The chronic malcontent is starting to drool

This evening I was sitting in a meeting, reading out loud to a small group from a list on a piece of paper, and I found myself slurring some words. As I was reading, my mind was galloping along a well-worn path: Am I having a stroke? Are my teeth falling out? Is my hind-brain dragging? Have I gotten so lazy I can't be bothered to enunciate anymore?

My mouth suddenly felt uncommonly soupy. My dental hygienist, Debbie, often praises me on the amount of saliva I manage to generate, so it could be I was feeling overly energetic in the saliva department. Should I surreptitiously attempt to wipe the spit off my lip with my mittened hand? No, that would be gross. Like anyone is watching... is anyone watching?

In a split second, my brain had split in three: one part was reading, one part was observing me reading, and the third part was wondering if I was going to burst into hysterical laughter at any moment. I managed to make it through the reading with a semblance of a Mona Lisa smile. Finally, it was someone else's turn to read. I settled back in my chair and bent my head to my notebook. I started sketching furiously. A face, a drooping mouth...What the heck was going on?

Sometimes I stammer when I get self-conscious. It sometimes occurs when I listen to myself reading out loud. My level of self-awareness rises to such a pitch, I begin to pay excruciatingly close attention to my voice. The usual ticker tape of self-judgment begins to roll through the screen at the bottom of my mind: Do I sound like an idiot? I hate my voice. Am I mumbling? My lips are falling off! I can't breathe! Invariably, when I get to that point, I fumble the reading because I'm turning blue from lack of oxygen.

This rant reminds me of the time I entered a Toastmaster's contest during finals week in college. In front of 100 people, I bungled my speech. It was without a doubt the most humiliating moment of my life, still guaranteed to break me out in a cold sweat if I think too deeply about it.

I'm beginning to see a common thread here. It's my old enemy, self. Not the good guy self, as in self-care and self-realization, but the bad guy self, as in self-obsession, self-recrimination, and self-centeredness. Oh, those pesky selves. Wherever you go, there they are. There's no escaping them! I picture them as fleabitten little monkeys, wearing ratty red vests and fezzes, bashing cymbals in my eardrums at all hours. Hey, maybe that's where this vertigo is coming from. (I'm coming up on my one-year anniversary of the first time I felt the vertigo, in case you are tracking. Which I'm not.)

Speaking of things there is no escaping: The ants are back. After a relatively ant-free winter, the hordes have returned. Luckily, I am not unprepared, thanks to the advice of my good friend, Carlita. I laid down my defenses some weeks ago (anti-ant spray). The desiccated carcasses of dead ant soldiers litter the counter under the window. Ha ha. But the scouts are somehow finding a way through my defenses and onto my shirt, where they make a run for the top of the hill (my head). They rarely get further than the back of my neck. Although last night one spent a few minutes speeding round the rim of my eyeglasses before I caught him and flung him in the brig.

Hey, I wonder if there is a spray to eliminate the overwhelming sense of self I'm sometimes feeling? Some kind of anti-self spray. Guaranteed to relieve you of the bondage of self. Wow, if I could bottle that, I bet I could make a fortune. Hey, you heard it here first!

For those who say they can't...

If you've read my blog before, you know I spend a lot of time whining about stuff. As a self-obsessed chronic malcontent, it doesn't matter what it is, I can whine about it. I can whine about how my mother's dementia is turning her brain to mush, I can whine about the crummy Ford Focus I bought because I didn't want to shop anymore, I can whine about editing the papers of dissertators who have clearly balked at reading the style manual. Really, everything is a candidate for whining in my world. Lately, I've been whining a mantra along the lines of I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it.

What does it refer to? Hey, thanks for asking. When I whine that I can't do it, I mean I've come to the end of my rope, I've hit the wall, the camel's back is shattered, and the fat lady is singing. It's a cry to heaven: I can't do it! Fill in the blank, whatever it is, I can't do it! Maybe I used to be able to do it, but no more. No can do.

I found myself whining this mantra today when my maternal parental unit (which really needs to go back to the factory on Clelldor for servicing) invited herself along on a shopping trip I hadn't planned.

“I need some baking soda,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

“And some other things. Do you think we could go to Freddy's?”

Normally, I would be quite willing, but today I was scrambling to finish editing two chapters of a challenging dissertation, and I wasn't entirely certain I would be able to submit the file by the 6 PM deadline. My first thought was to cry, I can't do it! But Mom comes first, so I said okay and picked her up at 10:30. I took time to make some coffee and swallow a few gulps, but no time to make breakfast or eat it.

“You're late,” she said, assembling her going-out gear: cigarette case, lighters, gloves, cell phone case. “I thought I got the day wrong.”

“Sorry, Mom. Got your list?”

I drove the few blocks to the supermarket and parked. The wind was chilly; it was raining, but not hard. Just a typical crappy spring day in Portland. I let her manage her own exit from the car while I grabbed two grocery bags from the back seat, thinking to myself, it's good for her to maneuver independently for as long as possible, right? And wondering how I would explain to my siblings if she accidentally slammed the door on one of her twig-like legs.

We made it into the store without mishap. I pulled a small grocery cart from the stack of carts and let her go before me so I could pick up whatever detritus fell from her pockets as she walked. (I've learned that one the hard way.) Slowly we trundled through the aisles: baking soda, applesauce, chicken, ice cream, fresh fruit, one potato. I thought, no problem, we'll be out of here in 20 minutes.

In the produce department, I tried not to recognize Marge and Linda, relatives from my father's side of the family, shopping for broccoli. Marge is 94. Her daughter Linda is 66. I didn't know that, but as our two old mothers stood bleating at each other, Linda and I commiserated about the care of elderly maternal parental units and the prospects for our own futures, and in the course of the conversation, we both disclosed our ages.

Linda didn't sound like she's that worried about her old age. I figured it out: Linda has a husband, children, and grandchildren. In the struggle to beat old age, she'll be in the winner's circle. Me, I'll be working till I die penniless and alone. That's my health plan and retirement plan, conveniently packaged into one.

You can't rush two old ladies who are trying to touch base even though they can't hear what the other one is saying. I remarked at how similar the two looked: shrunken, tiny, wrinkled, bright-eyed skeletons. I didn't try to listen to their conversation, but I have an inkling of what it was probably about on Mom's side. For years, Marge has lived at the big retirement community Mom moved to temporarily over the summer—the “warehouse for old people”—so I'm pretty sure Mom was explaining to Marge why she didn't stay for long at that retirement village, opting instead to move back to her condo. That's the move that precipitated the steep mental decline, as you may recall, leaving me and my siblings with a strangely different mother.

Eventually I scanned and bagged the eight items in the basket and paid for them with my mother's debit card. Then we went over to the in-store jewelry department to get her watchband repaired. That only took five minutes, and Mom fretted impatiently on my behalf so I didn't have to. Then she complained about having to pay $10.00 to the guy for the repair. I wanted to scream, I can't do this anymore, but I didn't. We got the watch. I let her lead the way out of the store.

Here's the thing about whining that I can't do it anymore. It's bulls--t. Clearly, I can do it, because I keep on doing it, despite my whining. Until I'm unconscious or dead, or until I choose something different, I am doing this. That is irrefutable evidence that I can.

You know what they say about those who can't, right? Those who can, do; those who can't, teach. Besides sounding a bit snarky, that saying might not really be accurate. Doing and teaching are sometimes the same thing, and the line between can and can't isn't always clear.

The chronic malcontent circles the drain

My sister is in town this week from Boston. She's staying at our mother's condo. We ordered Chinese food from a local favorite restaurant, and I picked up the food on my way over to visit and have another “family discussion” about the maternal parental unit who is the center of our orbit.

Darkness is especially dark when it's raining. I suppose it doesn't help that my eyes don't work as well after dark. Still, I managed to avoid hitting the pedestrians who scrambled across 82nd Avenue in pitch black night, heading for the bus stop. Victory for me. And them.

At the restaurant, the woman behind the counter said she'd be right back with my order. While I waited, a young Chinese man handed me a nickel and pointed at the tabletop fountain on the counter.

“Make a wish,” he said.

“What? A wish?” I said in confusion.

“Yeah, make a wish for me.”

I studied him. It occurred to me that perhaps he was a slow thinker. His voice sounded a bit slurred. But his smile was open and genuine, despite some broken teeth. He looked mid-20s, not very tall, and pretty well dressed. He didn't smell. He looked like someone's goofy kid brother.

“Okay,” I said. I took the nickel from his fingers and held it poised over the fountain. I said the first thing that came into my mind. “May you have many friends.”

He smiled. “Then what do I do?” he asked.

“Be a good friend,” I said and dropped the coin into the fountain. I sat down on the bench by the door. He grinned and sat down next to me, maybe just a little too close. It occurred to me, maybe he's not mentally slow, maybe he's on drugs.

“Is he bothering you?” The woman behind the counter sounded concerned. “Your order's almost ready.”

“Thanks, no, he's fine,” I said.

“She doesn't like me,” the kid said to me.

“Why? Are you making trouble?” I asked him.

“She doesn't want to talk to you,” said the woman, looking angrily at the kid.

“Maybe you ought to move on,” I suggested gently to the kid.

“Your order's ready,” the woman said, holding up a white plastic bag.

“I just want something to eat,” the kid said.

I thought, uh-oh, homeless, hungry, and on drugs. I thought of the money I had on me, wondered if I should give him some money to buy food. Then I thought, no, the woman would probably not appreciate my altruistic gesture if it meant he wouldn't go away. I sat paralyzed for probably a full 10 seconds, staring at the smiling Buddha sitting smugly on a shelf behind the counter, thinking through the scenarios. Finally, I stood up and handed the woman my mother's debit card to pay for the order. The kid stood up and went back to the fountain.

I did nothing. I paid for the order, turned my back on the whole thing, and went out into the rain.

Later, after dinner, after cigarettes, my brother and I were getting antsy to be gone. My sister got the drift. She wrangled Mom from her bat cave and computer games and enticed her to sit on the couch. Time for the family discussion. Oh boy, said the pot stirrer.

“We want to get a sense of where you are at in your plans to stay in the condo or move to a care home,” I said loudly, speaking at my mother across my brother. She's conveniently hard of hearing sometimes. From a certain angle, I noticed her head looked like a skull with very little skin, an animated skull. Weird.

“I want to stay here at least for the summer,” Mom said. “You can check out the places and if we find one we like, I might consider moving in the fall.”

Of course, it took many more words, shrugs, interruptions, questions, comments, and eye rolls (on my part) to arrive at that conclusion. I'm giving you the abridged version to protect your delicate sensibilities. You are welcome. So, that was the gist of the discussion. No surprise. Nothing's changed. Essentially, she wants to stay put until she can't function anymore.

It's all good, right? I think it's good for her to speak her decision out loud, so she can hear that it's her decision, not ours. It's good for her to feel that her children are actually listening to her. It's good for her children to get a sense of how her world is shrinking inward, narrowing in scope and depth, like a baby planet nucleus imploding on itself.

There probably will be less and less flexibility, less tolerance for ambiguity, less willingness to learn new skills. I expect to see her desire to manage and control increase as she tries to keep things from unraveling. I expect to feel increased frustration and fear, which I predict I will mostly manage to keep hidden from my mother as I dump on my siblings to relieve the pressure.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. I could get hit by a garbage truck tomorrow. Unlikely, but possible. You know what they say: Don't count your chickens... until they tear your lips off.