The wind in the shore pines

Day 22 of my epic road trip started as a typical spring day in Portland. That is to say, cloudy, damp, chilly, and depressing. I just dropped my sister off at the airport. Checkout time is noon. I’m hurrying to write and upload this blogpost before I lose internet access. I’m happy to report one of the main purposes of my trip has been fulfilled. Soon I will be free to move on from the city of my birth.

Speaking of free to move on, yesterday was the culmination of a family event long in the planning: the disposition of my mother’s ashes, which have been resting peacefully in a box for more than two years. My sister and I drove to the Oregon coast, met our two brothers at the South Jetty of Fort Stevens State Park, and braved a chilly ocean breeze to empty that box. You can probably imagine what happened.

First, it’s not legal to dispose of human ashes in the ocean at the shoreline. You are supposed to go three miles out before you dump the loved one overboard. We didn’t have a boat, and given the wind and high waves, you can imagine boating was not going to happen. In addition, partly because of beach construction and partly because of weariness and hunger, we did not seek out the Columbia River beach where we sent Dad off over the river bar to the Pacific, back in 2006. Now we are all a lot older. I have chronic vertigo, and my older brother is healing from a hip operation. My younger brother got lost trying to find us, so everyone was ready to take the easier, softer way. Next to the parking lot was a dense thicket of scrubby shore pines.

“She’d probably like being in there,” I said, thinking to myself, she’s dead, she won’t care where her ashes end up. Dirt, water, it’s all the same.

My older brother led the way. Instead of entering the thicket right from the parking lot, he chose a sandy path to the jetty. We stumbled after him, fighting the loose sand, buffeted by frigid wind. My pajama pants flapped around my legs. I put my hood up, a futile gesture. Soon I was miserable. Giving up was not an option, so I forged after my sister, who seemed impervious to the chill. Maybe my tolerance level is lower because I’ve been in Arizona for two years.

From the jetty, we backtracked into the scrubby bushes and found a little clearing.

“This looks good,” said my older brother. I’m not sure what criteria he was using, but nobody argued.

My younger brother’s knife was frustratingly dull, so breaking Mom free from the box and the plastic bag within took some doing. Finally, the bag was open. My brother held out the bag to us. One by one, we took handfuls of Mom’s earthly remains, now looking a lot like cement sand with a few little bits of white stuff and started flinging them on the ground.

“Don’t put them on the path,” my sister admonished.

The clearing was sheltered, but the wind was capricious. Within moments, we were all covered with white dust. I had a quick flash of Mom standing nearby, laughing, with a cigarette in her hand.

I said, “Miss you, Mom,” as I flung handfuls of Mom on a nearby bush. As soon as I said the words, I felt my throat close up, so that is all I managed to say as my special remarks on the moment. My younger brother was near tears and trying to hide it. I averted my eyes, knowing how much we desperately seek to hide strong emotions. Mom wouldn’t mind if we cried, I’m sure, but we wouldn’t be able to look into each others’ eyes over lunch at the Chinese restaurant, which is where I know we were all anxious to be without delay. If we could have beamed ourselves there, we would have.

I was too cold to appreciate the humor of the moment. I was aware of how silly we must have looked, skulking in the bushes to dump some ashes on the ground. Anyone walking their dog nearby would have thought we were doing drugs, or perhaps burying a body. Hm.

It took quite a few handfuls to empty the plastic bag. Finally, the job was finished. I took a photo of a leafless bush that used to be gray and now was white, covered with bits of my mother. Then we were ready to head back to our cars.

Back at the parking lot, we asked my younger brother’s wife to take our photo with my camera. I held up a small poorly printed photo of Mom that I always carry with me in my journal. My sister-in-law quickly took three photos. In the pictures, we look like tired, hungry escapees from a nursing home. Then, we caravanned to the Chinese restaurant and ate lunch as if we hadn’t just done what we did. I ordered vegetables and tofu. It wasn’t great. I tried to reach for a feeling of relief, and there was some of that, mainly a feeling that I was done with my personal caregiving obligation to my maternal parental unit. I don’t know how my siblings felt. Of course, we don’t talk about such things. But I felt some sense of satisfaction that I’d seen the job through. Whether she can be at peace in a scrubby grove of shore pines is beyond my ability to know. Short of renting a skiff and sending her out over the Columbia River bar or renting a plane and dropping her from the sky, we did what we could to put things right. You can’t leave your mother in a box forever. Eventually, you have to let her go.

A couple more days in Portland, a few more people to see, and then the epic road trip continues.

A not-so-modest proposal

Happy Mother's Day. If you aren't one, you had one, and even if you hated her guts, you can't deny you got birthed. It's not for me to say whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. All I know is, I exist, thanks to my mother. 

I got lucky in the mother department. As moms go, she was a pretty good egg. She had a challenge raising four kids who barged into her life in stairstep fashion and destroyed her independence and autonomy. A product of her times, she had little choice. In her day, after you got married, the job was all about cooking dinner and birthing babies. She did what she could to eke out a life in the thin spaces around ours, but it's no wonder she was a cranky resentful person most of my childhood. 

Which could be why I opted to remain childless. I saw the physical and psychological damage four self-centered kids could do. 

Later, after we all left home, she got busy joining book clubs, leading knitting groups, volunteering at the library, and growing green beans. For such a shrimp, she had strength in abundance. In nursing school, they called her Mighty Mouse. I used to be proud of her muscles, like, my mom, the superhero. 

Now she's gone, and I'm old, tracking in her footsteps, seeing her face in the mirror. I realize how lucky I was to be born in that time and place. To suddenly appear in that place, in that time, with that skin color—man, how lucky could a fetus get? It could have been so much worse. I grimace to see people acting all entitled, as if they somehow had any control over being born in a particular place and time. Stupid sods.

Speaking of stupid sods, you know what I'm going to say, so I'm not going to say it. Instead, I'm going to go out on a probably somewhat distasteful limb here and wave at you from the short branches as I state my support for a new policy, sort of my version of a modern-day modest proposal. I call it Mandatory Abortions. 

Yes, it is what it sounds like. No more babies. Not for you, not for me, not for anyone. I've come to the conclusion that humans are too stupid to reproduce, and it's time to shut the whole thing down. 

I once tried to give a speech in front of a large audience, a long time ago, like, in the early 1990s, when I was in college (the second time around). It would have been a funny speech. It made me laugh, anyway. Unfortunately, I arrogantly assumed I didn't need any notes. Thus, I forgot my speech partway through the delivery. I don't remember much of the speech, but I do remember the feeling of utter, abject, stomach-dropping horror at the realization that my memory had failed me and my words were gone. I still get cold sweats when I think about it, proving the adage that fear of public speaking is possibly the worst of all human fears.

The opening line of the speech, though, was something about babies being a plague upon the land.

Besides a surfeit of babies, I could point to a few other plagues upon the land, but I don't want to get too nuanced. My brain is pretty much locked in an either/or mode these days. I'm either alive or I'm dead. People are either good or they're bad. I'm half-blind and not seeing shades of gray very well, and shades of gray aren't safe anymore anyway, or so I have heard, not that I would know. One of the plagues, I can't help but notice, is men. I read something from a historian about the origins of Mother's Day. I had no idea that the day was originally proposed as a response to the stupidity of men killing each other off in the Civil War. Unfortunately, that was before women's suffrage, so . . . back to the kitchen.

For some of us, it's the kitchen, for some of us, it's the burqa. It never seems to end. My mother didn't get to create her own life until after us kids grew up and went away. I witnessed her anger and frustration—I was partly to blame for it. As a young adult, I was observant, and far too selfish, to fall into the trap of birthing babies. And how lucky I was to be able to cavort through my child-bearing years under the kindly umbrella of Roe v. Wade! 

In case you find my not-so-modest proposal appalling, remember, I'm old, this is my blog, I'm a smartass, and I can say what I want to. I've done my part to end my line of DNA. If it is any comfort to you, nobody will follow me on the family tree. The bud stops here.

Gaslit by a gas cap

I talked with a friend on the phone tonight. It's a welcome distraction to listen to someone else's problems so I don't have to think about mine. Is that selfish? Immersing myself into someone else's story to avoid reading my own? Today was one of those days I would rather have been someone else. Not because anything bad happened. I accomplished the things on my list. By my usual standards, today was a good day. So why did I feel like crap?

Today I got gobsmacked by grief.  

The morning started out normal enough. I was thinking about getting things done. Tomorrow I have my first appointment with a doctor under the Medicare regime. I'm going to a new clinic to meet a new doctor at a new healthcare provider system managed by a new insurance company. As I fixed my breakfast, I found myself telling my story aloud, rehearsing, you know how you do that? You don't? Hmm, I guess it's just me then. Embarrassing. As if I'm going to be allotted a couple hours with the new doctor to describe what the past year has been like. As if the poor doctor has time or interest. I have to remember to be especially animated with my eyes and hands, because I'm sure I'll be wearing a mask the entire time. 

As I chopped zucchini, I started to feel sad. I haven't told the story for a while. I'd forgotten what I might feel when I remembered the day Mom died. Remembering that day hurt, remembering the look in the nurse's eyes when she gave me the news, how shocked I felt, but what hurt worst of all was remembering the last few months of Mom's life, sitting outside the care home in the cold, trying to keep her with me just a little longer. We bundled her up in fleece. I have photos. She looked like fleece-wrapped bug, six feet away from me, still smiling. We talked about people we used to know, places we used to go. I remember her smiling a lot. She couldn't see me smiling because I was hidden behind my plaid cotton mask. 

Today I chopped broccoli and told the story to my empty apartment, rehearsing. 

Oh man. Time out to cry. I can't tell you the story of me telling my story to myself without feeling things I don't want to feel. I've been so busy moving here. Now I've stopped moving, there's no place left to go, I'm here, it's time to stop running, which means it must be time to start feeling.

I miss her. I miss those few months when she was alive and happy and I still had a mother. I had a purpose, I had a place, even though I itched for it to be over so I could go live some other life. Now I'm in that other life and it hasn't coalesced yet into something I recognize. I don't know who I am, I don't know where I am, I don't know where I'm going. 

Does anyone, really? We pretend like we are the masters of our fates, the grand designers of our lives. We don't know anything. 

Yesterday I ran an errand for a friend. As I was driving to the pharmacy, I heard that dreaded sound, the ding my car makes when it is trying to get my attention to tell me something is wrong. Ding. That horrible ding has meant the car is about to siphon $500 more dollars out of my dwindling bank account. Fingernails on a blackboard. 

I stopped at a light and peered at the dashboard. I didn't see any lights, so I was like, what is up with this car? Is it a existential cry for help? A bit of automotive angst expressed through a plaintive ding? Then I saw in the little odometer window a word had replaced the mileage number. It looked like the message was 9ASCAP. 

You probably see it right away. I did not. After hearing that sound, my brain cells had gone into freefall. ASCAP! Nine of them! Have I violated musicians' rights somehow? 

When I got to the pharmacy, I dug out my phone, Googled 9ASCAP, and started laughing. Right on! Gascap. The 9 was actually a lowercase g. My brain had failed to parse the letters correctly. I blame grief, old age, early dementia, and fear of economic insecurity. Any or all, take your pick. 

I went into the pharmacy and picked up the thing for my friend. When I came out, I checked my gas cap, and sure enough, it was loose. My beast! I screwed it back into place. The light didn't go off right away, but I drove gamely forward, and it went off somewhere between the pharmacy and home.

 

Growing a pear

The old suburban farmhouse in which I did most of my growing up had a Bartlett pear tree just outside the back door. Every few years we collected bumper crops in cardboard boxes and fought the fruit flies to see who would get to eat the pears first. I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my mother and the neighborhood women, paring and cutting slippery pears and soaking pieces in lemon juice in preparation for canning. To this day, nothing says summer is over, prepare for hell to me like the taste of a perfect ripe Bartlett pear. 

I'm doing a lot of remembering this week, probably because I can. Now that most of the obstacles associated with moving are resolved or being addressed, I have the luxury of letting my mind roam, and it seems drawn toward the past. I'm thinking about my cat. I'm remembering my mother. I'm missing the tooth I lost. And it's pear season, so I'm remembering pears.

There might be another reason I am looking backward. I'm reaching a milestone in a few days: I'm turning sixty-five. 

Yep, thanks for noticing. I'm coming of age—again. This coming-of-age marker isn't quite as appealing as turning twenty-one, or forty, or even fifty. This time I'm crossing the threshold into early old age or whatever they call it. I'm entering the neopleisticine dumpy sagtime epoch. If I'm lucky enough to somehow fall into a pit of tar and gradually be encased in amber, future anthropologists (if there are any in the future) will peruse my DNA, rub their depilatoried chins, and say, "Hola, she seems a bit droopy for someone who clearly subsisted on yogurt, nuts, raisins, and twigs."

Turning sixty-five reminds me of an anxious time when my elderly Mom fainted and fell on her condo patio and didn't tell me for a few days. (She was much older than sixty-five then, more like eighty-five, and I was her sometime caregiver with no idea of what was coming.) Mom mopped up the blood and went to bed with a couple cracked ribs, a banged up ankle, and a scraped elbow. She knew what would happen if she told anyone about her fall: An endless, tedious round of visits to various specialists, which is exactly what happened. She couldn't hide her injuries for long. A heart doctor, a heart monitor, an ankle doctor, and the usual EKG and MRI and CT scans all had a go at diagnosing her problem. The outcome: no obvious cause was found for her syncope. It was just one of those things.

The upshot is now I understand why she left her sliding glass patio door unlocked whenever she was home. She prioritized her fears. She might worry that drug addicts would sneak in and steal her television, but she was more worried that no one would be able to get inside to save her should she fall in the bathroom. 

I get it. Without a key, there is no easy way to break into the Bat Cave. That's good, if I want to be secure, but not if I want to be saved. Now I'm officially old, and coincidentally, I happen to have the luxury to think about such things. Time for another round of Swedish death cleaning.

Speaking of death cleaning, is it fall where you are? Fall has fallen here, I think. I'm not sure. I'm learning the desert seasons in real time. The night-time temps are forecasted to descend to the mid-forties. I hope the sky will settle into a steady blue dome. If it's sunny all the time, maybe the air pressure will stop fluctuating wildly up and down the barometric scale. Monsoon has been hard on my head. The ear crystals in my inner ear canals crash hither and thither, unable to figure out which way is up, or out, or whatever. It's near-constant ocotonia upset in the vestibular maze, which means I'm staggering the decks of the USS Vertigo day and night, under near-constant assault from the salt shaker in my right ear. It's very distracting.

Luckily, turning sixty-five means Medicare, here I come! Meanwhile, I'm eating fresh pears and thinking of home. 

Welcome to my slo-mo life

Welcome to the slow motion life of inadequate internet. Haven’t we become accustomed to a certain pace when we surf the Web? Pages load. Maps function. Emails appear. Buttons work. I thought my happy day had arrived when I saw the box containing the modem outside my door. Within minutes I was connected and jockeying for my place on the World Wide Web. However, there’s a kink in the line somewhere, probably right outside my door, judging by the bent cable that comes from somewhere and disappears into a hole into my apartment. After several days complaining via slow-motion chat to the internet provider reps, they finally broke down and agreed the problem was on their end and a technician will arrive next Friday.

I’m not complaining, really. I didn’t think I would get internet here until mid-October. The schedule got moved up when I got the address problem straightened out. Apparently, it takes longer to get internet installed in an apartment occupied by another tenant who already has internet. Who knew.

Well, actually, the address error has not been entirely resolved. The internet provider and the utility company seem to have accepted the new address and adjusted their records accordingly. The property management company, however, hasn’t shown any willingness to make an address correction. I’m trying to be patient. Perhaps they are still working from home. Perhaps they use a third-party vendor to manage their online content. Perhaps they are kind-hearted simple folk who move at a pace different from my own.

I’m expecting in about six months to get a notice saying, well, Carol, it was really nice of you to pay rent for that other tenant all this time, but when are you going to pay yours? It seems like such a simple thing, to acknowledge the error and resolve it. They may be well-meaning, but from my one-sided perspective, this property management company looks like it is run by a bunch of incompetent nincompoops. I’ve recently noticed a desire to use that word nincompoop in my writing. What do you think? Did I choose the right word?

Just when I seem to be circling the drain, the universe brings me something to chew on, something to occupy my mind and my time so I don’t completely implode. Last week, it was the address error. This week it was getting online. In addition, I’ve had a sizeable editing project, which has kept my mind out of the tailspin and helped me focus on being helpful. It is good to focus on something other than myself. I admit, I have wanted to tear my hair a few times.

I dreamed I was hanging out with Mom at her condo, helping her get organized. She sure had a lot of stuff, in real life, and in the dream. Accumulating stuff seems to be a favorite pastime among some Americans. Having just downsized and moved long distance, I am loathe to accumulate more stuff. Nevertheless, I went to Home Depot and Target and got some things to organize my space. My personal rule is never to buy anything I cannot lift and carry myself, so the things I bought fall into one or more of these three categories: they are small, they are plastic, or they can be disassembled into manageable pieces.

After I got my new shelves set up, I sorted through the contents in the boxes and plastic bins I brought with me in my minivan and shipped in the shipping box. Almost all of my clothes fall into one or more of these three categories: they are torn, they are stained, or they are fleece.

I have distilled my options to one of the following mutually exclusive categories: keep it, donate it, or toss it. I guess I left out a fourth category: set it on fire. In fact, I’m starting to realize that burning it down and starting over is metaphorically pretty much what I’ve done over the past six months. If you strip out the emotion, what I did was efficiently and effectively execute on an action plan I’ve had in place for about five years. No room for grief, no room for fear and anxiety, just sort it out, pack it up, move ‘em out, get it done.

If you are human, though, you know that emotions are sort of like your old dog Sam. It is easy to banish Sam to the backyard and tell him to go pee, but it’s very hard to keep him out there once he remembers that being inside is where the food is. All I can say is, I’ve been dealing with Sam this week.

After muddling through some weepy moments, I eventually reached a point of grace, in which I realized nothing is all bad or all good, that life happens to us all, and whiners never prosper. Once again I have the opportunity to embrace my life philosophy that emotions don’t matter all that much. Only actions actually have some influence on outcomes. Screaming because the property management company has failed to meet my expectations doesn’t hurt them. They clearly don’t care about customer service. Screaming only makes my voice hoarse.

I will continue my action plan: to nudge, poke, prod, remind, and cajole, all the while doing my best to be friendly, courteous, and reasonable.

I don’t need to burn it all down to start over in this new city.

Two minutes or less

Sunday mornings are a good time to drive around Tucson. I like to combine errands, so in addition to learning the city, this morning I planned my trip so I could drop off my recycling. I found the police station at Miracle Mile and discovered they only recycle glass there, not paper and plastic, so I headed east on Grant, which turns into Kolb, then left on Speedway and remembered the address of the East Tucson City Hall from my previous trip a few weeks ago. I dumped the contents of my two little wastebaskets into a humongous dumpster, making my tiny contribution to the delusion that I’m somehow doing my part to keep a few scraps of paper and cardboard out of a landfill.

If I wanted to be in a booming business, I think the trash disposal business would be the place to invest. There won’t be a lack of business for the foreseeable future, and even if the entire marketing machine comes to a standstill because of a global catastrophe, the landfills will be full of useful items, some of which will never disintegrate. If I had some vacant land away from a bunch of neighbors, I would glean useable items from the waste stream, sell them to artists and home decorators now (before the apocalypse), and sock the essential items away for later—I’m thinking of the tools, the sturdy plastic containers, the building materials, all the stuff you would need to survive without electricity, internet, and Starbucks.

You need a lot of space for a landfill and a space to sort and glean. A warehouse. An aircraft hanger, maybe. After the apocalypse, planes won’t be flying. We’ll strip them for parts and use the fuselages for shelter. After we clear out the dead bodies. That’s assuming it was a plague that decimated the population. Ha. I read too much science fiction. This scenario also assumes I will be one of those left standing. Human history repeats until there are no more humans: I’m referring to the continual bloody fight over scarce resources. We think we are so civilized, so polite, but really, the ones with the power and resources want more power and resources and they don’t care much who they trample to get them. There’s never enough when the mission is to safeguard your genes, your tribe, and your way of life. As usual, those of us without will always be struggling to get a little more than our fair share.

Last week, the theme of my life was, where the heck am I, really? No, literally, I mean, what the heck is my address? Apparently I signed a lease to rent an apartment that was already occupied. I remember I questioned the address on the lease, back in August, but the apartment manager swore it was the right address. You’d think they would know their property address, right? It’s the address on the lease and on the payment portal where I sign in to pay my rent. A month and a half later, I now have discovered I’ve been paying rent, utilities, and renter’s insurance on someone else’s apartment. How surreal is that?

Action is the magic word. I got busy to keep from screaming and tearing what little hair I have left out by the roots. As far as utilities go, I think I’ve got the problem straightened out with the power company. I’ve called the insurance company and updated my renter’s insurance. The internet provider might be coming next week to install internet in the actual apartment I’m living in, assuming the modem actually arrives in the mail and I’m able somehow to retrieve it. I’ve sent an email to the property management company advising them of the situation and requesting they update my lease with the proper address. I don’t think that is too much to ask, do you?

Meanwhile, if I recently gave you a street address, please discard that information.

This weekend I’ve been organizing the Bat Cave to suit my lifestyle. I can’t make holes in the walls or ceiling, but I have managed to hang some things using that blue sticky gunk that peels off without leaving a mark. Last night I hung up the plastic strips of photos I made for Mom when she was on lockdown at the retirement home. If you’ll recall, I hung strips of photos outside her window until there was barely room to peer inside to see if she was awake on the couch or dead on the floor. When we moved her to the care home, I transferred all the photostrips to her new room. She enjoyed looking at the pictures of her friends and family, evidence of a long life well lived. She laughed when she spotted Radar and Klinger among the family photos.

Now I have the photostrips on my wall. It’s bittersweet to see the photos and remember how and why they were created. It’s been a tough time, for everyone.

This morning I organized my hokey pokey closet space (put your right foot in and shake it all about). It’s actually pretty good sized, for a studio apartment. Bigger than the bathroom. When I look at the bins, boxes, and hanging clothes (most of which are acrylic fleece), I feel some regret and chagrin that I spent so much sweat and money moving that stuff from Portland to Tucson. Even now, after some rest and reflection, it’s overwhelming to imagine getting rid of anything. Four pillows, crammed in a plastic bin. What if I need them to, I don’t know, make a bigger pillow? Do I need these four sets of flannel sheets? I hear it gets cold here. And that lovely rarely used turquoise polyester “down” comforter given to me by a work friend--what if I have to live in my minivan? I will surely rue the day I gave that comforter to Goodwill when I’m shivering in the trunk.

Nope, stop. Have you heard of the concept of sunk costs? All the time, energy, sweat, angst, and money have already been spent and cannot be retrieved. Keeping stuff I don’t need, won’t need, or might need some unknown day in the future goes against the circulatory nature of good living. Rainy days do come, we can’t deny it, but I have plenty of gear for the downpours, and in a flash flood, the less I have to carry, the better. Four pillows and a plush turquoise comforter won’t float me downstream.

I went through the hanging clothes, boxes, and bins and starting culling. Now I have five small cardboard boxes of stuff to donate to a thrift store. I balked a little when I realized I paid money for those cardboard boxes, but then I reminded myself of the principle of sunk costs and the law of circulation. It’s never too soon to lighten my material burden. Call it Swedish death cleaning.

If you had two minutes or less to evacuate, what would you grab on your way out the door? Last week I had occasion to consider that question for myself. A text appeared on my phone from an unfamiliar number, telling me to evacuate the apartment because of a gas leak in the building. Alarmed, I poked my head out the door and sniffed. I smelled no gas. I didn’t see anyone milling around, and I didn’t hear any voices. Given the apartments are all electric, you can imagine my skepticism. I texted back to the unknown person, “Can you be more specific?”

The texter responded with a street address and range of apartment numbers that included mine. I looked around and wondered what I would be sad to lose if the place suddenly exploded. I put my laptop and gear in my backpack and put it in my car, hoping the car would not blow up along with the building. Then I grabbed my phone and fanny pack and keys and started walking around to see what I could find out.

The apartment property here is divided into two sections. The managers refer to them as “complexes,” although I think that is a pretentious label for eight buildings that look like parts of a Motel 6. Nothing against Motel 6, just saying. Eight units per building, four up, four down, with external staircases. Both “east and “west” complexes have four buildings each. Both have dinky pools in between a couple of the buildings. Each building has its own set of mailboxes. Each has its own trash dumpster, although ours is slightly larger than theirs (and neither side recycles or composts). The parking area wraps across the back of both apartments and surrounds three sides of the west complex. You drive in on the east side of the west complex and are supposed to drive out on the west side, although nobody does. People drive in and out both driveways to get to the street. So far, I’m following the arrows on the pavement, but I’m sure at some point, I will cave and seek the shortest path to the exit. Both entrance and exit are guarded by electronic gates that don’t work.

What’s really odd is that a tall cinderblock wall divides east from west, breached only by the back parking area and a walkway from the parking lot to the west pool. I don’t know how this came to be. The buildings were clearly built at the same time by the same developer. I surmise there was a family feud among the owners at some point, inspiring them to split the entire group of buildings into two compounds, east and west.

After locking my door, I walked along the parking lot in the back, came around the corner of the west complex, and saw a modestly sized truck with the words “So and So Gas Service” on the side door parked outside a laundry room I’ve never used. Ah, gas dryers, I guessed. Some guy was sitting in the truck, looking bored. I didn’t see any tenants milling around. A man and woman came out of Building B and sauntered to their car.

And that, my dear Blog Readers, is how I came to learn that after living in this apartment for a month and a half, I didn’t know my own address.

I have since learned the name of the texter. I’ll call her K. She’s the new manager of this property—both sides, I assume. I wanted to ask her about the weird two-complex thing so I ventured into her tiny air-conditioned office and introduced myself. I didn’t stay to chat. She was clearly harried.

“You aren’t the only tenant this happened to!” she said. Apparently the address error had propagated across other leases signed since this property management company assumed management of this place. Now a lot of things need to be unraveled and repaired.

On the bright side, now I know which meter is mine. I know where the power breaker is. I think I’m reasonably certain now of my street address. I mean, how certain are we, ever, really? I’m glad I didn’t get letterhead printed. Not that I would, but you know.

I’m curious about something. I have yet to meet my alter ego in the west complex. Should I walk over there and introduce myself, ask if they perhaps have seen a modem addressed to me? Should I reassure them that the power company has reinstated their account and express my hope that the temporary disconnect didn’t cause a hit on their credit score?

Life trundles on, until it stops. Meanwhile, I’m giving some serious thought to what I would take with me if I had two minutes or less to evacuate. I encourage you to do the same. Not to make you crazy. Just as an exercise in self-analysis. It's always good to know what we value. 

What makes a place home?

I am happy to report I’m starting to feel more settled in my new apartment. My sister texted me to ask if I felt “happy.” She put it in quotation marks, as if it is an unreachable state, something to be aspired to but never attained, like a dress size zero. I wrote back that I felt content. No quotation marks.

It sure is nice to be reunited with my stuff, even if it is in boxes, bins, and bags. Time to get organized! Over the past couple weeks, I’ve spent a chunk of money on shelving of different types. A four-shelf chrome wire rack now organizes all my travel gear behind the door and provides a great place to hang my television antenna. (So far the only broadcast channel I can’t get is CBS.) Another smaller wire rack now holds Mom’s dinky senior-friendly microwave, although I haven’t used the appliance yet. In fact, after living without a microwave for the past four months, I’m not sure I really need one. Maybe when winter comes, if there is such a season here, I will find it useful for heating my coffee.

Most of my home furnishing expenditures have been on wood. I love wood. Using cheap store-bought, assembly-required fake wood laminated cubes and some wood planks, I built a colossal writing desk with overhead shelves to hold all the paper goods I insisted on bringing with me to Tucson. (Ridiculous use of cargo space, but whatever, it’s done now.) I decorated the top shelf with a display of paintings, framed photos, and ceramic creations made by a former high school art teacher, long deceased, bequeathed to me in a roundabout fashion and carefully packed for the trip across the desert.

This studio apartment has a built-in divider separating one large room into two smaller spaces. The “bedroom” area is somewhat larger than the “living room” area. There is one door and one window. The window is large, but screened, so the view onto the parking area is gray and indistinct. However, passersby can see me sitting at the window staring out at them. I know this because my next door neighbor to the east waved at me as she walked by with her little terrier, returning from the dog poop area. That was nice. That she takes her dog to poop in the designated pooping place, I mean, instead of letting it poop anywhere. Also, nice that she waved. I waved back, of course.

The front room is for cooking, eating, and watching TV. The back room is the nerve center, the inner sanctum, the working space. It’s also the sleeping area, but I consider the bed to be an afterthought. The main focus in this area is productivity. There are no windows in this area, which means there are long stretches of blank wall space, perfect for setting up long work tables. There’s no light back here, either. It’s dark, which is why I’m calling my new home the Bat Cave. However, there are plenty of electrical outlets and no shortage of lighting devices.

Abundance! I now have two large work surfaces. The one to my left is for my desktop computer, speakers, and printer. Right now, that computer is not connected to the internet, which means it functions as a really big jukebox.

This new desk is designated for writing and artmaking. Sitting here, I feel at home. My laptop fits perfectly. I have my gizmos and knick-knacks holding my office supplies at my fingertips. Directly in front of me is a photo of my mother from late last summer, before we moved her from the retirement home to the care home. She’s smiling, illuminated by the setting sun, clearly happy to see me. She needs a haircut. I photographed her through the window from my vantage point in the bushes outside her room. Covid was a thing we thought we could outlast, back then.

I sometimes divide my memories into before and after. Before the death of Eddie. Before Covid. Before we moved Mom into the care home. Before she died. Before I moved to Tucson. These milestone moments are ledges on which my brain gets caught as I mentally freefall into the future. It’s easier to look back, I suppose, than it is to imagine something that doesn’t exist yet. Although, my memory being what it is, the past seems as murky as the future.

Speaking of murky, before I forget, let me update you on the story of Bill, my eighty-two-year-old friend at the trailer park. I called him on Friday night and told him I was coming over and wanted to return his CDs and go for a bike ride if he felt like it. He was amenable, so I drove over as the sun was setting. He invited me inside. I politely refused; I said I was allergic to fragrances, which is the truth. I didn’t mention the overpowering stench of his aftershave, recognizable from several feet away, outdoors.

Soon we were riding along the park roads. At his request, I was riding to his right so he could hear me out of his good ear. As usual, the sunset was spectacular. Every sunset in the desert is spectacular. Ho hum.

“I owe you an apology,” Bill said. “When I asked you for a hug, it wasn’t meant to be a romantic hug. We do a lot of hugging in my family, that’s all it was.”

I thanked him for the apology and said my family didn’t do much hugging. I told him he didn’t do anything wrong, that I took no offense, and that I was glad we were friends.

When we returned to his trailer, he said, “I have something for you.” I waited outside under his carport, watching rabbits gallop across the white rock lawn. Pretty soon, Bill came out carrying a large black plastic trash bag.

“My wife bought this for the hallway,” he said. “It’s a rug. She decided she didn’t like it after all, she said it was too much.” I’m guessing the rug has been in a closet for a while. I wondered what he was feeling as he jettisoned his dead wife’s possessions. I didn’t ask. He opened the bag to show me the corner of a low-pile Persian-style rug in earthy colors, mostly rusty red.

“That’s lovely,” I said truthfully.

Now I have an attractive runner rug in my work space. Not that I needed a runner rug, but I like the colors, and it really spruces up the place. When I walk across it, I think of Bill and wish him well. I also think of his wife. Now her legacy will live on in my interior design and color scheme. Good thing I got the rug before I make a trip to the IKEA in Tempe next week.

I think I mentioned I checked the mailbox here at the apartment. It was crammed full of mail, most of it destined for recycling. Some of it needed to be returned to sender, for example, a check from the U.S. Treasury for $300 for the child tax credit payment. I sorted through all the personal mail and counted mail addressed to seven different people. I am not sure if they all lived here at the same time, but I’m guessing a few did. Judging by the number of debt collection notices in the stack, I’m guessing the tenants had made a strategic decision to stop checking their mailbox. Who needs the aggravation, right? Elizabeth H., Danielle B., Christian O., Delores L., Sage A., Rachel G., and Carolina C., I hope you all will find peaceful resolutions with your creditors. Carolina, I would gladly forward you the two issues of Cosmopolitan you missed; however, the stench of the perfume inserts has proved to be too much for my sinuses.

Mostly, this apartment is great. I am continually amazed at how clean and dry everything is. I see and smell no toxic mold. There’s more than enough room for me and my stuff. The water is hot and plentiful. It’s a very civilized place to spend the next year while I figure out whether I should stay or go.

The main problem is flies. House flies come in under the edges of the window screen. No worries. Big flies are easy to shoot down with alcohol. This morning I taped up the edges of the screen with black duct tape, so I expect to see fewer house flies soon. It’s the no-see-ums that are the real problem. I am blotchy with red bites on my hands, arms, and legs. The females are tiny invisible nasty biters, attracted by carbon dioxide, intent on slicing my skin and suctioning my blood so they can perpetuate their abominable species. I can hear them whine sometimes, if they are near my ear, but I rarely see them. They are the epitome of stealth: fast, small, almost silent, and dangerous. I’m setting out cups of apple cider vinegar, hoping to entice them to reveal themselves, and I’ve got fans blowing in hopes of disrupting their flight paths as they are homing in on my breath. I don’t know if a mosquito net would be a tight enough weave to protect my exposed skin while I’m sleeping. I would gladly take mosquitoes any day. Calamine lotion is on my shopping list.

In addition to the annoying indoor neighbors, I have occasional moments of frustration with human neighbors who like to crank up the bass on their music devices. There is something about that visceral vibration that triggers my misophonia. Luckily, the neighbors with massive car stereos don’t hang out in their cars for hours on end—it’s still too hot. I can hear the booming receding into the distance as they navigate the speed bumps on their way out of the parking lot in their sporty loud cars.

The next-door neighbor to my west probably doesn’t realize how high the bass level is on her stereo. In fact, I can’t actually hear her music. I have no idea if she is playing country or rap or Bandera music. Only the bass comes pounding through the wall. I have imagined knocking on her door and asking her to turn the bass down. I’m pretty sure she speaks English. However, the conversation that might follow is more than I want to pursue. I just don’t have the energy to explain my request. It’s less social pressure to just endure. I find relief by passive aggressively bouncing a rubber ball off the wall we share. She can’t hear it, but it lowers my blood pressure a little. My final remedy is earplugs, jammed deep.

Oh, the last thing. I still have no internet here, and I don’t expect to get connected until mid-October. I’m paying extra to my cellphone provider to use my phone as a hotspot, and I’m using the wi-fi at the library for tasks that don’t require a secure connection. I go back to the trailer to do video meetings. It’s inconvenient, but not impossible. However, I’ll be glad to get back online from the comfort and privacy and security of my own space. Once I get internet access here, I think I might be able to call this place home.

Still homesick for something

It's been six months since my mother died. After her death, I was busy helping my family wrap up the estate. Then I was immersed in the process of buying a car, packing and shipping my stuff, and driving to Tucson. Then I got busy finding a place to live. For the past two months in Tucson, I've been rolling with the weather, from warm to hot to blazing, and then to wind, rain, and thunder. I guess I could pat myself on the back for being in the moment, but at some point, don't we have to stop and reflect?

I spent the last five years of my life drawing inward toward my mother in a tightening orbit. Now she's gone. It's as if someone moved the sun. Like, there I was trotting around her, fetching, carrying, singing, showing up for whatever her moment looked like, and suddenly, there's nothing in the center anymore. It's just blank space.

You might be thinking, well, Carol, you didn't have to lose yourself so completely in her life that you lost your own. Nobody asked you to do that. It certainly wasn't on the daughter-duty list. Do I sound like I'm complaining? I think I'm reflecting. I woke up this morning and realized I'm orbiting a black hole. It's an unsettling realization but sooner or later, necessary.

I store an image in my mind of my dead mother lying in the ER bed, eyes shut, mouth just a little open. In that image, to me, it's not really my mother lying there dead, it's an unpainted papier-mâché sculpture of my mother. That's because this fake pale mother has no teeth. Her dentures are in a plastic bag on the counter. That means her face is sunken and misshapen, like the balloon inside popped and the newspaper strips are sagging with gravity. It isn't my mother's face at all. Not the mom I used to visit and talk with and sing with. Some cartoon body with a blanket pulled up to its chin. Nothing to fret about, nothing to miss. 

I talk to her every now and then while I'm stuck in stasis (indoors in the heat and monsoon) waiting for my new home to appear. Ma, I say. Sometimes that's all I say. Ma. Ma. Ma. I sound like one of those kids that frazzled mothers drag around grocery store aisles. You see them yanking on their mothers' jackets and demanding candy. Ma! Chocolate! Ma! Pay attention to me. 

I miss what she used to be, not what she became. I would not want her back. She would not want to be back. Likewise, I don't miss Portland but I'm not home yet in Arizona. I don't know where I belong, or if I ever belonged anywhere. When I think of "home," no place comes to mind, no place I can say, yeah, that place, now that place was home. Home for me has always been about people. I always came or went because of people. Now I'm alone and I have to put myself in the center of my orbit if I want to create my next home. Conceptually I know how to do that but I'm not feeling it yet in my body or soul.

A conversation with Mom on Mother's Day

Today was my first Mother's Day without a mother. I occasionally forget she's gone and feel an urge to bring her up to date on the latest happenings in my life; however, she's no longer listening; she died on January 7. Even if she were still alive, I would not tell her the details of my personal fruit-basket-upset. Over the final five years of her life, she grew increasingly uninterested in anything beyond her couch, her next meal, her next moment. Sometimes I would forget and mention something inane, like, for example, the neighbor had a sewer line dug today. She had no connection to sewer lines or the loud heavy machines and men that dug them, so it was probably for the best that she forgot everything I said five minutes after I said it. 

Now she's gone and I can "tell" her anything, which is not really a philosophy I subscribe to, that we have an unseen audience of dead parents and cats waiting to hear about our day and cheer us on. I mean, if it makes you feel better to believe that, go ahead. I can't really picture my dead folks hanging out with my dead cats in some lovely heavenly place eating bonbons and cat treats and caring much about what is going on in my sordid earth-bound life. 

Seriously, if you were lounging in paradise, would you really spend much time looking down at earth and hoping humans will start learning how to live with each other? Me neither. I assume heaven has endless ice cream and no weight gain. Given the perks, who cares about politics, the environment, or moving house out of state? Just a bunch of striving in the wind, if you ask me, which I know you didn't, but this is my blog and I'll whine if I want to.

I'm not whining, really. I'm grieving. I don't think it has hit me fully yet, the losses of the past year and some. Eddie my cat died a year ago January, just as Covid-19 was ramping up in Washington State. Then we moved Mom into the care home. Then she died. Then I packed up and moved to Arizona. So with one thing and another, I haven't really had time to stop and feel much. And who wants to feel things anyway? Not me!

Hey, Mom, you might be interested to know that next week I will begin the apartment hunt in earnest. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for this smoothly paneled landing place, for sure. The palm trees remind me of Los Angeles. I'm fascinated by the wildlife in the dry riverbed of the Rillito River. From this safe launching pad, I'm learning my way around the vicinity, extending my scope onto palm-lined side streets and cacti-lined country roads. This is an amazing city.

However, sooner or later, the owners are going to want their trailer home back. I can't get comfy here. Goldfish remake their tanks to suit their needs, and I'm like a goldfish in some ways (short attention span, stinky lifestyle), but this mobile home is not a water tank. I'm missing my algae, I mean, my stuff, the detritus that supports my creative existence. I've got my bowl of paper clips but I really want my art supplies, my computer, my IBICO machine, my microwave, my television, my paper products. I'm such a hothouse flower. 

Mom, you'll be glad to hear, I'm getting things done. On a toasty Wednesday morning, I unloaded all my stuff out of the rented U-Box and into the rented storage unit. Even though I can't find anything, I know it's all in one place. That's progress. What's more, the grizzled guy at the AutoZone told me how to fix my check engine light, and lo, after one dose of mechanic-in-a-can, it worked! Next, on his advice, I filled the tank with the good stuff, and now the wild mustang minivan seems more amenable to being ridden. That's good because I might be living in that thing one day. 

Mom, here's something funny. I shopped at a Kroger's food store called Fry's last week, thinking it would be like our beloved Fred Meyers in Portland, and it was sort of, if you remember what the Glisan Fred Meyers looked like in the 1970s before it was renovated. Dingy, dark, narrow aisles, small produce department. Crummy selection of apples, and not one pear. Clearly we are not in Portland anymore. The good news, though, is that Phoenix has a Winco, if I want to drive a hundred miles. One of these days when I'm bored and have nothing to do, I will make a run to Winco. And IKEA too, while I'm there, hey, might as well. Let me know if you need anything.

I miss you, Mom. If a shred of your spirit exists anywhere, I hope you are content and enjoying big bowls of Rocky Road ice cream with no lactase blowback. Rest in peace. 

Time to put on my infinity hat

Mom started keeping a journal in 2005, when she was seventy-six years old. I scanned it into a pdf file last night. Each entry was just a few lines long, mostly centering on the weather and her garden. Defrosted freezer received equal weight with July is half over already! She noted some major moments in her life and in the lives of her four children, mainly the passing of people and pets, but most of her journal chronicles the weather. Few entries offer insight into her mind, which makes this one notable: In 2006, she wrote, Some days fly by—others crawl. Sometimes I wonder why I'm still here—What am I supposed to do with myself? She answered her own question: to be useful. 

She led a supremely useful life, in my opinion. She kept lifelong friendships with high school chums, nursing school classmates, neighbors, fellow librarians . . .  As an bubbly extrovert, she spread love and hugs to just about anyone she met. Dementia stole her outgoing talkative nature and turned her into a confused, cautious, reticent old woman. Her journal is filled with exclamation points almost right up to the last entries. In 2015, she wrote Growing older. No car. Carol does financial and food. The next entry was in 2016: Just maintaining! In January 2017, her final journal entry: Cold, very cold. 

A few months later, she admitted she couldn't live alone anymore. We moved her into the retirement home. She had her computer but stopped using it. She had her TV but forgot how to work the remote. She forgot how to use the bathroom. She forgot how to think. 

I postponed scanning her journal because I didn't want to feel sad. Last night, I scanned it without reading it. Instead, I listened to the news and let my hands go through the routine motions of flipping pages and pressing buttons. Before I sent the pdf file to my siblings, I finally took time to read through her entries. 

I hear her voice in her Farmers' Almanac style entries. She sounds like the mother I used to know before dementia took her mind away. I wish she'd written more, left more of a legacy. She lived a life of loved experiences instead of documenting her thoughts in writing like I do. She preferred to keep her introspective moments hidden. 

I wonder if she knew when she was writing these pages that I would be the one to go through her journal. 

Probably not. She stopped writing as her life started unraveling. By the time I was visiting her daily at the retirement home, sitting with her on her stinky couch, finding M.A.S.H. reruns on TV, and helping her navigate the meal menus, she had become anchored in the present. If she had introspective moments, she did not share them. After Covid-19 barred me from entering the building, I taped photos of her family on her window so she wouldn't forget us. When she moved to the care home, the caregiver pinned those strips of family photos on her wall in her little bedroom. She loved looking at pictures of her children interspersed with beloved characters from M.A.S.H.

I'm taking those photo strips with me to Arizona so I don't forget where I came from.

Mom was home and home is gone

I decided that packing up all the clutter would make me feel better so I dug my flattened spider-infested boxes out of my basement storage cupboard and started with my books. Including the few academic books I would like to keep, I managed to fill three boxes. You might think, wow, that is a lot of books, Carol. If you think that, however, you clearly never knew me. Books were kind of like my thing. 

I don't know where I'm going. I just know that as soon as is reasonably possible with a minimum of impulsive insanity, I am leaving Portland. Home was Mom, and Mom is gone, so this is no longer home. I need a new conception of home. Maybe something with blue sky above it. 

My friend the astrologer would credit the arrangement of the planets with this upheaval that sends me on a new trajectory. I don't want to make this entirely about me. I would guess Mars is retrograding in Uranus for most of the world right now. I know I'm not the only one reeling from events. 

Sometimes radical upheaval brings blessings. It depends on how I decide to frame my experience. Lately I'm just going with it. Trying to figure things out so I can finally manage and control circumstances has never worked for me. 

For the past five years, I watched dementia constrain my mother's world into a narrowing circle. She shed interests, activities, possessions, friends, and even family, until after five years, all that was left was her couch, her clothes, and me. I learned the lesson: Nothing is permanent, everyone dies, and all I have is the present moment. Mom was the Zen master of being present—I'm nowhere near her level, but in my defense, she had the advantage of being demented and I only have my self-centered determination, which is the antithesis of being present in the moment. Well, I'm trying. 

So back to packing. 

Mom left behind her blue plaid wool blanket, a scratchy old ugly thing. I don't want it but I made the mistake of smelling it. It smelled like laundry detergent and Mom. My mother had a smell. After she stopped smoking, her smell was a combination of old lady and Tide Fresh. Not something I'd want in a bottle, but the scent of her brought me to my knees. I'll see if my brother wants that blanket. Maybe he needs a good cry.

How to train your spider

For the past couple months, I've shared my bathroom with a house spider. I told my mother about the spider, and Mom named it Esmeralda. I presume Esmeralda was a female. I say was, because, yes, my pet spider and I had to part ways this week. She crossed a line, that line being the thin silk thread by which she hovered over my head just inside the bathroom door. If I hadn't disrupted her descent when I swung the door open, she would have landed on my neck. I like all creatures but we each have our place, and I admit, humans don't usually stay where they belong, but spiders on my neck is not acceptable. 

I captured Esmeralda in a plastic tub, carried her through the house to the back door, and put her in a dirt-filled flower pot on the back porch, where I hope she will be very happy. 

I miss her. Now I really feel alone. 

It's been almost a year since my cat Eddie died. I miss him everyday. A spider is not a substitute for a cat. Still, Esmeralda was a presence. When I entered the bathroom, I always checked to see if she was there in her spot, either clinging to the wall by the shower stall or hanging a foot below the ceiling nearby. Only once or twice did she make the trek across the ceiling to hang near the doorway. (I can't actually be sure it was Esmeralda, because, you know, house spider identification is not my strong suit.) Everyday I told her, "You stay in your space, I'll stay in mine." During nocturnal visits, though, just to be sure, I waved my hands over my head when I passed through the doorway. Just in case. 

I did my best to care for her. I put a piece of mango in a dish near the window to attract flies. I'm not sure my strategy worked. I never saw any flies hovering over the mango. It wasn't fresh—it was frozen, and it thawed to a remarkable gooey consistency that I found a bit off-putting. Maybe flies did too. It's winter, anyhow, so not that many flies are around the Love Shack, just a few little ones that zoom around the light above my computer monitor. 

I'm sure Esmeralda got enough water. I take a bath nightly. The bathroom has no heat, but it gets pretty steamy in there, especially when it is cold outside. The steam rises and condenses on the ceiling. Water, water everywhere, I'm pretty sure, for a thirsty house spider. (And for a fine crop of mold, but that is a different type of pet.) I read that house spiders can live for a year or more if they get enough to eat and drink. I'm sure Esmeralda and I would have continued on as roommates, wary but amicable enough, if she hadn't crossed the line.

I wonder how she is doing. When I enter the bathroom, I look up at the spot where she used to hang out, almost hoping she perhaps has found her way back inside the house. So far, her perch is empty. I see a few flies hanging around the monitor but flies don't make good pets. That is my opinion based on many years of observation and experience. 

Tonight I visited Mom at the care home. We sat outside under the shelter, me in a mask, her wrapped in fleece blankets. It was unseasonably warm for the time of year and the time of evening. We are enjoying intermittent rainstorms courtesy of the Pineapple Express, the subtropical firehose that occasionally points directly at Oregon. 

Mom seemed inordinately sleepy tonight, for the third night in a row. I cast around for something to keep her engaged and entertained. 

"Esmeralda and I have parted ways," I said. 

"Who is Esmeralda?"

"She's the spider that used to live in my bathroom. You named her Esmeralda." 

"I did?"

"She made the mistake of hanging over the doorway into the bathroom." Mom looked confused. "I didn't want her on my neck."

"Ah." She got it. 

We looked at each other. 

"I'm tired," she said.

"Tired today or tired in general?" Leading question, I know. I dig for facts so I don't have to feel my feelings.

"Tired in general," she replied. "It's all a puzzle."

I think the caregivers keep her busy working on puzzles so she will stay awake during the day and sleep through the night. Mom is weary of puzzles, but I think it's deeper than just puzzles. She's bored with the whole thing, the showing up for life thing. She's like a fine old watch that is winding down. 

Of course, I could be reading it all wrong. Come spring, she might revive with the light and decide it's time to plant a garden. I'll be ready. Whatever comes, I'll be ready.

Welcome to another stupid cold holiday season

 Hello, happy holidays to my seven blog readers. You sly anonymous folks, you know who you are. I've been anonymously writing this blog for some years now, hiding behind the moniker of The Chronic Malcontent (like about a hundred other bloggers). Now we are all living anonymous lives, hidden behind plaid and paisley masks, or tasteful cotton chambray, perhaps. Or maybe you use one of those disposable things I see lying on the ground in the Winco parking lot. Whatever we are covering our faces with, we are all hiding, waiting for this stupid cold Covid season to be over. 

I'm done trying to figure things out. I'm taking things as they come. You want to be stupid? Go right ahead. You want to complain? Right on, go for it. I support your right to be loud, stupid, and annoying. 

I'm taking my cue from my mother, living in the moment, not looking behind me, not peering ahead. She's the Zen Master of the Senior Vista Villa, or whatever the place is called. 

"How are your fellow inmates?" I asked a few nights ago as we sat outside the back door under the porte-cochère, six feet apart, me masked (plaid), her bundled in fleece blankets against the December chill.

"Those idiots are so dense!" she said with disgust. 

"Why, what are they doing?" 

"They do it all wrong," she complained. "The contract gets moved, and then everything goes haywire." I nod in agreement, even though I have no idea what she is talking about. 

"Are they messing with your puzzles?"

"You have to keep your eye on Vivian," she said. "She will try to get out the door if you aren't careful."

"You mean, she'll try to make a run for it?" 

"Yeah, she's a real pistol. Sometimes she tries to sit in my place." 

"At the table?"

She nodded, lips pressed tight. Clearly, the drama does not fade once we hit the nursing home stage. It's just like junior high all over again, only the mean girls are toothless and wear house slippers. 

"Well, if she takes a swing at you, you scream bloody murder. Erin won't stand for it."

"Yeah, she runs a tight ship." High praise. Moving Mom to this care home was traumatic for everyone but almost three months later, she's doing better than fine. She's happy and thriving. 

So, what about me? Thanks for asking. My life is no more precarious than it has ever been, hence my strategy of living in the moment. Nobody controls the future, nobody can determine outcomes. I try not to be stupid but hey, I'm human. Sometimes I don't wait as long as I should for the vents to clear the fog off my windshield before I tentatively drive the eight blocks to the care home. 

Every day brings new opportunities to remember that the Universe does not care what I think or feel. Gosh. I wish I could go back in time and have a little do-over. All the energy I have wasted whining about things over the years could have been spent writing ten novels or painting fifty portraits of my cat or planting a garden or waxing my car or my upper lip. Combined! I've been operating as if my complaining about how unfair life is and how mean people are and how stupid everything is has one tiny bit of influence on the Universe. The Universe does not care. Now I know. It's not about me. It's never been about me. I'm glad I figured that out before I catch Covid and die gasping in my bed.

The great benefit of living in the moment is that I'm free to pursue what interests me. I wish I'd done that back when I was eighteen, instead of doing what everyone else thought I should do. Oh well. All those choices brought me here. What a long strange trip it's been. 

Tubbing it with my laundry

 

Howdy Blogbots. Feeling like giving thanks yet? Yeah, me neither, although I should. I'm alive, after all. I hesitate to admit things are going well but I can't honestly claim it's all bad. For a chronic malcontent, that is some admission. I pride myself on my ability—it's an art, really—to look on the dark side. Little Mary Sunshine, I am not. And yet, I persist.

Last night I was multitasking by taking a bath and doing laundry at the same time. I can hear you asking, what? Laundry must be done, and washing skivvies in the tub means I can save my quarters for the sheets and towels. So, rub-a-dub-dub. Nobody gets close enough to smell me anyway, so who cares if I reek slightly? Anyway, I often think while I'm tubbing, and last night as I was squeezing water out of my socks, I was thinking, should I feel guilty that my life hasn't really changed all that much since Covid? 

Sometimes I think I should be suffering more. It feels like my inner empathy machine is just a click or two out of alignment. Before I can get the empathy machine to lurch into gear and flood my system with angst, I have to nudge my brain into having a thought, oh hey, people are suffering, I should feel compassion. I should suffer too. Then the sluicegate opens, the wave of empathy and angst washes through me, and I cry a little. Then I wonder, were those tears artificial? Am I crying for others, or am I crying for myself?

For me, the great tragedy happened on January 9 when my cat died in my arms. Since then, I have felt frozen in amber, mired two heartbeats from feeling much in real time. I'm responding to life, I'm taking action, I'm talking, and showing up, but I always feel a step behind, like, did I say the right thing? Am I feeling the right thing? There's a long moment in which I feel suspended in freefall. I can name the abyss. It's uncertainty. The dark hole yawning beneath me used to be hidden by the fog of my mundanities but no longer. Yowza. Life is damn precarious! I bet you feel it too.

After a remarkably smooth trip to the dermatologist on Friday, we learned my mother has a pressure sore on her right ear. (Yay, not skin cancer.) After researching ear-hole pillows on the Internet, I leaped into gear, determined to use materials on hand to create a pillow remedy. A few hours of cursing later, after repeatedly remembering how much I despise sewing, I proudly presented my accomplishment to Mom's caregiver: A pillow with a hole in it and a pillowcase to match. Essentially, it looks like I took a pillow and shot it with a small cannon. I'm still picking up the stuffing scattered around the Love Shack, but Mom has her ear-hole pillow.

Tonight I finally conquered the problem of foggy glasses. It's difficult to drive with fogged up glasses, have you noticed? During the day, okay, but at night, impossible. With or without glasses, not good, I can't see a thing. That reminds me of a time my former boyfriend and I got stranded hiking in an arroyo near the Colorado River after dark. I had only my prescription sunglasses. After dark, I was blind with them and without them. I tied a bandanna to his beltloop and stumbled after him along the sandy riverbed, sure our bones would be washing out somewhere down onto the plain below after the next thunderstorm. Well, driving with foggy glasses at night is like that, without the bandanna and the boyfriend.

In an earlier blogpost I reported that I had discovered my ears were not in a good location for wearing a face mask. Now I can report that my nose also presents a prominent issue. That is to say, the bridge of my nose is quite prominent, which makes it difficult to get a face mask to cover that bony curve. Has my nose always been so bony? Big, yes, since my teens, but gosh, so bony? Why is all the meat on my body migrating away from my wrists and nose and going straight to my ass? Well, a question for the ages. Anyway, today I took a dust mask and stapled a rolled up strip of fabric along the inside top edge. I sprayed the strip of cloth with a little water (I read it on the Internet so it must work, right?) I donned the dust mask and pressed the metal band tight into my skin. Then I took two cotton balls and stuffed them into the two gaps on either side of my nose. Then I covered the whole mess with my faded plaid cotton pleated mask. 

Feeling well barricaded, I expelled some experimental breaths. Eureka! Success. No fog! Special added bonus: Tonight the rain stopped long enough for me to catch a glimpse of the half moon in the southern sky. See what you miss when your glasses are fogged up?

My bathroom is festooned with drying t-shirts, tank-tops, underpants, and socks. Because the bathroom is cold and damp, each load of laundry takes about five days to dry. I've got a nightly routine. After I am done with my bath, I dump the clothes into the tub with me. No, I don't try to wash them while I am wearing them, although that did occur to me. Even though washing them while wearing them might be more efficient, wet clothes are not comfortable. I won't do it, even in the name of efficiency. 

I wash each "load" cursorily with bath soap. I rinse the items in the bathwater and hang them on hangers to drip dry from the windowsill. That's the nightly routine. Every day I take one load of cold but mostly dry, wrinkled stiff clothes, fold them like cardboard, and put them away in my drawers. This is an odd way to live but I don't mind. I conserve quarters, which saves me a scary trip into the bank. 

Tomorrow I get to make a scary trip to get a mammogram. After that I'll do my weekly scary trip to the grocery store, masked and gloved. In and out, like a burglar. It's a scary time but I feel oddly well-equipped to handle it. I don't let the pesky holiday season get in my way. My family stopped celebrating years ago. This is a piece of cake. You stay over there, and I'll stay over here. If you want me, you'll find me on the Zoom. 

 

The Chronic Malcontent tries to settle down

Is it time to exhale yet? I'm not sure. I keep telling myself, wait until this class is over, wait until this event is done, wait until that election outcome comes to pass. I'm very busy waiting. I'm waiting until it is safe to breathe but forgetting that life is happening now, daily, moment by moment whether I'm breathing or not. I am no longer a bystander in my own life, which is probably a good thing, but I'm tethered to my calendar, gritting my pearlies as I attempt to do the next thing on my list, wondering when it's all going to finally be done so I can stop running and start breathing. Aren't you tired? I'm exhausted. 

Life is just a habit of showing up. Some days showing up is just getting out of bed, but most days I'm an action-oriented dynamo. I fear I've come to believe that I'll only be safe if I accomplish everything on my list. I get an inordinate sense of satisfaction from checking things off. For example, the only reason I'm writing this blogpost is because a week ago I put it on my list. Dang it. If it is on the list, I have to do it. That is the rule. The upside is I get a lot done. The downside is I am my own cruel taskmaster. 

The schedule holds me together. The structure of my day orbits my evening visits to my mother. I don't want to go out after dark, especially if it is raining, but I do because I've set an alert on my phone—5:50 pm, visit Mom, bring gizmo. I bundle up in many layers of polyester fleece and fill my pockets with the baby monitor, a small flashlight, hanky, and gloves. I pull up my hood and venture out into the cold. For my reader in Minnesota, sorry. It's not Minnesota cold—40°F tonight, but I'm not built for cold, just saying. 

As part of my personal kindness campaign, I've been eschewing the parking spaces close to the Love Shack, leaving them for my neighbors who of course are oblivious to my sacrifice. Instead I park about one hundred yards down the street. Every night I wonder if my car will still be there. Every night, so far, it has been. On Halloween night, someone broke into my car and took my cell phone charger and spare change. The contents of the glove box were on the floor. The intruder rifled through the crates of car gear in the trunk but rejected the jumper cables and tire iron. Even though the thief was no doubt disappointed, in exchange, they left me a little bag of Halloween candy, wasn't that nice? And in spite of their disappointment, they didn't trash the car. They could have, but they didn't. So I still have a car that works. Maybe there is a god. 

Every evening when it is time to visit Mom, I take a little flashlight and stumble down the street to my car, masked up, wary of pedestrians. Even if they are walking a dog, you never know if they are wackos pretending to be dogwalkers. People with dogs are everywhere up here on the hill. They could all be wackos. With everyone masked, you can't see their faces. Luckily, they always give me a wide berth. Maybe they think I'm a wacko. Like, why would I choose to be out here walking in the cold dark if I didn't have to walk a dog? 

It's fall. That means my car is buried in golden leaves. I scrape them off the windshield with the wipers so I can see but I ignore the piles on the roof and hood. The soggy leaves will disintegrate and dissolve the paint but the car will be long dead by the time that is a problem. I might be too, who knows. 

You may remember Mom moved into a small care home in my neighborhood. It takes about four minutes to drive there. The streets up on this hill seem darker year by year. I'd like to blame the old streetlights but I'm pretty sure it's my eyes. My eyes are old. Everything else on me is old, no reason to think my eyes would escape the ravages of time. I don't really care except I get a little nervous when I drive in the dark. I am learning to drive by feel. By the way, you might want to avoid the east side of Mt. Tabor if you are driving after dark. 

Yesterday the caregiver at the care home sent me a two-minute video of Mom. She was sitting at the dining room table talking with two other white-haired women. The big screen television played football on the wall behind them. The audio wasn't great but I gathered that they were discussing books. The conversation was slow as Mom struggled to find her words. It emerged that the newest resident at the care home had worked in a library somewhere. Mom remarked with some excitement that she used to be a librarian herself. Common ground! I felt proud, like I was watching my kindergartener behaving appropriately during milk and cookies. 

Tonight Mom bundled up to visit with me outside the care home. The sky was black and filled with stars. We sat in the patio chairs six feet apart. Her breath billowed out in front of her face; mine was blocked by my face mask.

"Guess what?" Mom said. "We have a new president!" 

We congratulated each other. 

"Maybe now things will calm down," she said. She has no idea. 

Shortly after that she packed it in. Too cold. We visited through the bedroom window for a few minutes, using the baby monitor system. I pulled my mask down so she could see my entire face as I chatted through the walkie-talkie. She hasn't seen my face in weeks. For some reason, that mattered to me.

I drove home slowly like the aging person that I am, conscious that one careless mistake could result in tragedy. In keeping with my personal desire to do no harm, running over a dogwalker (or a dog) would blow my good karma to smithereens. Don't want that. It's cold and dark, and I'm old and tired. I need all the good karma I can get. 

Living in the present

Happy fall!? What was I thinking? More like happy winter here in the Rose City. We bypassed fall and went straight to misery. I am ramping up my whining a bit earlier than normal this year, thanks to a cold front and some gusty east winds. Only a few weeks ago I removed the sunshades from my front windows. Now it's already time to hang the plastic on the back windows. Fall was barely three weeks long. Why am I surprised? It's 2020. You'd think I'd be all ho hum by now but sometimes I can't believe this is real. This, meaning, like, everything.  

After I moved Mom into the care home last month, many of her possessions ended up in my living room. Over the past month I've made a pretty good dent in the stacks of boxes and bags. I've spent several evenings sorting through old cards and letters, bundling up clothes, and organizing stuff into boxes for the thrift store. All the yarn disappeared from my front porch, thanks to two happy Freecyclers (I assume they were happy, I didn't actually see them in the world of contactless donating). Some things I don't know what to do with.  . . . the $40+ toilet seat riser, for one, which we purchased to add to her toilet at the retirement home. It's the kind of thing you wonder, like, will I need this any time soon or should I . . . donate it on Freecycle? Yeesh. I think I can give it to the new care home. Still, I wonder, like, should I stash this away, just in case? You never know when you might suddenly realize your toilet is too low. It's 2020, after all.

When I packed Mom's stuff last month, I had little time to decide what would go with her to the new care home. For example, for many years, Mom kept a small basket filled with pastel-colored guest soaps on the back of her toilet. I assumed it was to gently combat the bathroom smells with pleasant scents of lavender, rose, lilac, and lemon. On moving day, I threw many disparate items into one box for later sorting, including the basket of soaps.

Eventually I went through the boxes and bags in my living room and found the basket of soaps. As I lifted the dusty basket, it fell apart in my hands, probably because of rough treatment during packing. I decanted the soaps into an empty yogurt container, maybe a dozen grungy soaps in various shapes and colors. A gray heart, a speckled egg. . . Should I donate them to the thrift store? I sniffed them experimentally. No odor. I examined them with a critical eye. Would anyone I love welcome these objects as a gift? Not a chance. I walked around my apartment with the container of soaps, reminiscing about my boasts about downsizing, and eventually ended up in the bathroom, as we are all wont to do, and there the soaps found a home on the back of my toilet, where they now sit gathering dust and doing nothing to combat the bathroom smells. 

When I went through Mom's castoff clothes, mostly fleece jackets and cotton-poly knit polo shirts, I set aside a navy blue cardigan I thought she might like to wear again. I am not certain but I think it might have belonged to my father. It's nothing fancy, acrylic, I'd guess, loosely woven and unraveling in a couple places near the neckline. I hung it on a hanger and left it on a doorknob where I noticed it from time to time and thought, hey, I should mend that thing. 

Tonight I looked at the sweater more closely. Mending is not a favorite chore. For Mom, I would tackle the job, but would she be glad to see Dad's old sweater? Or would it make her feel sad? What would the new caregivers think of Mom wearing a decrepit unraveling cardigan? Would they think Mom is a slob? Or would they blame the family (me) for not getting her some new sweaters? All this was going through my mind as I fingered the holes and wondered how I would mend the thing given that I have no navy blue thread, and I hate to mend. In the end, I hung it in my closet. It's getting cold in the Love Shack. Maybe I'll wear it for Zoom meetings; maybe people will think I look professional if they don't look too close.

I visit Mom at the new care home every evening after dinner. As you may recall, the first week was rough. The second week she was morose. By the third week, she and the main caregiver Erin were old chums. For the past week or so, we've visited outside on the patio. One evening I sat six feet away, making a face under my plaid mask while I watched Mom hug Erin like a . . . well, like a daughter. 

The people at the care home are her family now. Anyone who prepares Mom's sandwiches and wipes her nether regions deserves family designation. I'm just the peripheral person who visits outside and pays the bills. It's okay. A month in and I am grateful daily that the move didn't kill her. Her life might actually be better. She sounds calm. She's doing puzzles. She looks clean. She's making more sense. She voted. Did you hear me? She voted. 

This week my mission is to cover the east-facing windows with layers of plastic and drape my work desk in a booth of drop cloths hung from the ceiling. I hope this bit of crude remodeling will retain heat in my work area, where I spend most of my time. The heat comes from the $14.00 heater I wrested from Home Depot during a three-month slow-motion curbside pickup. Now I'm toasty warm while I doom-scroll, attend online webinars, mentor clients, and endure Zoom crashes. I'm glad 2020 is almost over but I don't expect much from 2021. Maybe spring will come again, who knows. I'm doing my best to bundle up and live in the present, one day at a time. 

Happy fall from the Hellish Hand-basket

Howdy Blogbots. How's it going? I'm doing fine, thanks for asking. Oh, I have the usual challenges, like anyone in these strange times. Life during Covid kind of sucks. I have Zoom fatigue. Fall started, that's a drag. I mourn the end of summer. I hear some folks are dealing with venomous caterpillars. Jiminy crickets. I have yet to see any Murder Hornets, though, so that's good. I try to stay out of the wreckage of the future, especially about the rather consequential election coming up next month. Got your voting plan? I got mine: Vote early and pray for peace.   

All in all, situation seems normal, that is, in general, all effed up, but I have to say, I'm doing fine. Why so cheerful, you ask? It's out of character for a chronic malcontent, I know. I'll tell you why I'm chipper. In only two short weeks, my maternal parental unit has adapted to the new care home. It's a miracle, proof of god. I was amazed. I credit the dementia and a really awesome caregiver. Mom now seems to like the saintly, endlessly patient, wonderful Eren. 

Things are looking up. I've almost but not quite forgotten the heart-stopping stomach-dropping moment when Mom glared at me and demanded, "Why did you do this to me?" That memory lingers because of the heavy emotional load I unintentionally attached to it. It will fade. Like all my memories now, it will fade. It's the curse of age, but it's also a blessing. I've forgotten most of the stupid things I've done and said. All that lingers is a frisson of humiliation and a desire to immerse myself in Time-Life Midnight Special music infomercials. I imagine Mom feels somewhat the same, except for the urge to sing along to Aretha and the O'Jays.

I'm slowly regaining floor space in my living room as I redistribute Mom's unwanted gear to the local thrift store, mostly old clothes pockmarked with cigarette burns. Some things I incorporated into my habitat—for example, staples, paper clips, sticky notes. Some I tossed—three little boxes of gummed reinforcements, for instance. Maybe I could have sold those on eBay as antique office supplies. Hmm. My former couch now turned writing desk is littered with stacks of old cards and letters sent to her from friends and family over the three and a half years she was at the retirement home. I need to go through all those, scan the ones that are meaningful (not the dozens of cards that say "Love and hugs, Dorothy"), and fill up the recycle bin. It's a task made for winter weather so I'll save it for a few more weeks.

Almost every evening since she moved, I've been walking the ten or so blocks from my place to Mom's place. I set my phone to alert me at 5:45. I don my walking gear and head out into the neighborhood. It takes thirteen minutes going (mostly downhill) and about seventeen minutes returning. Most nights Mom comes outside and we sit in chairs six feet apart, me wearing a mask, and discuss the meaning of life. Well, sometimes the topic is, Who is that walking a dog out there past the gate? Her memory is still stuttering but I think her ability to be in the conversational moment has improved. She sounds like my mother. It is beyond thrilling to see her in person. 

Tonight a windstorm blew up from the south, bringing some tepid rain. My rain gear isn't great, but I brought an umbrella (bright blue, a gift from Mom's health insurance company), which snapped inside-out after a block. I turned around, popped it back open, and kept going, peeking up once in a while to make sure nobody with Covid was coming toward me. Oddly, I was the only person out walking. 

I made it to the care home without mishap, slightly unsettled by the tall fir trees whipping in the wind and rain. I wasn't expecting Mom to come outside, but there she was, in her black fleece jacket and knit cap. It was a short visit. Even though our patio chairs are under cover of a large porch, Mom didn't want to sit out in the chilly wind for long. Still, she was glad to see me. She wanted to hug me. She seems to barely come up to my waist now, so strange how old people shrink, so I turned my face away and patted her on the back. It's a great relief to know she no longer hates me.