home Groups" are listed, including addresses and phone numbers for some. And this is where Peter's name appears--"Peter Schuler"--along with the description that 'This group will focus on the study of the Gospel of John, prayer, fellowship and outreach to the homeless." It seems that Peter is not the "host" (Steve and Linda Dixon have this responsibility) but rather the location, suggesting that he lives there at "8510 North 50th Dr., Glendale, AZ."

When I download this document off my email I feel excitement--at last I have an address for him--but also something else, something I am trying to identify. Fear perhaps? Worry? Anger? A part of me believes that this can lead to no where good. If Peter wanted to be in contact with my mom, he would have. After all, he knows where she lives. I haven't noticed any letters or phone calls coming Mom's way from Arizona.

Every time Peter has conversed with Mom since he left in 1979 it has been about money--about his need for it and why he hasn't received his "share" of Dad's estate. Why would it be any different now? But really, why does this bother me--this is my Mom's business, right? If she wants to talk with him--to find closure for all these years of pain and separation, that's her death-bed perogative.

I suppose it's "natural"--wanting to make amends, and yet I doubt that Mom really has this in mind. When ever I have spoken with her of late about Peter, there's never the word "apology" (or any version of this word) in her speech. Instead, it's been about telling him there are "some things he needs to know." Mom wants to reconnect but only on her terms. My belief is that the only thing that would reach Peter is a humbling apology--a recognition that she hurt him, that both she and Dad hurt him, by their lack of support of his decisions, by their need to "control" his life. Anything short of this is not likely to hit the mark. And even this may not be enough. So, instead, of emotional support, my parents opted for financial dependence: reluctantly giving Peter money, paying for his rent, basically enabling his dysfunctional lifestyle and decisions. After Dad died, Mom did with him what she tried to do with me (but didn't succeed) but did manage to succeed with my other brother, Eric: manipulate life choices by offering or retracting financial resources and emotional support. This is the worst thing a parent can do to their child, or at least one of the worst things. It's crippling.

After all this time, what can Mom expect? That Peter will come to her bedside on bended knee to make amends? Peter is not a stupid man--he knows how old Mom is--if he wanted such a homecoming he would have sought it before now. Parents don't live forever.

But he is Mom's son. And it is her end of life, not mine. So I have found him for her, that is with the gracious help of my cousin (the youngest child of my father's sister, Lu).

Now what do I do, say?

I have longed for Peter's homecoming, mourned him nearly every day of my life. Felt his absence as a death. Wanted him resurrected back to our family. And now, faced with the possibility of my finding him, contacting him, I know only one thing is probable: an angry 50-something man will reenter my life, Mom's life, demanding to know why he has been so abused, so financially neglected. He will circle like a vulture. I don't know if I can face this, don't know if I have the strength to acknowledge that the brother I once knew, once loved more than anything else, is now the angry, supposedly "Godly" man who lives in Glendale running an"adult home group" for "The Vineyard Church of North Phoenix." Haven't I suffered enough? Hasn't Mom suffered enough? Can I face seeing Mom's disappointment?

But maybe I'm wrong. About Peter, about everything.

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

girl talk

"It's the nature of men," Lorna says. "Sex...sex...sex." Mom and I laugh, startled into glee by Lorna's irreverent words. Mom's laugh is huge, her mouth open so wide she could be doing any number of things--yawning, screaming, catching flies--but instead it's laughter coming out, a screeching, hoarse sort of noise, reflecting how rarely Mom laughs now since her Alzheimer's and her stroke. But why should we be surprised by Lorna's words--Lorna's always the pillar of honesty and, after all, there is some modicum of truth here, isn't there?

Mom, Lorna and I have been talking about marriage, and in particular the early days of a marriage. I've been asking Mom about her and Dad, wanting to know what these days were like for her. I ask her--"Did you like being first married to Dad?" She answers--"I don't know"--and I think--how can one not know something like this?

When I think about my own marriage I remember the ridiculous joy--the sheer pleasure at simply being appurtenant to this person, with him forever, or so I imagined. And then the intense pains of adjustment--how my husband and I rarely understood each other, coming to our marital world with such different values, expectations. A collision at best. I'm astonished, really, at how unprepared I was, despite being thirty-four years old and living on my own for so long.

But Mom and Lorna...what were their experiences? I ask Lorna--"Were you prepared for marriage? "No," she answers quickly, her answer not requiring much thought apparently--something she has already worried over, pondered. Lorna is from the Philippines--born there, grew up there, married there, taught there in the local school district of her province for thirty years. And then she retired and immigrated to the US. She has three children and more grandchildren than I can keep track of. Some of them live in Seattle, but most live in Vancouver, the place she travels to most every weekend with her husband--Lorna's husband driving (Lorna doesn't drive) and Lorna riding shotgun as they wait for hours every week to get through the border, their car packed with 50 pounds of beef, 30 pounds of chicken, dozens of eggs, bags of vegetables and rice. Food is three times as expensive in Vancouver, so out of love Lorna and her husband provide a shopping service for her family. Now that they have their Nexus pass (as of last week), and can travel quickly over the border without waiting, she is limited to 20 pounds of beef, 20 pounds of chicken, 20 pounds of pork and so on. Apparently, customs is worried that, while Lorna is not a security risk (hence her Nexus pass), she may have turned "commercial," when really all she's doing is being kind to her children and their families.

"I eloped, my dear, " Lorna adds. "Got married when I was nineteen.""Oh my dear, such a fuss. I was not ready for marriage." She laughs then, not a laugh of pleasure, I imagine, but one of disbelief. One's marriage is a reason for disbelief--so many years ago, lifetimes, I'm sure. Nearly inaccessible, those memories, these emotions.

I eloped too, but I don't say this aloud. This is still a point of great pain, humiliation for my mom--not something we have ever been able to talk about, work through. It was the trigger point for Mom's departure from my life, so many years ago. I got married on Stewart Island in the San Juans--we flew in (there's no ferry and no formal airport) on the twenty-second of April fifteen years ago and pledged a life together while we gazed adoringly off into the Gulf Islands and Canada beyond. I remember the surprising heat that day, while it was April, it was hot, sticky--my nylons (something I never wear now, no matter what) my very own portable sweat lodge. The vintage dress I wore--embroidered silk from 1910--slicked down tight to my skin, despite its loose drape. We stood there, like every couple, full of hope, excitement. And like every couple we were deeply disappointed.

"Did you know about sex, Mom," I ask her at this point, now venturing into dangerous waters, "I mean, before you got married?" I add. Mom does not feel comfortable talking about sex, particularly her own sexuality. Never has been. Prudish, I have always thought, this reticence of hers. But I feel emboldened by Lorna's presence. "Did you talk about this with your girlfriends, your mother?" I add. I know that by the time Mom got married in 1948, Berentina had been dead for three years, long before such mother-daughter confidences might have occurred. Mom got married on September 26th--she remembers this clearly, no matter what day I ask her this, what hour. This information is firmly imprinted into her brain tissue and synapses.

"No" Mom adds quickly, getting the words, the taint of sex, out of her mouth as quickly as possible. "I knew nothing." And I remember how Mom never had these discussions with me either, not when I reached puberty and certainly not when I was engaged to my husband. She left me to fend for myself.

I think then of my mom, as she appeared in my favorite photo of her--she's been rowing with Tommy and now luxuriates in the bow of a skiff, leaning in close to the camera. She's nineteen or twenty and how clearly she exudes sex, sexualized glamor really, and yet sex is the furthest thing from her mind. In fact, it's the thing she's most afraid of, always has been. Mom's a Calvinist at heart, despite her Methodist upbringing--she's steeped in an Augustinian fear of the body as a sexual being. The body is something she eschews, whether it's her clitoris or her hamstrings. Something to be controlled, kept under wraps. Not something to be looked at, talked about.

"Did you like sex?" I ask Mom then. Actually, I can't believe I've asked her this. And really, I never would have but for Lorna's easy words about marriage and sex.

Into the wake of my wonderment, Mom says--"Wasn't fun." And I think, this is how the world has changed for women, or at least one of the ways. Sex can be "fun" because it can happen on women's terms. Sometimes.

Lorna adds--we didn't have birth control, so it was...bam... bam...bam...three babies in three years, and as she says this she slaps her thigh three times with her right hand.

"After that," I ask Lorna, "what did you do?"

"Avoid as much as possible," she answers with a wide smile.

"Not much awareness about birth control then," I say aloud, confirming Lorna's revelation, and then Mom unexpectedly adds--"I always thought that was kind of goofy." I'm thinking, what's goofy about birth control and then I realize what she's reflecting upon is her own discomfort about sex and the the body. Anything having to do with these issues--like how to alter bodily functions to prevent pregnancy--appears "unnatural" to her, appears "goofy."

"Do you think sex is a 'right'...something husbands are entitled to by reason of being married?" I've addressed my question to Lorna and I wait, curious for what she will say. After a moment of two, Lorna nods her head "Yes" but doesn't say anything more. And I think--perhaps this too has changed for women. Sex is not a "right," it's a benefit that comes from intimacy, from doing the work of keeping a marriage alive, healthy. Their is the real choice to leave, a choice for women now, and not just men. I'm glad for just this moment that I'm not a nineteenth century or even an early-twentieth-century woman. And yet, I know how these ideas linger--how Lorna and Mom's expectations about sexuality in marriage still circulate today, surface as men fight to stave off the erosion of patriarchy.

And then I remember Lorna's comment--"the nature of men"--that men are somehow perceived as inherently hyper-sexual and hence having urgent sexual needs. And then, how this biological "fact" is seen as justifying men's sexual behavior, good, bad or otherwise. Just a brief look at mistaken assumptions regarding rape goes to show how powerful this cultural learning can be about men's sexual needs--that somehow men must be satisfied. Women have sexual needs. They are due the respect of having these needs met on their own terms.

I think about my father--what a creative but uncompromising man he could be at times with his bombastic ideas and certitude about how the world should be lived. And I think about Lorna's husband--a man turned religious convert (zealot) twenty years into their marriage and how this has made him rigid, cruel, someone to avoid at all costs for the last ten years (there's a reason why Lorna now works as a 24/7 caregiver five days a week). And I think about my own marriage to an eccentric gifted man who nonetheless rarely considered those around him, but for how they might bend to his needs. All of them--not "bad" men but men acculturated to seize what is theirs. Not a woman's learning, at least not my generation, not be mother's generation.

Mom and I look through the photo album I've brought with me--a plaid wool-covered binder that's about six inches square. It's Mom's, but I borrowed it, needing to search for my parent's secrets as Mom has so little to reveal. There's page after page of snapshots of Mom and Dad right before their marriage and then in the early days of their marriage, before Peter is born. I hold the album on my knees, sitting close enough to Mom so that she can see the photos too. Some of the photos are faded, some are less than clear.

There's pictures of her and Dad while on a trip to Portland to visit Dad's family--his father, Gus, and his brother, Chuck, and sister, Lu. There's pictures from a road trip Mom took with my father and her Dad, Deda, before they got married. When I question Mom about this, she blushes and asserts that Deda was the chaperon....that "I wouldn't have gone without Daddy." They pose with friends, people who have slipped from Mom's memory. She looks at one picture of a couple dressed in ski pants and standing in snow and says--"I know...this is...this is..." but can't conjure the names. I feel the loss of this, heavily. There's no getting back to this moment, this couple, that experience. It's gone because Mom's memory is gone. There's a picture of Mom and Dad standing by the Peace Arch at the Canadian border (a trip they took soon after being married)--Lorna recognizes this monument, an attraction she sees ever weekend as she and her husband make their familial commute. They look so content, Mom and Dad, just pleased to be with the other. Both are slim, in good health, and their lips curl with the kind of happiness that I can't ever remember seeing on either of their faces when I was growing up. There's even pictures of them building the house in Medina--snapshots of half-built rooms and ladders leading to not-yet-built roofs.

My favorite, though, is a picture of Mom, standing on a beach--she can't remember where. She's in one of her ubiquitous sweater sets, with a white Peter Pan collar, and a wrap skirt of gabardine. Her hair is very much how it is now--short bangs and a slight curl at the shoulders. Her body's facing away from the camera but her face and shoulders are bending into the viewer's line of sight. The photo is overexposed, so their's no richness here, only the quality of Mom's smile. Her teeth gleam white against her lip-sticked lips. Everything about this photo says--"I am happy, we are happy, we are happy to be together." Where did this "happy" woman go? How did marriage, life, children erode an essential fact: that my parents chose each other and were glad of it.

When I go to leave, Mom is agitated, she has been on and off during the whole visit. She feels she "did poorly" in OT. Johna, the OT, wheeled her to the dining room for lunch, a place Mom does not like to be for meals. Mom spilled a glass of water, wetting her pants and bottom. She's so flustered that she can't use her fork, can't begin to figure out how to eat the food on her plate. She's mortally embarrassed. Nothing on her plate gets touched.

"Mom," I say. "It was just one OT session. You've been doing well otherwise."

No," she says, "no, it was bad...really bad."

It occurs to me then that Mom lives by a strict code of what is "good" and what is "bad." New people Mom meets fall into the category of "a nice man" or "not a nice man." An unsuitable husband her daughter wants to marry falls into the category of a "good match" or a "bad match." A son who behaves painfully and disappears becomes inscribed as "a good son" or a "bad son." This is the world according to Mom, an unforgiving world where one's behavior always carries the possibility for catastrophic loss. Perhaps it's the unexpected death of her mother that produced this sense of fear in my mom--that everything could turn out badly unless strict rules are followed, that everyone could leave you unless you hang on hard enough, long enough. The need for control, or rather the appearance of control. The world is that frightening.

When I close the door for HC 201 behind me I can hear the low mummer of Lorna and Mom's voices--girl talk, I think. Lorna is the friend Mom hasn't had since college. She's the companion Mom has been hungry for but didn't know it amidst the self-enclosed world of her marriage. I feel grateful just then for Lorna, for Mom, for the second chance I've been given--the chance to chat with my mom as a friend, not just as a daughter. The girl talk we never had.

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

connectivity

Red letter day yesterday--no Internet connection and hence no blog. Apparently the Internet "card" for my computer had come loose inside the belly of the computer itself. How this can happen while the computer is at rest on my counter is a thing of mystery. A friend of mine figured out the problem today, so I am eternally grateful, as it's not anything I would have known how to resolve.

There are limits to connectivity--many kinds of limits. Aside from Internet "cards" there's the issue of data retrieval--as in data bases to access in finding Peter. An Internet search for "Peter Ross Schuler" via Zabasearch" reveals three possible entries for my brother: Medina, WA, Lynville, IA and Ketchum, ID. I easily rule out the first one--Peter hasn't lived in the family residence since 1976. The third, Ketchum, has a phone number that I immediately dial, expecting what I find--a disconnect message: "This number is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this number in error please..." Peter and his wife did live in Ketchum, but this was many years ago--in the 1980s. The second listing, "IA" (is this Iowa, Indiana?) seems an improbable location for my brother, lover of hiking and skiing and all things out-of-doors. And then, as I look further, I notice the birth date is wrong for the Peter of "IA": it's Oct 1931 when in fact Peter is only 56 years old, having a birthday of February 1953. I realize then for the first time--Peter is exactly the same age as my father when he was killed in 1979. This realization makes me stop and reflect. Shudder. Brings my father's death back to me. Peter and my father's birthday are just days apart. Peter is as old as the father I remember, as the father I can visualize.

Then I notice there are thirty-two listings for "Peter Schuler" from places as far away as San Antonio, Texas, Knoxville, Tennessee, Merrimack, New Hampshire (never heard of this one) and Fargo, North Dakota. It seems my brother could be anywhere.

When I relay this information to Mom--that I've done some checking but have yet to find a firm location for Peter--Mom looks devastated. It seems she's been counting on finding him. Eventually. This is not something I'd realized. I remind her that I've just begun--that there are other databases to check and that there's always the prospect of a private detective. I'm not giving up yet.

I ask Mom--what would you say to him if you could write a letter or better yet see him walk through this door" I've asked this of Mom before, never getting a clear answer. Mom pauses, looks perplexed, says nothing. Then she adds--"I'd say...remember...you know...the years..." What years, Mom?" I ask her. "You know...THE YEARS...the ones he was here...you know...in Seattle." Wow, I'm thinking, Mom still believes in blood--that those first twenty-five years or so of his life could be a stronger a tie than the more recent twenty-one years. I'm not convinced.

Mom has a truncated memory regarding my eldest brother. I remind her of the many years Dad and then my Mom (after Dad died) paid rent for my brother and his schizophrenic wife, Heather, to live in scenic (expensive) Sun Valley, Idaho. My father first did this as a precaution, I imagine, as a way to keep my brother around and in their lives, even if in a dysfunctional way. I mean, what business do parents have in supporting a twenty-eight year old married son in the lap of luxury? Peter's hostility and resentment over my parent's rejection of his choice of spouse, religion and lifestyle made it difficult to communicate; the only thing that talked was money. But then, what business does a son have in disappearing, ditching his parents? Mom too was afraid of this loss. When I ask her--"Why did you do it, pay his rent, take his abusive words"--she's silent and then she says to me one word--"Fear." Fear of losing my brother for good.

Something else I remember: Peter and Heather "camping out" with tent and cook stove in my father's Medical Dental Building sometime during the year before he died. Mom has no memory of this.

Another memory: dozens of angry letters sent to first Dad and then Mom (after Dad died), letters condemning my parents to hell for their "ungodliness." Mom has no memory of this either.

I'm beginning to wonder what Mom does have a memory for. What reason does she assign for why her son has been gone since 1979?

Mom stumps me then, asking--"Is he...you know...is he...de...dead?"

This possibility had not occurred to me as, like Mom, I have naively assumed that someday there would be time to resolve what has yet to be resolved with my brother. I think quickly now, knowing that I want to assure Mom that this is not the case: she has become so invested in the idea of finding him, resurrecting him.

"No, Mom," I say. "I don't think this is the case."

"Why?" she asks.

"Because...because...this would have come up on the database--they check death records as a source of information about people." Fortunately I'd noticed this fact when I'd glanced in the margins of the "Zabasearch"--"Want to know more about the death of a loved one?"

"Oh," Mom says, placated for the time being. She comes back to this question three more times, however, before I leave for the day. Apparently Peter's death is something she's thought about, something she worries about. Maybe something that keeps her awake at night, keeps her crying when she has no words to explain why she's so sad.

I ask her again--"What would you say to him? What should we write to him?" Like Sunday, she has no words to give me about this. I begin to be concerned, as I'm positive we can find Peter, if finding is what we want to do. He's had no interest in contacting us but I don't think he's hiding. But once found, what will she say to my brother? What would any mother say after so many years of silence?

Dinner comes--"Pork Chop with Peppercorn Sauce, Roasted Potato and Sauteed Corn." Mom is not a big fan of pork chops, so I wonder about this choice. And, in fact, when presented with eating her chop, Mom adamantly declines after one bite. Lorna manages to get another three or four bites of potato and/or corn into her stomach, but after this, Mom refuses everything. She uses her "No Way" voice, the strident whine that lets Lorna and I know she's reached the end of her rope, she's not going to cooperate any further. She even refuses her apple juice, screwing up her face into her raisin-look (as in shriveled and sour-pussed), like juice is the grossest thing imaginable. Lorna cajoles with--"Just one more bite, lovely lady" and Mom snaps back with--"No...no way." They're at an impasses. After a pause, Lorna gracefully says--"Okay" with her Filipino accent, a lovely musical tone that lifts up sharply with the second syllable. Mom's tray is moved away from her bed, waiting for the nurse's aid to take it back to the kitchen. When the tray's still sitting there after five minutes, Mom starts to mutter: "Take it away...you know...take it. The thing." For some reason, the sight of this tray is upsetting to Mom, as this happens most everyday. Some days I actually pick up the tray and take it from the room myself--just to get her to stop her whine about "the thing."

"Drink this," Lorna urges, bringing a glass of water to Mom's lips. Mom's fluid intake has drastically dropped since she's been in the Mirabella. For some reason, she just doesn't want to drink. The consequences are serious--dehydration and increased risk of UTIs, both of which are serious for people my mom's age. As it turns out, I was correct in suspecting a UTI--Mom is both dehydrated and under siege by an infection in her urinary track, something which may account for her ill-humor and general nastiness last week. Her doctor started her on antibiotics the night before last.

"Drink more, my dear," Lorna encourages, checking to see that today Mom has drunk 200 ml of water: the difference between 900 ml and 700 ml on the iced water pitcher that's brought to her fresh every several hours. Not nearly enough.

"Do you want to have babies, my dear?" Lorna asks, referring to Mom's birthing of her BMs. However gross this may sound, it's a gentile way to talk about Mom's problem with constipation due to her neurogenic bladder, a recurrent issue requiring the indignity of suppositories every three days. "Drink water, my dear," Lorna adds, so you will have less pain in the birthing."

We all laugh then, a genuine guffaw, that crescendos as it ricochets around the room from Lorna to me to Mom and then back to Lorna again. I'm relieved that finally Mom can laugh at herself, laugh with us about her bodily ailments. It's a form of connectivity, this laughter, something that's been missing for many many months. Feels like progress to me.

Lorna and I then chuckle about how many times we go pee due to drinking large amounts of water: we talk about this in an attempt to encourage Mom to drink, to get her to see that she too could drink a lot of water. Mom says--"Keep track." Lorna and I look puzzled. "Keep track of what, Mom?" "You know...the pee," she adds. And then I really laugh, doubled-over-almost-pee-my-pants-kind-of-laugh, realizing she's suggesting we keep a tally of how many times Lorna and I must make the journey to the toilet during a day's time. A contest of sorts. This is the funniest thing Mom's said all week.

When I get up to leave Mom, I notice she's tired. We had PT and OT today. In OT Mom picked up brightly colored cones for nearly thirty minutes, reaching over, picking up, letting go into a large blue bowl--a blue heaven for all correctly retrieved cones. Mom likes this game but it's also frustrating, exhausting. Becky (OT) and I can see her concentration--how her brain almost revs and rumbles like an engine as it works to get her body to cooperate.

At one point, Mom stops and says--"Nothing is automatic."

Becky and I are astonished, both at Mom's insight and at her word choice. "Automatic" Becky repeats. "Yes, that's right Dorin. Everything is hard. Nothing is automatic."

Moving a limb is complicated," Becky continues, "more complicated than it looks. There's positioning the limb in space--information given by your joint receptors. And then there's the motor function itself--getting your muscles to cooperate. And then finally there's sensation, paying attention to light touch, deep touch, to pain. All of these things go into moving your arm to grab one of these cones."

By the time Becky is done explaining, she has lost Mom, probably lost her back at the word "joint receptors." But this is something Mom is good at--hiding the fact that she can't follow, can't understand. She's been doing it for years and this fact makes me inexplicably sad, knowing that for such a long time Mom has been living in an abbreviated world, a world where words and ideas fly by her unread, unexamined. She compensates by nodding her head, looking engaged when really things are a muddle. What must this be like? Nonetheless, I'm glad Becky has explained--helps me to understand why each move of Mom's arm is daunting challenge, a challenge that might result in either her completion of the task or not. Every attempt is a gamble. Mom's courage in taking this gamble, again and again is unbelievable.

As I kiss Mom goodbye, she and Lorna are busily getting her second and third blankets arranged on her bed. Mom hates to be cold. She's got three smears of lipstick on her face, places where I've loved her two cheeks and chin in the hopes of telling her just how much I love her, need her, can't do without her. Connectivity.

What my brother Peter is missing...and he doesn't even know it.

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

motherlove

"I didn't know she was...you know...going to...to...be gone," Mom says.

We are both sitting in Mom's bed, Mom actually in bed and me on her bed with my back resting against what passes for a foot board. We've been looking at pictures of Mom's mother, Berentina, who died in 1945 when Mom was twenty-one. Usually Mom begins to cry when we talk about her mother, but today she's able to say a few things more before collapsing into tears.

Berentina was hospitalized during the summer of 1945, but Mom can't remember which month, except that she was going to summer school at the UW. So it had to have been June or July or early August. What comes through strongly is Mom's regret--how she can hardly live with the fact that her mom was there at the hospital (not sure which one, but definitely in Seattle) and Mom was occupied with school and homework. Mom's father, Deda, was also working during this time at Star Lighting. So the long and short of it was that Berentina was by herself much of the time, primarily, it seems, because no one understood the seriousness of her illness.

"He was bad," Mom says then, unexpectedly. "Who was bad?" I ask her. "You know...that man...the one with her." "What man?" I ask, hoping to get at the identity of this "man" from a different angle. "You know...the one looking after her." Then it occurs to me who she's talking about--the doctor attending to Berentina when she was ill that summer. "Oh, you mean Berentina's doctor?" "Yes," Mom says in return, "Yes...that man." And as I hear her say these words I can register the venom in her voice--the true hate that radiates her vocal chords. And I think--wow, after all this time, Mom still reviles this man, the doctor who was not forthcoming. I need to understand more about this.

"What did she die of, Mom?" And when I ask Mom this I'm almost certain she will begin to cry. Marguerite was this way also: an image of Marguerite holding a wet dishtowel (or was it something else?) wringing her hands and sobbing into the middle of her linoleum kitchen floor, not long before Alzheimer's claimed her brain cells. Such grief these two sisters carried, unresolved pain. But Mom surprises me--no tears wet her face. Not yet.

Mom sputters now, her lips moving but I can't tell what she's trying to say. "In here," she says finally, pointing to her chest. "A heart attack, Mom?" But to this she shakes her head "No." "Cancer? Another nod "No." "Pneumonia?" I ask her then. Mom says--"No" again but then begins to form her lips into a "B" and I'm reminded of what I'd forgotten--that Berentina had chronic bronchitis.

"She wouldn't have died," Mom continues. "Not today."

"So it was pneumonia," I say back to her, "fluid in her lungs that killed her?" Mom says nothing, just stares at me. I'm thinking, this was before the era of ventilators which artificially keep people alive when fluid in their lungs prevents adequate oxygenation of their blood.

"How long was she in the hospital?" I ask her.

Mom's silent and then starts mumbling again, something I can't understand. So I prompt her--two weeks...three weeks? She nods her head "Yes" to both. "Which?" I ask, a bit frustrated. Mom says nothing.

"So she was by herself...for most the time?" To this, Mom answers a definite "No" "There were...you know...people there," she adds. "Like in the ICU--nurses?" "Yes," she nods again.

My questions and Mom's incomplete answers go on for several more minutes. What I deduce is this: Berentina had chronic bronchitis and during the summer of 1945 she suffered a particularly bad attack of this, an attack that resulted in her hospitalization. It's unclear whether she was hospitalized for the pneumonia or whether her pneumonia occurred after her hospitalization for bronchitis. In either case, the family was not aware of the seriousness of her illness. Again, not clear if it was the doctor's refusal to be forthcoming concerning the risks or whether he was simply incompetent and had no idea she was that ill. The end result was that Berentina died alone and without her family's full understanding of how ill she was. This is grief, I think, the kind that lingers. Lasts.

I consider now whether to ask anything further, wondering how much more I can prod before the floodgates open. But what is there to lose? If I don't ask, I won't know. When Mom dies her mother dies with her, as I have no independent knowledge of Berentina, no way to preserve the past. I never met Berentina and my grandfather Deda died when I was eight. And isn't this what my questions are all about--my attempts to keep Berentina and Deda alive, somehow, despite their plot and headstone in Walsheli Cemetery?

"What was it like Mom...when she died?"

And then it happens, what I've known all along, the tears that would end our conversation. Mom's face scrunches with the effort of weeping, leaving not a square inch of her face untouched. Her skin sears red and wounded, like a burn where just the mere touch of oxygen causes unimaginable pain. Tears ooze from her sores. Almost too awful to gaze upon. I'm sorry I've pained her...but, at the same time, I want her to tell me everything, tell me the stories so I too can know this miraculous love--this motherlove Mom has for her mom, the love that survives Berentina's death, survives sixty-four years of living motherless. Maybe I too can learn how to keep Mom "alive" despite the absence of a breathing self, a body. Maybe I too can learn to resurrect Mom in my head, when there's nothing else left for me to do.

Mom's dinner comes now--"Chicken Penne with Roasted Tomatoes and Onions." Yum--this is one of Mom's favorites. Mom's tears are forgotten. When I inspect the meal, however, I notice there's just one measly piece of chicken, small enough it hardly qualifies as a bite, amidst a sea of limp green onions. No tomatoes. "Look at that, Mom" I say, pointing to the lack of protein on her plate. To be frank, Mom really hadn't noticed. If Mom had her way, she'd eat none of her dinner (much less worrying about protein), and focus only on the ice cream (it's vanilla tonight, her favorite). "No way," I say, as I get up off of Mom's bed and walk out the door in search of the kitchen and more chicken. This is at least one thing I can fix.

Minutes later, we have a second dinner plate, heaped high with pasta and, fortunately, roasted chicken and tomatoes. There's more chicken here than Mom can eat. Mom struggles with the few bites of penne she can manage. Mulu holds the fork--Mom's too tired to work on grabbing hold of her own silverware tonight. One, two, three bites and then, what I've come to expect: "I am NOT going to eat ANOTHER...NOT ANOTHER BITE!" These words come out clear and crisp--they sound like a rant. No problems with expressive aphasia when it comes to refusing food. Mom knows just what she needs to say. Mulu and I cajole her, beg her, "trick" her into eating more. Mulu is a pro--"Come on Gamoo...you must eat this to get strong. Just one bite more. That's all." But of course, it isn't "just one bite more" as Mulu has Mom's fork poised and at the ready for at least three more bites beyond this. Mom gets really mad--every time, like we are trying to poison her. "Stop it," she shouts, louder than I've heard her all day. "I WON'T. I WON'T." Mulu and I look at each other, and then back at the petulent child Mom's become. So this is when Mulu and I quit--we've had enough. A person does, after all, have the right to decide what and when to eat, or whether to eat at all. A piece of human dignity.

After the remnants of dinner are cleared away, I ask Mom--"do you want to write that letter?" Mom looks confused. She doesn't remember the letter. "You know," I say to her, "the one to Peter that you want me to help you write." "Oh," she says, "Oh" and nods her head "Yes" or at least I think she does.

When I've retrieved a tablet and pen, we begin. "What do you want to say first, Mom?" Silence. "You know, as in how do you want to greet him--'Dear Son'...'Dear Peter'?" I wait, letting the pause widen, the silence deepen. And I wait some more. We're not getting very far, so I decide to change my question.

"What is the thing you want to say to Peter, Mom. Tell me and then I can help you say it." Still she doesn't say. So I decide to fill in the blanks.

"How about we say--'Dear Peter: How are you? I miss you'?" When I'm saying this I'm looking at Mom, trying to read her face, trying to anticipate what words she might want to say even if she can't say them.

"The thing is," she finally says. "The terrible thing...you know...just can't...can't....you know."

"Can't what Mom?" I ask her.

"Can't...can't..." and then another pause. "Can't write."

And then it's my turn to weep, because the thought of Mom being unable to write to her son, unable to write period is more than I can cope with at the moment. This is not new information--she's been unable to even sign her name for a year. But really, it's not even this--instead, it's her knowledge that she can't do the most basic of things--to write--the thing that I do for hours everyday, including this day. The way I make my living. Gone to her forever. And she knows it. The loss of this is unimaginable to me.

I don't want Mom to see me cry because it will just make her own grief deeper, longer...but I can't help it, as my eyes water, lids brimmed with tears. I see a drop rain down and blur the "D" and the "e," the places where I'd begun to write--"Dear Peter" but then stopped. We just sit there then, me with my tears and my writing right hand and her with her dry eyes and her useless right hand. Peter's letter is forgotten, left for another day. Or maybe not at all. Who's idea was this anyway?

My mom is a complicated woman, more so than most. She is so many women under that reptilian skin of hers, the age-puckered skin that I too will possess when I get to be her age. She can shed one dry flaking skin after another and miraculously there's another, waiting. No matter of lotion applied by Lorna or Mulu can stem the transformation. I look at my photo montage of Mom--Mom the sweet young girl of eight, Mom the sexy, sultry young woman of eighteen, nineteen or twenty, Mom the timid new wife and then the harried new mother of Peter, Mom the motorcycle Mama and the beach queen, Mom the satisfied mother of Christine, the daughter she didn't know she wanted but once here, she couldn't live without. Who is my mother? Is she the fragile, silent woman in that bed tonight at the Mirabella or is she one of these woman captured in my film? If she can no longer throttle her Honda, no longer sweat and labor her way nine miles to Frosty Pass, no longer lounge in a wolf fur coat outside her home in Sun Valley,Idaho, then is she still these women?

Who are you Mom?

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

CNN

It's a fine autumn morning, the air blue and crisp and there are fingers of mist lifting up and away from the lake, remnants of a fog that never quite happened. Yesterday I noticed the leaves, large pancake-shaped maples that have finally begun to yellow with the frost. Autumn is usually a welcomed time for me, suggesting reflection, assessment--a figuring out of where I have come from and what this might mean for me. But this year is different. I have no urge to go out into the day and kick up leaves with my boots, no urge to walk the Aboretum in search of that damp-musk earth of a smell that suggests the year's hunkering down for winter. These all seem redundant. There's loss enough for me, death that's right here in my face without going in search of life's lessons, or of vestiges of life's meaning.

Walking down the wide corridors of the Mirabella towards Mom's room, HC201, there's pain enough, evidence enough of irrevocable loss. Often the doors are cracked open, and, while I purpose to not look in, I can't help but notice things out of the corner of my eye--a patient in room 207 laying in bed, face slack and chin staring straight up at the ceiling with CNN blaring out of the TV set. Or another patient in room 209 sitting propped in a chair, spindly blue-veined legs sticking out from under a hospital gown like a child's stick-drawing of what legs ought to look like: no music, no TV, no visitors, just silence or as silent as one can get here in a busy medical facility.

One can't help but gain perspective on the arc of life from such a stroll. It's unavoidable. Room after room of patients, all of them elderly, all them crippled in some way by ill health, all here as one stop on their further journey towards death. They are like Mom, not sure of how much more time they have, not sure of how much more time they even want, considering their incapacities. I mean, how does one make meaning out of a day when all of one's needs must be met by a nurse's aid--eating, bathing, brushing one's teeth, getting one's Depends changed, sitting up in bed, transferring to a chair, turning on the TV set to watch CNN. My mom can't even push the call button when she needs something, she's that helpless. In fact, she may not even know that she needs something, like to get her Depends changed or take pain medication--she has no idea! Surely, this is a redefinition of "living in the present" as the present is all one has and it isn't much, according to standards of the work-a-day world outside the Mirabella. When was the last time you've thought about what it would mean if you couldn't read a book (or even listen to a book-on-tape) because your brain won't let you process that intake of information? What if the only meaning of your day is who comes to visit you and then, by the next day, you can't even remember who that visitor might have been? And worse yet, what if you aren't even aware that you can't remember who came to visit you?

Mom's had a few better days recently--she's cognizant and good humored, not like the dour days earlier in the week. When Lisa, the speech therapist, comes to see her, Mom is able to perform better on the tests than she has ever. "Fill in the the rest of these sentences," Lisa tells Mom. "It has been snowing for____He put salt and pepper on his____They are followed by____The boy took his dog for____." Mom easily gets all but one out of ten. She rocks and Lisa tells her so--"You've improved a lot," Lisa says. "It seems like it's easier for you to think and talk." Mom says--"Yes...yes it is. And I don't want to let it go!"

"I'm very happy with the progress you've made," Lisa continues. Mom replies with--"I am very happy" and then adds--"I appreciate you, even if your husband doesn't." This is a remarkable statement from Mom, as not only does it reflect Mom's return to civility (something that's been missing for a very long time)--being able to thank people for kindness rendered--but also indicates that she's remembered previous conversations with Lisa where they've talked about husbands and wives and the difficulties of marital negotiations. And, there's a spark of Mom's good humor there, particularly as she quips "I'm here a lot" to Lisa's parting statement that she will see Mom soon. Mom wows both Lisa and me!

By the time I get up to leave, it's 8:30 pm and Mom is visibly tired--not the yawning kind of tired but rather the kind that suggests utter exhaustion: she is having a difficult time attending to what's around her. The highlight of her day was a visit from her nephew Mark (Marguerite's eldest son) and his friend, Nancy. I meet them in the belly of the garage at the Mirabella as I come to visit Mom. We stop and chat for a moment. Nancy is a lovely woman--soft brown hair pulled back from an open, intelligent face and an astounding paisley scarf wrapped tight from shoulder to shoulder--Mom would love her sense of personal style. Nancy is someone I'm sure Mom would like to know better; I wonder if she will have the chance?

Nancy has brought a charming bouquet of fresh flowers from her garden--Mom shows them to me with pleasure as soon as I get into her room. Immediately Mom says (with regret), before I even have my coat off--"I just wasn't...you know...my best." What do you mean Mom?" I ask her. "Not clear...you know" she explains. And I feel inexplicably sad, knowing Mom knows when she can't follow what's being said, when she can't make her sentences make sense. And knowing all this in relation to a woman who has spent her entire life invested in words--books, writing, conversation, debate--these were what gave Mom's life meaning.

As I pull on my coat--it's frosty outside at last--Mom says: "We are one...and...one."

"What do you mean, Mom?" I ask her.

"You know...one for one."

I struggle for a moment, trying to deduce what she has on her mind. I've gotten good at this. I say--"Do you mean you and me Mom...that we are here for each other?"

"Yes" she says, shaking her head vigorously, or as vigorously as a stoke-victim can. "A team!" she adds with enthusiasm.

I come over to her bed and say--"Yes, Mom, we are that. I'm here for you." Mom smiles and then adds--"Everyone needs...you know...the one."

"Yes, Mom, they do" I tell her, all the while thinking there won't be "the one" for me, when I get to where Mom has arrived. No daughter to hold my hand, check my medication, make sure I get the UA that the doctor's ordered. No one to see me through in this way.

"I want you to..." Mom says then. "Want you..." she repeats but then her voice fades off. Concentration is difficult by this time of night.

"Want me to do what, Mom?"

"You know...he needs his one...he needs someone."

"Who are you talking about Mom?" I ask her.

"Can't wait," she adds. And I look at her, trying to decipher what she needs. It's a challenge to keep up with the strange twists and turns of her conversation--how one idea links with the next but without an obvious connection. It's like Mom's speech is a verbatim translation of how everyone's mind works, a stream of consciousness--one thought that leaps slit-second to the next, without even trying--only there's none of the internal editing we do, the way that we modulate out speaking selves so that speech appears smooth, linked, logical. She can't perform these editorial functions and hence must let her words escape on wings, flap away as they may.

And then it comes to me, what she' asking for, though Peter's name hasn't come up in days and days--not since out chat several weeks ago.

"Do you mean Peter, Mom?" I ask her.

"Yes, yes," she says, annoyed almost that I have been this dense, taken this long to figure out what she has on her mind.

"You want me to find him?" I ask, sure now that this is what she needs.

"Yes."

"But you know he won't come."

"No...no...not that," she says, waving me away with her left hand, the hand that now can lift and wave and move with some ease, despite the stroke, due to the marvels of OT.

"What then?" I ask, frustrated that I can't perform my interpretive wonders on demand.

She lifts her left hand again, waving it like she's holding a pen, and I finally get it--she wants me to help her write to him, to write to this brother of mine who left and was left. She wants me to be her scribe, her interpreter...to resurrect Peter and help her find her way back to a time when she and her eldest son were close enough to talk, to write, to laugh, to hug.

"Sure Mom," I say without hesitation, though inside I'm full of dread, fear even. "We can do that. We'll start tomorrow, okay?"

She looks relieved with my easy assent, glad that finally she's made herself known, finally that her long lost son will be found. To myself, I am thinking--how will I find him, do I even want to find him? The only time Peter makes himself known is when he wants something--money. Is there an expiration date on love, on how far one's willing to stretch to meet another's hands? Does blood only go so far, despite the old aphorism that "blood's thicker than water"?

"Tomorrow," I repeat, "I'll bring a pad and pen."

Mom smiles then, and as I lean in to kiss her goodbye she says with a bit of cheek--"See you, my darling."

"See you too, darling" I quip back at her.

As I move out into the hallway, I can hear CNN headlines escaping though the cracks of her door--Mom's link to the outside world. She's taking her nightly dose of news before drifting asleep amidst tsunami flood disasters and presidents who get awarded the Nobel Peace prize. Meaning in a world devoid of meaningful thought and action.

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