Weirdness

I learned the other day that my mother's death certificate says that the cause of her death was Alzheimer's Disease.

This is fascinating to me.  My mom was given multiple diagnoses for her physical and mental decline in the five years that she was sick, ranging from Parkinson's to Alzheimer's, to not-Alzheimers, to other weird forms of dementia we had never heard of, to generic "decline."  That period of time was characterized by confusion and questions, by us figuring out over weeks and months that doctors, in general, don't know very much about the brain or its problems.

We've had two close family friends who also received Alzheimer's diagnoses.  Both of them exhibited textbooks signs of that disease like forgetting family members' names and their relationships to them and gradually losing the ability to converse. While mom experienced intense confusion sometimes and was clearly dealing with some kind of dementia, she never forgot who she was, who her family and friends were, never forgot names. She even remembered more than most of us sometimes: she could remember how she met a person or details from events far in the past.  She repeated herself a lot, but she could still carry on a conversation with us, and she asked questions about grandkids and jobs and other goings-on of life.

I remember when she died, we had to decide as a family whether or not to have an autopsy done.  It was the only way, we were told, to know definitively if she had suffered from Alzheimer's or not.  I had stopped expecting medicine to provide us with any answers, and my vote was NO, we didn't need that to happen.  Most of us agreed, and we didn't do it.

But someone, somewhere, decided to fill in the box on her death certificate with a specific answer, as if that were a thing that could be known for sure.  Who made that decision? Why? What purpose does it serve?  How is that information used, and by whom?

One the one hand, it doesn't feel very consequential.  On the other, I find it so strange that such a personal question -- how did she die? -- has apparently been officially answered when the actual, most true answer is that we don't know for sure. 

How trustworthy are official documents in general?  How do historians evaluate documents like this when they are doing research into famous or historical figures?  Seems like a giant guessing game to me.

That is all.  I just think it's weird and wanted to take note of the weirdness in writing.

Crave

I crave crunchy gravel,

Clean swept wooden decks,

Cool, misty sprinklers in the evening.

I crave the deepest forest quiet,

Leaves settling and pinging into place.

Hummingbird wings pulsing through thick summer air.

I crave the stillness of time.

The suspension of need and want and craving itself.

The commandments of land and water, field and sunshine.

Out there, everything makes sense and fits together.

Out there, we both belong and understand.

The dry creek beds and the smell of dirt tell us who we are.

Let’s go there together.

What Is Wrong With Us?

Our country is in a rather distressing situation.  I chose those mild words deliberately because losing my mind over the current state of affairs is getting exhausting.

But really, we do seem to be headed for a fall: everyone is angry at someone; everyone is sure their side is right.  Everyone feels panic about something: guns, abortion, immigrants, you name it.  But how do we break through the noise and weirdness that has gripped our national discourse?  How do we ask real questions and listen to real answers?  Nearly every single thing I see on Twitter, or Facebook, or in the news features someone spouting their incredulity at "the other side."  All around us, people are fighting and ranting.  No one seems to be getting past the rant. 

Rants feel great, don't they?  Just this morning, I went on a very satisfying one about my ungrateful children and how infuriating it is to confront what seems like their complete lack of awareness and consideration.  I ranted.  I raved.  I expressed myself, energetically.  And then I took a deep breath and remembered that I love those crazy ingrates and that "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?" is not an effective parenting strategy. 

Neither is it an effective governing policy or problem-solving approach. 

But we do have a problem in this country: we are divided, and divided, we cannot stand.  This division will not stop and it will destroy our country unless we can figure out how to listen to each other and how to respect each other's humanity.

Up to this point, I have not betrayed my politics in this post, because the division problem we have isn't about who is right and who is wrong.  It's not about who you're going to vote for, or who you think is Anti-American.  It's about the humanity of the people we disagree with and our inability to honor it or even see it.  And we should.  Even in the people who infuriate us; even in the people who want to keep their guns at the expense of our children's lives; even the people who say that Democrats support killing babies; even the people who think that cruelty as an immigration policy is a totally OK, ends-justifies-the-means kind of strategy.  So there, now you know my politics.  Now, you either think I'm on the side of All Things Right and Good or you think I'm a Godless Communist.  You'll either welcome me into your fold or you'll write me off as an idiot.  You'll either give me my humanity or you won't. 

None of this will stop when Trump goes away unless we figure out how to build community with people we disagree with.  It will not stop until together we ask and try to answer: What is wrong with us?

I'm at Least as Strong & Stubborn as They Are

I am rusty.

I used to sit down in front of my blog and write, write, write. Words flowed out of me as fast as my kids could mess up the kitchen, and I could barely keep up with the stories and ideas pouring out of my mind.  Now, I rarely think of something I want to write about, or I censor it before it travels from my brain to my fingertips.  Even as I try to get the writing habit back, it feels foreign, clunky, awkward. Yucky.

Two main things have contributed to the demise of my writing: Teenagers and Social Media.

First, I've had teenagers for something like seven years and will have them for another 8.  Writing a blog about parenting and family life is much harder with teenagers around.  They aren't exactly thrilled with me using them as blog fodder.  I used to write funny anecdotes about my kids all the time.  Now, things are different.  Either teenagers just aren't that funny or cute, or they're waaaaaay more sensitive than younger kids about parents telling stories about them.  Now, I gotta be all considerate of their autonomy and stuff.  They still do things that would make some seriously great stories (comedy, horror, tragedy...really all the genres), but now I can't just share their business with abandon.  Some might say I shouldn't have done it when they were younger either.  Some might be right.  But it's definitely less OK to do it with teenagers.

Second, I totally blame Facebook.  Once the Almighty Network sucked me in, the language in my head started sounding like status updates instead of stories.  BFB, I would sit down at my laptop when the kids had finally gone to bed and write about the day.  I would make sense of life's craziness by thinking about how to tell a story and why it mattered to me.  AFB, I stopped responding to my life by writing about it.  AFB, I'm too busy catching up on everyone else's posts and scrolling myself into a stupor to write, and I can't really make fun of my teenagers publicly anyway, so what's the point?  Embarrassingly, I also discovered that even an introvert and a cynic like me responds to that little red notification circle like it's a warm hug of validation, albeit fleeting.  The time I used to spend writing, I started wasting on FB, Instagram and Twitter, scrolling and scrolling, and reading endless, usually pointless comments on posts and tweets, and waiting for something to grab me, for the notification/dopamine hit to give me that sick little rush of adrenaline (they don't call them push notifications for nothin').

I recently cut my social media use way back, for lots of reasons.  I found that asking myself, mid-mindless scroll, "how is this enriching my life in any way" was a great motivator for shutting down the window on my laptop or the ap on my phone.  Removing the aps from my phone altogether is also incredibly helpful (and hard to stick to).  I miss out on a lot of stuff, including super important news like the latest insults our colossally stupid president has tweeted, but it's better for my mental health to limit my exposure.  Both to our president and to social media in general.

Anyway, neither the teenagers nor Facebook seem to be going away anytime soon, and I miss writing.  So I need to figure out how to claim that habit back for myself.  When I first started this blog, I wrote about wanting to write as a way to make sense of the contradictions inherent in raising a family: the love and anger, the joy and despair, the exasperation and exhilaration. As the mother of teenagers and young adults, I need this more than ever. As a citizen of the world, I need it desperately too, as I contemplate the madness facing us at every turn.

And so, here I go. I will try to shake the cobwebs off my fingertips and my story spinners. I will write shitty first drafts (thank you Anne Lamott) and be happy that they exist. I will make something from nothing, I will make sense from the senseless, I will create as a way to respond and stay hopeful.

Or at least, that's the idea. Teenagers are even harder to neglect than younger children, so I know it will tough to find the time. But I'm at least as strong and stubborn as they are, so I think I've got a fighting chance.

Wish me luck!

Untangling Knots

A few weeks ago, my daughter Tallulah found one of her favorite necklaces, a sweet silver angel with a rhinestone heart, in a jumbled tangle under the passenger seat of my car. She asked me to fix it. “Sure, yeah, just stick it on the dashboard.” I may have a habit of saying “sure, yeah, later” to my kids and their 47 daily requests for me to do something for them.

Days went by, and I made no effort to fix it. Driving to and from work, grocery shopping, picking up girls from soccer practice, I would look at the small lump in the corner of my dash and push it out of my mind. It took me a few days to realize that I wasn’t merely putting off a mundane task.  I was actively avoiding it. Why was that little thing taunting me? Why did the sight of it fill me with something like dread?

A few more days went by before I realized it was because of Ann.

* * *

Ann and I met when I was 13 and she 14. Immediately, I realized that she was basically good at everything. She knew how to ride horses, and taught me how as well. She got better grades than I did (than nearly everyone did), and helped me in my classes. She trained me at the deli where we both worked, and where we first met. She was confident and humble, and I looked up to her, even as we became good friends.

A couple of years later, she had her driver’s license, a brown diesel Volkswagon Rabbit, and a sense of adventure bigger than mine. Powered by Ann, we went to the Sonoma Coast, on hillside hikes, and to exotic San Francisco, always exploring. I followed her everywhere, literally and figuratively, and I relied on her for many things, large and small.

Among her many talents, she was particularly good at fixing tangled necklaces. Such necklaces would have gone to the top of my dresser to die if not for Ann. Lacking as I did the patience to fix them myself, I would save them up for her, my more patient and optimistic friend.

“Ann’ll do that for me,” I’d half think to myself before tossing them aside. And she would, always. She never seemed irritated or bothered. She went about the work of untangling knots as if she had all the time in the world and no more important thing to give her attention to. She is the reason my necklaces survived my teenage years.

In many ways, she is the reason I survived my teenage years, my college years, my 20s and 30s and 40s. As one of my closest friends, she eased my fears and insecurities for decades. When I needed to study, she helped me buckle down and focus. Ever the caretaker, she knew that I didn’t eat much when I was stressed, so she’d show up at my house with apple fritters drowning in butter. Later, as a doctor, she helped me understand the medical issues faced by my children as they grew and my parents as they aged; I would often call her after leaving a doctor’s office to get The Ann Translation, because I knew she would tell me what I needed to know, with the perfect metaphor to help me understand, and that she would ease my anxieties over the health and well being of my family.

She even once pulled a tick out of two-year-old Lola’s neck, because I was just too completely freaked out to do it myself. Never mind that she was all dressed up for her own daughter’s baptism, never mind that she had a house full of people to host. She responded to my plaintive “Aaaaaannnnn!” by whisking my child up to the bathroom and applying her tweezers and surgical skills to the nape of Lola’s neck. In no time, that tick was surfing down the toilet drain, giving rise to yet another opportunity for me to say: “Thank God for Ann.”

Ann died of cancer in July of 2017. I can’t call her anymore to ask what some weird medical thing means. We won’t be going on any more jaunts to Goat Rock beach. I can’t indulge with her in chocolate chip cookie dough or apple fritters. She will not be talking me down from any more social-anxiety ledges.

And I can no longer save up tangled knots for her to fix.

* * *

Last week, I found myself at a soccer field, waiting for a notoriously over-time coach to finally call the end of practice. As I sat there simmering in mild annoyance and thinking uncharitable thoughts about the coach, my eye fell upon Tallulah’s necklace. This time, I didn’t push it out of my mind. Instead, I pulled it and so many memories of Ann towards me.

“OK, dammit, I can fix this stupid thing,” I thought as I tackled the job of picking the knots apart. With no small measure of bitterness, I looped pieces this way and that, followed dead-end paths, and stubbornly tried again. I stared at clots of chain, willing my eyes to pierce the mysteries of which lengths went where. More than once, I chastised Ann for leaving me to deal with this mess without her.

After countless fruitless tugs this way and that, one loop finally got a little bigger and pieces started sliding through. As I worked, I found myself warming to the task, and concentrating more willingly and hopefully on my goal. More spaces opened up, knots resolved one by one until at last the angel was free. It probably took no more than 20 minutes, but I lived a lifetime in those minutes, a lifetime of thinking about all ways I miss having Ann in my life.

Something else happened too: I caught a glimpse of her spirit, of the way she did a job with purpose and single-mindedness -- and without self-interest or complaint. It seems too flippant to say I was channeling her, but I was bringing her to life for myself once more, by doing a task the way she would do it. As I worked at the tangles, I grew calmer and less bitter. Knowing how happy my daughter would be made me experience something like joy in the process. Realizing that Ann once did these things for me, and now I would need to do them myself, made me want to do this job and do it well.

This is is how she will live on for me: not merely by my remembering her or thinking about the things we did together, but by embodying her way of being in the world and making her present in the actions I take each day.

Hopping in the car after practice, Tallulah noticed her newly liberated angel swinging back and forth from the rearview mirror and happily exclaimed: “My necklace! Thank you! You’re so good at fixing tangled chains, mom!” With her words, I realized that I have adopted a little bit of Ann to take with me into the years ahead. Tallulah will probably save up her jumbled necklaces and shove them in my direction for the next several decades, and I will welcome them. Each one will bring with it another chance to have Ann by my side.

She once helped me smooth every tangle and resolve every knot; now I know that she will do that forever, from deep in my heart.

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