Involuntary Simplicity: 50 First Dates with Mimi

There’s this perpetual bit that I’m forced to run through anytime I happen to speak about my mother. It’s truly uncanny. I could actually write down people’s lines for them before they deliver them. It’s like I’m in a continual rehearsal for this one scene and it plays out every time almost word for word, gesture for gesture, no matter who is playing opposite.

LEHS Stage - home sweet home.

Lights cue on a blank stage.

SARAH: Well, my mom has Alzheimer’s…”

SYMPATHETIC CONVERSATIONALIST: tilting their heads, Ohhhhhh, IIII’m soooo soooorrrryyyy.

SARAH: No, it’s fine.

SYMPATHETIC CONVERSATIONALIST: lips pulled in over teeth, head nodding on its tilted axis.

The role of the SYMPATHETIC CONVERSATIONALIST is played by friends, colleagues, family acquaintances, new acquaintances. This character is generally a nice person.

I always appreciate their well meaning gestures, people do care, and do their best to be supportive of the situation I have just somehow uncomfortably delivered, “Yes, and…” I am always grateful for kind words – I’m no dummy; I take what I can get at this age. It is however interesting to reveal to my partner in the scene that Alzheimer’s, although structurally, is yes, technically a tragedy, some of the scenes? Pretty damned funny.

I did not ask for this.

For example: My mom flashes me her boobs. A lot. How many of you can say that? It’s like a perpetual Mardi Gras, and I’ve unwittingly been put in charge of the beads. Actually, I’ve seen a lot more of my mom’s real estate than I am particularly comfortable admitting in a public blog. The reason being was she stopped wearing underwear about two years or so ago, citing that everything I bought her, or all of her older support bras, her big cotton underpants, were, “Way too tight. I don’t think these are mine,” she would whisper conspiratorially.

Hanes Briefs, roughly enough fabric to properly outfit the mast of a Sunfish.

“Oh?” I would reply, raising an eyebrow.

“Are they yours?” Holding up an expanse of white cotton cloth with the elastic stretched tight, I was unable to see past it to her upper body and torso to answer to her face.

“Iiiii don’t think so,” I would say to the fabric in my face.

“Well, they’re not mine.”

PRO TIP: It is pointless to argue with a person who has Alzheimer’s Disease. They are stubborn once they have glued onto an idea. Plus, you will come away from it shaken and upset, and a few minutes later, they will not even have a clue as to why you’re clenching your teeth, “Oh honey, you must have had a bad day. Come sit, and have some chocolate. But not too much, your underwear will get too tight. I don’t think these ones are mine, by the way.”

I take the giant underpants, “Maybe I can check to see if any local sailors lost some  yardage on their ships. No? Perhaps a local balloonist?”

Thar She Blows!!

            She would laugh.

            It didn’t always go like that, but I usually could end it the same way.

Usually.

It was and still is hard to see her when she falls into her head, whispering to herself as she tries to feel her way back up through the fog to remember some tiny little idea, a name? She just had It, and why won’t it come back? I can see her struggle, watch it plainly appear and play out on her face, unaware, her eyes search inward, her fingers find her lips, touch her nose, her breath just hitting over the palm of her hand. The scene is wrenching, but what is wonderful about it is, she – my mom - can forget it.

She can forget it. I don’t, my brother and sisters don’t. My husband and children don’t, but she can.

She lives in the present. Not saying that it is always positive, but it is always fresh, and has the possibility of being wonderful. The days when I bring her hot chocolate, or play her The Songbird Album on the constant wonder that is my iPhone, my mom always has the potential to smile, to sing, to look at me and tell me how beautiful she thinks I am.

I'm singing "A Woman in Love" as I type this.

The next moment may not be good. The next day could always hold disaster. I know that, I lived with the constant threat of it in our house for the five years that she was with us: What if she trips? What if she wanders out? What if she tries to heat up her coffee over the toaster again? What if she threatens Pete to call the police again when she doesn’t recognize him or the children?  

I lived and worked in a constant pace in which I had to rush home to make sure that she was okay, or that I had to relieve someone who had taken on her care while I was driving the kids to practice, or had to teach or take a class. I had no time to waste, my mother was home and I need to be sure she’s safe. She is safe now, and I visit her, and she is happy to see me, even if she is not quite sure how I belong to her, but still somewhat aware that I do. She still complains about her waistband of her underwear, usually greeting me with her pants half around her ass, like the boys in the middle school where I teach. She thinks it’s funny when I tell her that. And from there, her mind can go anywhere.

I’m not saying Alzheimer’s is a blessing. The eventual ending is what people are responding to when I say that my mom has Alzheimer’s Disease, The “Oh, I’m sorry,” lives in the final act. And yes, I’ve read the spoilers. But for now, as the scenes play out, and the lines are sometimes spoken through tears, I can take a beat, talk with my mom, and still laugh.

Murphy, Pete, Mimi, Anna, and Fay.

Involuntary Simplicity: Or How I Stopped Trying To Do Everything. Step One, Yoga

Yoga Studio App

The Beginning: Ass Over Tea Kettle

I found myself at the bottom of my cement stoop, the seat of my pants soaking through the icy slush from the stair I had landed on, I could feel it just about to seep all the way through to my undies.

Great.

Now I would have to change. That would throw off my WHOLE schedule.

It took probably about thirty seconds, the fall, but then, I would have to go back in, change my pants, and probably my underwear - so new outfit altogether - dry out my bag or switch to a new purse, assess the damage to my lunch bag. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. I liked getting to school at least 20 minutes before the kids showed up. So clearly, not going to happen.

There I was, I had just fallen down my front stairs, slipping on the ice forming on the concrete, and I was already mentally shifting my schedule. I realized I would need to actually get up. But you know me - born to multitask!  Initiate vertical sequence - GO!

But, nope. Danskos sprawled across the white-spotted lawn, bag filled with student papers jammed underneath my right shoulder of my red riding hood jacket, my hood thrown back, my wet hair plastering my face, I was stuck on the stair, immobile, like some sort of distracted turtle in the chilling, seeping slush.  I would need some help. I tried to locate my phone, thinking that it had skittered just out of my hand as, uttering an elderly woman's "Ah-uh-ohhhh,"  I bounced wa-wup-boom down the brick and concrete of my front stairs. I found that turning my head ignited some sort of fuse of pain down my spine, exploding in a blinding flash just under my sacrum. In excruciating, teeth grinding pain, my fingers fumbled over the rapidly freezing puddle and found purchase on my phone, I dialed my husband who I had kissed goodbye just moments before. He answered.

"Um, hi. Can you come get me?"
He was a little dumbfounded, "Didn't you just walk out the door?"
"Yes."
"So, where are you?"
"At the bottom of the front stairs."

He opened the door, and looked down at my pitiful form, legs akimbo, left hand gripping the bottom of the iron railing. "What the hell is wrong with you?" he asked, always sympathetic. What he lacks in human feeling, he makes up for in strength. He picked me up, once again.

You see, this was not my first time fracturing my tailbone. When I tell the story(ies) to my students, they love when I use the word, "coccyx."

It's red because it's on fire!

But it was the last time I did it. Last school year, December 2014.

Strangely enough, that morning, I was returning to work. I had just recovered from the flu  and I was happy to be going off from home to see my 7th grade students. The kids are always the best part of teaching. Although the weather was low - a disgusting, driving sleet - my spirits were high.  (If any of you readers remember the weather of last school year in New England, you will remember the snows of January and February 2015, but let me tell you, December 2014 was no picnic either.)

As I left my house that morning, my thoughts were on the driving conditions, what I needed to get done, how much work I had missed, when was I going to be able to grocery shop, who would pick up my mom's prescription, how was I going to get Anna to the Winter Concert and get Pete to swim practice, when would Pete and I get to have sex, did I have homework, when could Judy and I meet for the Grammar Class, how could I meet with my mentee, what were we doing for Drama Club, and how I would greet the kids, or more accurately, how they would greet me when I had come back from my already panic-inducing two day absence, "Miss! Where have you been?" But, as I ended up, ass over tea kettle down at the bottom of my stairs, my only thought was: well, how the hell am I going to get everything done now?

That was my life in December of 2014 - a giant, never ending To Do list that only slowed itself ever-so-slightly on vacations. My husband was working only part-time, taking my place for the year as my mother's full-time caretaker. She has Alzheimer's Disease, and had lived with us, relatively successfully, for almost five years. However, when it was time for me to return to school in September, it was clear that her condition was declining, slowly, but steadily. Leaving her alone was an impossibility - Pete had been out of work, and it seemed to make sense.

It was hard on him, to be on call during the day while still trying to get contract work completed. But we made it work. I took every opportunity offered to me - mentoring a young teacher, creating district-wide assessments, teaching additional classes for the teachers, to make the extra money that I thought we would need for us, for my Mom, for the kids, for the house, for classes for my license. On most weekdays, I left at 6:45 am and came home at 5pm, 7pm, 8:30, 9. Weekends were meant for cleaning up, catching some time together, correcting, planning, and taking over Mom duties. My sister was trying to help by taking her on the weekends, but she also worked full time - I told her every other weekend was fine.

But on that morning, Pete had to call in the Calvary. The kids made their way together to middle school and my sister had to take my mom, as I ended up leaving the Emergency Room with scripts for Vicodin and muscle relaxants. I'm not a giant fan of either, so I tried to make it on Advil and not moving. And despite my Up And At'Em start to the day, I ended up out for the rest of the week, stuck on the couch, moving at about the same speed as my mother, when on her bazillionth trip to our bathroom (she forgot she had just gone), she asked sweetly, sympathetically, "Are you sick, my dear?"

I always answered with a small smile, to save the time and trouble of explaining again, for the bazillion-1 time, "Feeling better. Mimi. Thanks!"

Recovery was slow. Excruciatingly so, which was harder on my spirit than my body. Objects in motion not only tend to stay in motion, but I think they like to. Busy-ness helps you ignore the fact that something might be systematically wrong. But, I didn't think I was unusually busy. I just thought this was the way things went for everyone, stuck in the middle of life, with two kids, a husband, and a mom who needed me.

It wasn't that December day that changed my life, but it was that fall that started a change in me. It wasn't that I was suddenly imbued with the knowledge that I was covering up unhappiness in my life with activity and that, from here,  everything must change - it was that I simply thought, I don't want to be a (then) 41 year old woman who can't move. I can't be. Kids, especially middle school kids, can be kind, and helpful, and sweet one on one, but in a group, mob mentality takes over, and they will prey upon weakness. I could not be weak for too long in front of them. I grew up watching Jaws. I wouldn't let them smell blood in the water.

You're going to need a bigger boat.

On January 3rd, 2015, I started yoga. 5 am everyday, a full hour earlier than I normally woke up. It wasn't easy: I would stumble out of bed, my younger dog sleepily following me down the stairs. I do not know if she was commissioned by my husband to specifically supervise me on stairs, but she and I made our slow way to the living room, where I would learn poses, breathe, and try to slowly stretch my way to un-oldladiness.

Fay in Advasana (reverse corpse pose)

I used Gaiam, Inc. Yoga Studio app, sometimes crying through the workouts, but feeling better immediately after, throughout my long days losing the stiffness that would set in, getting stronger as I made my quiet way through the moves.

I found it on iTunes, but here is the website from the developer: http://yogastudioapp.com/. Without irony or emphasis, it was one of the best $3.99 I have ever spent.

I am not an ambitious athlete. I will not post photos of me in Wheel pose on Instagram. I will never push myself to do a handstand, and I don't need to perfect Lotus, but yoga has reminded me on a daily basis to slow down, breathe, and do something for myself, so that I can, like every other woman out there, help everyone else. Of course, that is really just the beginning of how my life has changed over the past year and a half.

But that is another story.