When I can't breathe I call upon my secret rescue inhaler: I ask myself, what would my extroverted friends do right now? Would they let this excess of exuberant change pummel them into a puddle of goo? No. They would not. They would rush out the door to meet it for coffee, preferably with a horde of friends all driving Kia Souls and Mini Coopers. Re-frame! Re-boot the shattered brain!
Lucky me! Between editing dissertations about China's healthcare system, cosmopolitan-thinking in the world's education system, and culturally relevant pedagogy in American middle schools, I get to visit retirement homes.
And when I'm not doing that, I am earning some money by calling people in faraway places to interview them for a research study about fluid connectors. So far I've dragged my double-wide out of bed before dawn to dial people in Italy, Germany, and Minneapolis. Talk about exotic locales! And Shanghai, China, too, although that interview took place at a very civilized evening hour. I am really starting to get a sense of the size of the planet by calculating time zone differences. (Big place.) Although I have to use Excel to figure it out. Or my fingers. I have always had a precarious relationship with analog time. I have no pictures in my head to explain time. I dread the moment we shift from Standard time to Daylight Savings.
Part of my problem is I think making my mother's last years pleasant is my responsibility. I want her to be happy. She's not happy. Last week she had a doctor's appointment. I offered her a ride, and she accepted: Warning sign #1.
Her doctor was a tall, slender Asian man with a scraggly beard and a charming smile. He didn't hesitate to shake my hand (germs, dude! Really?). My mother and I sat on the two square stiffly cushioned blue chairs, the kind you've seen in waiting rooms everywhere. The doctor sat on the rolling stool, waiting calmly, looking at my mother. I waited, too. My mother scooted forward in her chair. Warning sign #2. I thought, she's getting ready to make a presentation. The audience is in place. Showtime.
“My digestive tract seems to be on the mend the past three days,” she began. Good news for my scrawny mother who eats like a sparrow and weighs barely 94 pounds.
“Great,” said the doctor.
“But I just don't seem to want to eat anything.”
The doctor and I both looked at her expectantly.
“I hate to cook, I always have,” she said. I could have said something, but I didn't. Memories of canned green(ish) beans and gray peas floated through my mind. “I just don't feel like cooking or eating much of anything,” she added, frowning. I felt guilty for not cooking for my mother. Even though I'm a worse cook than she is.
“Are you depressed?” asked the doctor.
My mother thought for a few seconds. “No,” she said flatly. “I'm bored.” Immediately, I felt guilty for not doing a better job of entertaining my mother.
“I'm tired all the time. I think I'm bored. All I do is play video games on my computer,” she said. It suddenly dawned on me that since my mother's co-treasurer position on the condo board ended last fall, she's got nobody to complain about. Oh, she always finds something, but without the monthly hassles and gossip of the condo meetings, she's bereft. My mother the pitchfork-wielding extraverted rabble-rouser. No wonder she's bored. She needs a cause!
“I've got too much stuff,” she complained. “I want to move.” No use uttering a squeak as my heart fell into my stomach: I've known this day was coming for a while. I just... I guess there's just no good time for change, is there?
“If you moved into a retirement community, you would have more social interaction,” the doctor observed. “You would probably eat more.”
“That's just what I was thinking,” she said. “I have friends in a place over by Mall 205.”
“That's all you need,” the doctor agreed. “More friends.”
And that is how I agreed to take my mother to a retirement place next week to eat a free lunch and take a tour. I can hardly wait. Next chore: get boxes, start sorting out the ten years of junk she collected since she moved into the condo and the sixty or so years of crap she's dragged with her from place to place along with a husband and four kids. I'm just really glad she doesn't collect Franklin Mint plates or Beanie Babies.
