Getting down and dirty: Reader discretion advised

The sewer construction recommenced at 7:00 a.m. this morning, ten yards outside my back door. A cacophony of gerunds ensued: banging, grumbling, pounding, grinding, beeping. My cat spent last week under the couch. Today he seemed resigned. We ate breakfast and stoically ignored the noise. At 10:30, I tiptoed past the roaring backhoe to do my weekly grocery run. Burly workers in neon vests and hard hats were trying with hand signals to direct my neighbor as she tentatively backed her Prius out of her driveway past the gaping twenty-foot long, six-foot deep trench holding the pipe that would soon hook her house up to the city sewer system. I took a couple photos to show my mother.

I drove away feeling somewhat superior that I had remembered to park my car on the street last night instead of in my usual parking spot now occupied by said backhoe.

I did my errands, came home, and parked my car on the street. I think I could have parked in my usual spot. As I lugged three grocery bags of food toward my back door, I saw the workers had finished laying the concrete tubes, filled in the trench, and parked their equipment at the bottom of the hill. In fact, they were nowhere to be seen. Only their little neon flags and the big Local Traffic Only sign remained. I admired the level gravel parking area. I put my groceries away, reveling in the silence. Then the cat and I took a nap. At 6:00 p.m., it was time to visit Mom. Three of my neighbors' cars now occupied all the parking spaces.

When I got to the care facility, Mom had just returned from dinner.

“I have some gluten-free macaroni to give the cook,” I said. “I'll be right back.” The kitchen is twenty steps down the hall. I put the boxes of pasta on the stainless steel table. Thirty seconds later, I returned to see Mom just settling down on the couch.

“Hey, Slacker, let's change the batteries in your hearing aids.”

She levered herself back up to a sitting position, an astounding feat considering the couch is actually a pastel flower-covered black hole. Every Monday night I remove her hearing aids, open the little trap doors, and switch out the tiny batteries. I have to take off my glasses so I can see to peel off the little coverings that keep the batteries fresh. I have a routine so I don't mix up the old and new batteries. Sometimes I have to use a little gizmo to replace a tiny tube that gets clogged with ear wax. I used to find it a little gross to mess around with my mother's ear wax. Now I don't care.

I got the hearing aids situated. “Testing, testing.”

“Uh-oh. Something feels like it needs to come out,” Mom said, standing up. It took me a scant moment to realize what she was talking about.

“Okay, do your thing.”

She grabbed her walker and shuffled around the divider wall to the bathroom. I turned on the television. Sadly, TV Land stopped running M.A.S.H. reruns last week. Now we are stuck with HGTV. I sat on the couch, tempted to crank up the volume on Love it or List it, praying I would soon hear the toilet flush. No such luck. Considering the sewer-related theme of the day, it was no big surprise that Mom went into the bathroom and got stuck there as her brain tried to figure out what to do with the poop in her pull-ups.

She called my name. I leaped into action.

It never occurred to me that I might someday be helping my mother navigate her toileting challenges. When my parents wrote their wills, I was the last of the four children to be named executor of the estate. I'm sure they figured it was the end of the road if my three siblings had somehow expired before me and my parents' care was left in my hands. I don't blame them. I was not a reliable or trustworthy daughter. Certainly I didn't seem to be caregiver material. Fast forward four decades and look at me now. I'm an expert at tearing the side seams of poop-filled pull-ups.

I removed her Merrells and pulled off her elastic waist blue jeans. I tore off the pull-ups. “Are you done pooping?”

“I don't know. I think so.” She reached for the toilet paper roll.

My mother has developed a . . . how shall I put this? A specific cleansing routine involving two carefully counted and folded sheets of toilet paper. I'm sure somewhere in her crumbling neurons are intense memories of the clog-prone toilets at our old house, which no doubt accounts for her stingy use of TP. She does not have to pay for it at the care facility but telling her that does no good. She slowly folds the two sheets in half and goes in from the front, if you know what I mean. She leans so far forward as she's trying to clean up the damage, I'm afraid she'll do a face plant, but always she bobs back up, like a Bobo doll. Then she drags out the soiled tissue from between her thighs to examine the results, which inevitably ends up on her fingers.

At this point, she's caught in a loop. She cannot resolve her dilemma. I've seen this routine a few times now and wondered to what extent I should try to intervene. Today I thought, what the hell.

“Hey, let's try this.” I reeled off a fine handful of toilet paper and handed it to her. “Scoot forward a little and go in from the back.”

She's a trooper when it comes to taking direction. She doesn't question. If she had any brain cells left, she might have said, “What, are you crazy? Hokay, here goes nothing, Einstein.”

She leaned forward, reached around with the wad of TP, and rummaged around back there for a good long while. Finally she sat up and we both examined the results. I reeled off another wad of TP and handed it to her. “One more time,” I suggested. She repeated the routine. Eventually we were both satisfied.

“Okay, great. Now stand up, and give it a good wipe with this.” I handed her a big wad of wet wipes, which are stacked in packages on the back of the toilet.

“Wipe what?”

“Your butt.” She did as directed. We checked the results. “That goes in the trash,” I said. She complied.

“Alright. Sit back down.” I got her toes into a fresh pair of pull-ups. She waggled her feet into her jeans. I could tell she has done this before. I positioned her shoes.

“Now you can stand up and hike up your drawers.”

She stood up with some help and yanked everything into place.

“Now flush.” She flushed, watching the action. I'm pretty sure she fears clogging the toilet. She closed the lid and turned back toward me.

“Let's wash our hands,” I suggested, thinking of all the surfaces she touched with dirty fingers. While she washed at the sink, I grabbed another wipe and wiped down the door handle and the toilet handle. 

We watched the end of Love it or List it. I turned the channel. M.A.S.H. was on MeTV at 7:00 p.m. She decided she wanted to walk me to the end of the hallway. We sang I've Been Working on the Railroad. Partway along the hall, she said, “Jane died.”

“Jane, your smoking buddy?”

“No, no, the one who sits at the end of my table.”

“Oh, you mean Alice.” I couldn't believe it. I saw Alice just last week, looking as hale as anyone on oxygen and in a wheelchair can look.

“Right. Alice.”

We walked in silence to the back door.

“I guess that is why people come to a place like this,” I said.

“My turn will come,” she said.

I kissed her forehead. We exchanged peace signs with our (hopefully clean) fingers. I walked out to my car. She waved as I drove away.

The chronic malcontent calls in sick

On Monday night I caught a cold. I don't remember the last time I had a cold. I had forgotten the misery generated by the drip, the scratch, the snot, the clog, the ache. I guess I thought I was a cold-germ superhero. On the upside, a cold probably won't kill me; the downside: at 3:00 in the morning, when I'm snuffling, coughing, and breathing through my mouth, it might make me wish I were dead.

I haven't been sick in years. All the witty words I had planned to write have been flattened under a pounding sinus headache. I wanted to tell you in excruciating detail (but funny, of course) about how wretched I feel. Then I realize, you've had colds before. You know what it feels like. Having a cold does not mean the universe revolves around you; it just makes you feel as if it should.

In accordance with the advice from multiple websites, I'm laying low today, resting and drinking lots of water. I called in sick to the care facility. I hope the nurse actually writes the note and puts it on Mom's coffee table. Although Mom might not even notice I didn't show up, the way things are going lately. She's been dozing on the couch every night for the past week. Yesterday I shuffled out to my car and drove in rush hour traffic to see if she might be more alert before dinner. She woke up when I came in but did not sit up. I sat in the visitor's chair on the other side of the coffee table and didn't touch anything.

“Do you want to go outside and plant seeds in your pots?” I asked her. My spirit was willing but I hoped she would say no. My flesh was definitely weak.

“Do you want to go outside?” Was she reading my body language? My mother is a master at the codependent redirect—I don't know, what do you want to do?

“It's up to you.”

“I don't think it is the right thing to do.” She was rubbing her stomach under the blue plaid blanket.

“Are you in pain?”

“Yes.”

“Is it your stomach?”

“I don't know what I need,” she said in frustration. Her eyes started to close. “I just want to sleep.”

I didn't kiss her forehead like I usually do because I didn't want to contaminate her with my germs. Although a tiny voice inside me said, hey, pneumonia, the old person's best friend. I told her I loved her and quickly left. I should not have come, but I felt compelled to see her. I only sneezed twice on my way out the back door. Into my elbow, of course. I drove slowly home, too slowly, apparently, because some guy in an old American car sped by me and flipped me off. I didn't have the energy to feel righteous anger. Besides, I drive slowly everywhere. I used to be a school bus driver. That is another story.

The weather is lovely this week. Unfortunately, higher temperatures means low humidity, which means not only am I parched but so are the forests. Two weeks of spring and now apparently it's summer. That was fast. The roses aren't even blooming yet. Now there's a fire warning for tomorrow night. Wind, low humidity, and high temperatures create the perfect conditions for wildfires. Sometimes when I walk in the park, I imagine what one carelessly thrown cigarette could do. In the city, with houses so close together, it wouldn't take much to generate a conflagration. On the upside, if the air filled with smoke right now, I would not be able to smell it.

The best way to endure a cold is to immerse myself in the screen. I caught up on a new CW television show last night. It's free TV, so every five minutes I was treated to a commercial of happy people cleaning their kitchen floors using special gizmos to capture dust and dirt. Clearly, the companies that make floor cleaning products don't know about my kitchen floor. In the distant past, some ambitious soul laid down a checkerboard of black and white linoleum squares. Over the years, these squares have come unglued in many places. Corners have broken, revealing the subfloor. Crumbs and cat hair collect in the crevices. Beige paint speckles the black squares from the many cupboard repaintings. The white squares are speckled too but you can't see it as well. The whole floor should be bulldozed. Swiffering is not a solution.

Speaking of bulldozing, on Monday, heavy equipment moved into the gravel road behind the Love Shack. Three little houses up here are not on the main sewer line. That means we all must endure the beeping and banging while the City digs trenches and lays pipe. On the upside, wiped out by this cold, I went to bed early the past two nights, so I was up when the bulldozing began. Early morning for me is like one of those plants that bloom once a century. I would appreciate dawn more if I could breathe.

Being sick has inspired me to take some chances. Despite my fear of dying from amoebas eating my brain cells, on Tuesday, I dug out my neti pot, figuring I could either suffocate now or maybe die of amoebas at some unknown point in the future. Early this morning, I found some expired Tylenol in my medicine cabinet. Turns out ten-year-old Tylenol still works. What do you know.

All of this is happening while my mother is fading. I am confounded that so many things can happen at the same time. You would think the earth would cease turning out of respect for the loved one who may soon be exiting the earthly plane. You would think cold germs would hold off until a more opportune time. You would think digging a sewer trench could wait until the tears have been shed. But everything happens now.

I think she is leaving but of course I can't be sure. Maybe it's just the humidity.

Coming apart at the seams

Last weekend, four out-of-town friends came to Portland for a reunion. We were a small group, just six in all. Two locals served as drivers; we split the passengers between two cars, one of which was my dinky old Ford Focus, emptied of trash and toothpicks for the occasion. After getting lost, driving in circles, misreading road signs, and driving east when I should have driven west, I am supremely aware of my failings.

On the bright side, the other driver (a man ten years my senior), got lost, drove in circles, almost crashed his car, and upon arrival at what he thought was the correct house, led his two passengers up some steps and through an unlocked door into a stranger's house—clearly not the correct destination. Quick exit, stage right! This week I have prayed the party of three were not caught on security cameras. Just in case, I've planned my defense: We plead early onset dementia, Your Honor! The busy weekend is over. No one was jailed or killed.

After two days of above average temperatures, by Saturday my limited wardrobe was exhausted, forcing me to stuff myself into a pair of old Levis jeans I have been saving should I ever lose ten pounds. Luckily, the groaning seams on my authentic (not knock-off) non-stretchy, faded blue denim jeans did not fail me as I diligently played tour guide, chauffeur, host, and organizer. Added bonus: My jeans made me sit up straighter in my chair and eat somewhat less at the restaurants we seemed to patronize every two hours.

The sun is shining today. I finished editing a paper early (misread the deadline, argh). That means I have some extra time to get some things done: change the sheets, do some laundry, and write a blog post. Spring is finally really here. Baby birds are nesting in a flowerpot at the care center. Brilliant leaves have burst out everywhere, glowing a color of green I spent my childhood desperately trying to mimic with yellow and blue tempera paint.

As a former fashion designer—well, okay, seamstress—I know a bit about seams. When I think of seams, I usually think of clothing and the thousands of seams have I sewn in my lifetime, trying to cajole other people's poorly sketched ideas of style into something real they could display to their envious church friends. Governments have seams too, I think. I don't notice seams much except when things fall apart. Then I realize how some poorly sewn policies leave us naked and undone. For example, we are now seeing the seamier side of healthcare.

I notice that the seams on many of my clothes are failing. When I fold my long-sleeve t-shirts, besides the occasional broken seam, I see stretched necklines, unraveled hemlines, faded colors, and frayed edges. I don't mind. These butter-soft remnants remind me I used to have a job that required me to think about clothing. I am glad that job is gone while these old t-shirts just seem to get better.

As I get older, in every way conceivable, I seem to have less stretch. In obviously visible ways, gravity drags everything south, but in my mind, too, I perceive less flex, less give. My brain seems to be coming apart at the seams. Maybe it's just stress pulling my mojo down with my butt and boobs. A friend told me I would gain 10 IQ points after my mother dies. She spoke from experience. I fear I'm sloughing off brain cells at an increasing rate. Where do they go, I wonder. Into the same void that disappears my socks, I suppose. If I ever find the gravity well that is hoovering my neurons, no doubt I'll find the mates to the socks I now wear in mismatched sets because I refuse to buy new socks. Ponder this: Socks have no seams. Unless I count the ridge across the toe that produces blisters if my shoes are too tight.

I think of my mother's brain and body coming apart at the seams, as if she's a cartoon character exploding from the inside from accidentally eating a bomb. Ooops, it happens. I imagine the core of her personality, the essence of who she is, still glows deep in her center, like a melty pool of maternal magma. I think I see it now and then, when she laughs at Klinger sewing the stylish frocks that never seem to get him kicked out of the army. Almost ninety years of psychic dust, detritus, and clutter obscure the sun at her heart.