Write What You Know

Procrastination, Space time, and Lady Godiva

As I procrastinated and binged BritBox during the last few weeks, Graham Strong, in his Substack, To Write With Wild Abandon, somehow knew my dilemma (he denies any hidden cameras)!

His post, When It comes to Writing, Are you Guilty as Charged, validated my feelings while giving me the kick in the rear I needed. Yes, I feel guilty when I don’t write.

Multiple trips from Michigan to Ontario to spend time with my mom in her nursing-home could be my excuse for not writing…but it would be a lie.

The desire/inclination/urgency to write just hasn’t been there. However, after reading Graham Strong’s post, I have given myself permission to say, “Just because I’m not writing at the moment doesn’t mean I’m not a writer.”

I have often likened visits to mom as ‘sliding down the rabbit hole’ or Lalaland or the Dementia Zone. All are said with affection. Visits with my 97-year-old mother are still a source of joy while being extremely tiring at times. I try very hard to embrace the woman she is NOW and not expect her to be the mom I remember from days past. Acknowledging that, I think, is the key to spending quality time with her.

A post I put on Facebook after my latest visit to mom is a great example of our interaction:

            MOM: There are a lot of old people living in this building.

            ME: Mom, you do know you’re 97, right?

            MOM: (forcefully) No, I’m not. I’m 79!

            ME: If you’re 79 you must have given birth when you were around 4.

            MOM: Well, yes. I remember I WAS very young!

After that comment, she turned her attention to the window and the goings-on in the parking lot. Our respective ages were totally forgotten. That’s how it works with Dementia.

Albert Einstein observed special relativity in 1905, but it was his teacher, Hermann Minkowski, who wrote about the space time continuum in a 1908 essay. Specifically, “how different observers perceive where and when events occur”. (Wikipedia)

I may be stretching the definition of space time, but the fact that mom and I can recall the ‘where and when’ of events differently doesn’t mean one of us is wrong. Perception is the key and the person suffering from Dementia needs to be validated – whether or not their perception is accurate. It is real to them.

During the Pandemic lockdown, we were pretty much isolated in mom’s small apartment in Canada. Learning to meet mom in her own time space continuum was essential and proved invaluable. You can offer correct information. If it isn’t heard, the best course of action is to play along until the opportunity arises to re-direct the person or, using humor, defuse the situation. Humor plays a huge role in my interaction with my mother thanks to my late father who knew how to do that well.

That brings me to this month’s excerpt from JUST CALL ME IRENE: A MEMOIR.

2020

My mother once told me that you were getting old when doctors began to look like high school kids. I’m sure that goes for border agents also. The young man standing in the kiosk on the Canadian side of the Bluewater Bridge looks no more than sixteen. But, he is clearly in charge of his station.

After checking my passport and license plate number, he looks at his computer and announces, “I see this isn’t your first time across the border so I’m sure you’re familiar with the 14-day quarantine and the $75,000 fine?” (for not complying)

            I say I am, then just to add some fun to the young man’s day, I tell him I’m surprised he doesn’t have my nickname in his computer.

            “Nickname?” He looks puzzled.

            “Yes, you are looking at the Quarantine Queen,” I proudly announce. “I quarantine here, I quarantine there; I isolate and wear a mask EVERYWHERE!”

            So proud am I of the obvious (at least to me) homage to Dr. Seuss that it takes me a moment to notice the young man’s blank expression.

            “Dr. Seuss,” I tell him.

            “Oh,” he replies, looking at me as though I’m totally bonkers.

I’m sure if Seuss was alive today he would have great fun writing a book about Covid-19 for kids and adults alike. Perhaps a play on his own work, Oh the Places We (Won’t) Go? Driving for 4 hours on sparsely travelled highways gives a person ample time to play silly mind games. I’m no exception.

The unique experience of arriving at mom’s apartment has not lessened over the months. Today, I rolled my suitcase around to the patio on the opposite side from the parking lot. One needs to be a contortionist to manage the three doors and a flight of stairs, on the parking lot side of the building, while lugging a suitcase, computer bag, or groceries for that matter. As I knocked on the window of the patio doors, mom peered out at me from the couch in the living room. She waved and began to talk to me through the glass.

            “Open the door please,” I called to her, then watched her try and open the vertical blinds but only succeed in closing them instead. It took several minutes for her to correct her error and unlock the door. After a brief exchange in which mom said she was surprised to see me, and the usual, “You got here very quickly,” I pulled my suitcase into the living room and proceeded to “my” bedroom.

            “Don’t unpack just yet,” she said.

            “Why is that mom?”

            “The others aren’t here yet and I’m not sure where you are all going to sleep. You might have to share your bed.” When I asked who the others were, she suggested there may be a few men coming to stay. Oooh! A bright spot in my day.

            “Okay mom,” I told her, “I’m willing to share but only with a great looking guy who has lots of money!”

She didn’t blink an eye but continued, all afternoon, to wait for the others and speculate as to what they might want for dinner when they arrived. Judging from the amount of cooked, but uneaten, meals in the fridge, I’d say she had been expecting the starting line-up for the Toronto Blue Jays arriving for dinner a few nights running. That became a whole other discussion, one which left me feeling I’d already been here for a week, not just three hours.

            At 10 p.m., as I write this, mom is in bed for the night. I’m still waiting for the hunky guy to show up with his generous bank account. Wine and roses in hand. I am in my best flannel PJ’s after all!

Living with mom, trying as it is, gives me a renewed sense of self. What will I be like if I manage to reach 90 plus? Each day is brand new; even familiar objects become unfamiliar. Today, mom has decided some of her underwear is not hers.

After doing the laundry, I pile her clothes on her bed to be folded – she likes to do that herself.

“You don’t fold clothes the way I do,” she has told me.

She emerges from the bedroom holding a bra and a girdle. Yup, she still insists on being tucked in and squeezed tight - no garter belt attached though. Her days of silk stockings with seams up the back are in the rearview mirror.

“Are these yours,” she asks, wiggling the bra and girdle in my face. Literally in my face.

“No mom.”

“Well, they aren’t mine. Somebody left them in my laundry.”

She walks through the apartment, no doubt looking for the offending woman, and finding nobody, comes back to me.

“These must be yours. Or one of those other women you talk to.”

She puts the folded (of course) underwear on top of her chest of drawers and announces they can stay there until somebody claims them.

I silently hope that she won’t begin to label all her clothing as “not hers.” It could lead to a Lady Godiva situation in no time at all. And, I don’t think mom has ever ridden a horse!

Lady Godiva, Smithsonian Institution

Update: The offending underwear sat on mom’s dresser until she moved to a long-term care home in 2021. Several attempts, by me, to integrate them back into her drawers failed. They were unceremoniously returned to the top of the chest of drawers each time – often with new pieces added.

Next month I think I’ll share the year my father announced he was going to die. All based on a prediction made by a gypsy in 1936. Don’t miss it.

Thanks for reading this – if you did.

Till next time!