The Chronic Malcontent tries to work a program

Last night the power in my apartment went off just after 3 a.m. I woke up when my fan stopped. Dead-of-night silence is inordinately loud. I wandered around in my dark apartment with a flashlight, peered out the window, and soon realized the power was out in the neighborhood. I woke up my phone and looked up a power outage map. Yep. A red square in the center of Tucson for some reason had no power, and me smack dab in it.

Not having power is similar to not having internet. Both feel indispensable when I don’t have them. However, during summer in the desert, you really need power more than you need internet. I went back to bed—or what serves as my bed, call it foam rubber pad on wood platform, bed for short. When I woke up in the morning, I was glad to see my digital clock blinking red. Like magic, the power had been restored.

If I had internet, I would do some sleuthing to discover the cause, just because it would be interesting, just because losing myself in surfing the Web is a delicious distraction from reality. The cause of the power outage was probably some drunk driver downing a utility pole. It happens here a lot. On Saturday nights, drunk drivers crash into all sorts of things—trees, fences, power poles, bicyclists. My friend likened Tucson to a third-world country. I am inclined to agree. We could blame the vortices swirling around the Santa Catalina Mountains. Whatever the cause, the energy in this place on weekends reminds me of being eighteen on a summer night, drunk out of my mind, riding in the car of my handsome boss, also quite drunk, and laughing hysterically as we narrowly avoided ramming a parked car. That’s Tucson. Needless to say, I am not eighteen anymore.

Speaking of distractions, I drove up to Phoenix this week for a visit to IKEA. I thought I might feel anxious about driving. I haven’t done any distance driving since April when I drove the 1,500 miles from Portland to Tucson. However, once I got on the I-10 freeway headed east, I could feel my limbs relax. I was glad to be on my way out of the city, any city. For a few minutes, I daydreamed about what it would be like to have a bedroom, kitchen, living area, and bathroom neatly tucked into the cargo space of my Dodge Grand Caravan. Then I immediately started fretting about how difficult it would be to actually live the van life in the desert southwest. I’ve seen all the videos. The daydream dissolved as reality returned.

IKEA was big and blue, sitting in an enormous flat parking lot under a sizzling sun. Cars nuzzled tightly around the building, leaving the outer reaches empty except for the spaces sheltered by the shade of a few scrawny trees. All taken, of course. I parked in the open so I could find my car again, covered the steering wheel and driver’s seat with my reflectix windshield cover, and hiked to the enormous blue building in 111°F heat. At the entrance, I passed through a veil of water mist, a failed attempt to provide some cooling, and then I was inside.

In the bright atrium, I paused to get my bearings. I pulled out my list. The wide staircase to the showrooms rose in front of me. Should I ascend to dreamland? Not this time. Already overwhelmed, I decided to bypass the showroom and go straight for the crack cocaine, that is to say, the so-called marketplace, hidden behind a generic door under the stairs.

Within two minutes, I was hyperventilating under my facemask. I haven’t shopped like that in many years—I mean, intentional, purposeful hunting and gathering for non-essential items. Shopping frenzies are an artifact of my past. Instead of feeling energized at the endeavor, I felt sapped. Pillows, textiles, bedding, rugs, lamps, argh. Too much. I kept my eyes on my list and navigated the arrows on the floor, keeping my distance from other shoppers, many of whom were maskless.

I used to shop at IKEA once in a while when I lived in Los Angeles. I remember being enchanted with the place, all the myriad décor possibilities, the potential for self-expression everywhere, color, shape, and function, the intersection of everything I loved. As I shuffled around IKEA this time, I wondered what had changed. Was it IKEA or was it me?

Today’s IKEA seemed darker, dustier, smaller, and less enchanting than I remembered. I blame Covid-19. Nothing seems good anymore. The place seemed dingy, dimly lit in some corners. Displays seemed half-hearted, noncommittal. Many shelves were empty. I soldiered onward, finding everything on my list, or reasonable substitutes. I wasn’t all that choosy. A couple rugs, not my preferred color, but good enough. A few bathmats. A little square rug for the closet. A couple cheap floor lamps. A coat rack. A bar stool for my breakfast bar. I didn’t spend much and felt pretty satisfied with my haul. I would have bought more if shelves had been stocked.

Of course, I have changed too in thirty years. I’m wearier, mentally and physically. Plus I’m sort of done with accumulating stuff. I just got done doing some serious downsizing, so buying more stuff seems like a major slip in my downsizing recovery program. Did I tell you, I’m a founding member of Accumulators Anonymous. I’d been doing so well. Sleeping on a foam rubber pad on a wood platform is part of the recovery plan. Beds are so forever. Until they aren’t; then they are so hard to get rid of. Although, now that I think of it, tenants in my apartment building have been dumping mattresses out by the dumpster. Every week, there’s a different mattress, along with the random vacuum cleaner, ripped recliner, and broken big-screen TV. Someone comes and removes them, like elves in the night coming in to do your laundry. Is that a thing? No? Well, we can hope.

Anyway, mattresses. Maybe they aren’t as hard to get rid of as I think. Still, I’m trying to think long and hard before buying more stuff, even cheap plastic stuff. Well, especially cheap plastic stuff, because although cheap is tantalizing, plastic is bad. It’s a depressing thought to realize that the items I purchased from IKEA, and the plastic in which they came packaged, will outlast me by centuries.

Another month to go until internet. Meanwhile, I am enjoying my new IKEA purchases while battling flies in the Bat Cave.

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.

Reading the signals

My new friend Bill at the trailer park has taken a shine to me, it seems. Last week, we rode bikes in companionable silence in the gloaming. I knew it wouldn’t last. What is it with guys? Why can’t friendship be enough? Along the ride, Bill invited me on a date to see the Beach Boys in November at some casino thirty minutes south of here. I said I would think about it. When we got back to the trailer, I put the bike into the back of my car.

“Whoa, muscles,” he said. I ignored the comment. He continued, “I was wondering, why do you wear your hair so short?”

Part of me suspected Bill was consolidating his possession of me but I didn’t want to acknowledge it openly. Wouldn’t I feel stupid if I came right out and said, “Hey Bill, it seems like you are coming on to me. Is that what is actually happening?” and he said, “What? No, what gave you that idea?” and then I would be like, “Oh, sorry, my mistake.” Instead, flustered, I lamely explained my hair challenges.

“Oh, I thought you might have had cancer.”

“No, no cancer.”

He couldn’t help himself. He had to try again. What is with guys? He said, “Say, have you ever considered wearing glasses with smaller lenses?”

At that point, I began to exit my body. Ever mindful to maintain the polite veneer, I tried to explain my eyeglass and vision challenges. Meanwhile, I regressed to age eighteen, imagining I was hearing my father’s voice suggest in a perfectly reasonable tone, “Why don’t you wear some of those nice Ship ‘n’ Shore slack outfits?” The implication was clear: nobody will love you if you look the way you do.

You probably don’t know this about me. I used to be a fashion designer. I was an artist and a writer from a young age but I also had an interest in clothing as a form of self-expression. In elementary school, I applied the sewing skills I learned in 4-H to make A-line skirts and cotton jumpers. In high school, I adapted Butterick patterns to make hot pants and prom dresses. In college, after my art school friends convinced me painting was an obsolete art form, I switched my major to graphic design, which overlapped into fashion illustration. My interest in clothing design led me to Los Angeles in 1977.

I went to fashion design school in Los Angeles and learned to make patterns. I opened a funky custom clothing studio in West Hollywood. Even though I despised the tedium of sewing, for ten years, I made all kinds of clothes for all kinds of people. I made costumes for television commercials and sitcoms. I made costumes for movie characters you have never heard of. I dressed a few stars . . . Alice Cooper, Jon Anderson, Madeline Kahn. I made suits and hats. As Rome was burning, I made prom dresses, wedding dresses, and bridesmaid dresses, and then in 1989 it all imploded in a fireball of unsecured debt.

You would not know it to look at me now but I once had style. Oh sure, most of the time I dressed like a slob. I hate to sew, remember? However, when I needed some fancy outfit for an event hosted by my nouveau riche quasi-inlaws, I somehow managed to conjure up outfits that garnered surprised compliments. Oy, that goyim can really sew!

Now that I’m older, I don’t care how I look, which is a much more peaceful way to live. In addition, I am used to living alone, taming my hair with hedge clippers and eschewing bras. Nobody cares. My friends appreciate me as I am. That is why Bill’s comment caught me off guard.

Now I face a dilemma. How much do I want Bill’s friendship? Should I laugh at his jokes, listen to his stories, and gaze at his overbite with charmed admiration? Should I ride in his car to the Beach Boys concert, throwing Covid caution to the wind and ignoring the fact that I am in an unfamiliar city with no easy way to get home if the date goes sideways?

Bill talks about himself but has yet to express any interest in me. Not once has he asked me who I am or what I believe in. I would have thought his kids would have Googled me by now to let their father know what a creative wackjob I am and if I’m likely to be out to get his money.

I don’t need another friend, not that kind of friend. I’ve had friends like that, the ones who do all the talking and none of the listening. I hate to assume he’s just a lonely horny old man looking for a companion and eventually a caregiver, but it’s a possibility. I hate to say it could just be a guy thing. He’s of a certain generation, almost old enough to be my father’s generation. I don’t think anyone who knew my father well would say he treated women with true respect and equality.

When I was younger, I didn’t know how to say no. I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I got into some sad situations because I just wanted to be loved. Now I don’t care. I know I’m loved. I also know I was not put on this planet to meet someone else’s needs at the expense of my own. Not my job. And what the heck! I am not in dating mode. Been there, done that, don’t see myself doing that ever again.

Looks like I need to muster my courage for the talk. Let’s see, how should it go? Bill, when you suggested I should consider wearing glasses with smaller lenses . . . I want to say, what the hell were you thinking? Where do you get off, judging my appearance, as if you have jurisdiction over how I look? Bugger off, you and the saggy old horse you rode in on.

Oops, no, I would not say that. Let me try again. I could say . . . gosh, Bill, it sounds like you have an opinion on my appearance. Perhaps you think I would be happier if I looked different in some way? Because of course I know that you want me to be happy, and being different is not the path to happiness, is it? Maybe you think a woman’s place is to . . . No wait, my blood is starting to boil. Dammit, I wish I could say this stuff no longer has power over me, but clearly I would be lying.

No, let me try this again. Bill, when you suggested I should consider wearing glasses with smaller lenses, I may have missed an opportunity to tell you about myself. It’s true I wear short hair because it is convenient and I wear these glasses because they are what I have. But Bill, if you want to be friends with me, you will need to accept me as I am. I like to be different sometimes. Tomorrow I may show up bald with even bigger glasses. If you want to be my friend, you need to be okay with that. Because true friendship is not based on appearances. And oh, by the way, in case you were wondering, I’m a lousy cook and housekeeper, I hate to be touched, I eat onions and broccoli for breakfast, and I pick my teeth with toothpicks. Just so you know.

Something like that. What do you think? I’ll work on it.

Here’s an update from tonight. I just got home. I’m a bit peeved. First, I am chagrined to report, I failed to have the talk. Bill invited me into his trailer to receive more CDs. I sat hostage at his breakfast bar and slowly suffocated from the smell of laundry detergent as he told me story after story about his experiences being anti-racist and pro-Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the army back in the 1990s. The overpowering stench assaulted my nose and clogged my lungs. Outside the wind was picking up. I could hear thunder over the Santa Catalina Mountains. Finally after a particularly loud boom, I hopped up and said desperately, “Do you want to ride bikes before it starts raining?”

Mid-story, he stared at me in surprise. I apologized and whined something about being allergic to the smell of laundry detergent.

“That’s Lysol,” he said. I can differentiate the smell of laundry detergent from Lysol. It hardly mattered. Either way, I was busting a gut trying not to cough all over his kitchen. I grabbed my stack of CDs and went outside to find clean air and a fantastic sunset.

We rode bikes once around the park as the wind picked up. My hat stayed on my head. Bill’s went flying. Pedaling into the wind was a challenge. I coughed and laughed and pedaled and admired the sky as the rain began pelting down. Rain doesn’t fall here, it pelts, like the sky is actively trying to nail you with giant orbs of cold water. The storms here never fail to impress.

Back at Bill’s trailer, I loaded his wife’s bike into the back of my car while he put his in the shed. We stood not too close to each other and watched lightning bolts shoot from the tops of the clouds to the ground, seemed like just over the next ridge.

I knew what was coming. I can still read the signals. Even after all these years being single, I know when a guy is making his move. Bill was just unsure enough to give me a warning sign: He started to spread his arms out toward me. And he asked permission.

“Can I give you a hug?”

My body answered for me. Before my brain could engage, I had backed off and put my hands up in front of my chest in a defensive posture. I shook my head babbling, “No, I don’t think so, no, sorry, not for me, no, sorry.”

He is a tall man but he’s thin as a stick. I am sure I could deck him, especially when adrenaline and anger take over my brain. He would be a puddle on the ground before I had a chance to apologize for my unladylike behavior. However, politeness is an insidious disease. When taken to an extreme, politeness—the overwhelming desire to avoid giving offense—can cause me to exit my body and hand over control of it to someone else. I simply float away. This must be avoided. I’ve spent too much time in my life hovering near the ceiling while icky things happen. 

No hugs.

Stuff in the here and now

Welcome to monsoon. At any moment the sky can rip apart and dump buckets of rain on your head. You walk along the road toward a lovely pink and orange sunset, basking in the soft desert air. Don't look over your shoulder, though, because an enormous soggy gray cloud is sneaking up behind you. 

A couple nights ago, I went out for a walk around the trailer park. I've got a route now, thirty minutes of mindless walking. At the point furthest from the trailer, the deluge began. Raindrops are big as plates here. I was drenched in short order and slogged back to the trailer with my cotton knit (pajama) pants clinging like saran wrap to my thighs. Plus, it was almost cold. I'm not used to being cold anymore. It was shocking to shiver. 

The night before the rain storm I met a tarantula crossing the road. It did not speed up or slow down. I watched it move at a measured pace. I wondered what I would do if a car approached. A few yards away I saw what was left of a lizard that hadn't been quite fast enough, flattened on the asphalt with its little claws frozen in a permanent oh hell no pose. It would have made a nice addition to my pressed lizard collection, had I such a thing, which I don't.

I met a trailer park neighbor on the bike path. We were both peering over the edge into the Rillito River after a downpour, trying to see if the river had water. We couldn't see any where we were on the bike path next to Sam's Club. Later I discovered if we'd walked about twenty paces to the east, we would have seen that indeed, the Rillito River was alive with flowing water. Sally is a ceramicist who recently had a falling out with some hoity-toity gallery owners and is taking a break from making art. Southwestern ceramics sell well here, she said. Anything Southwestern sells well, I'm coming to realize. For example, the artist I met who lives out in the desert apparently sells quite a few drawings of round-faced indigenous children dressed in native costumes . . . for some reason, those images appeal to tourists. Why is that? No idea. As if kids on reservations don't wear sneakers. Whatever. Anyway, if I want to make money making art, I better learn to draw saguaros and maybe tarantulas.

Yesterday I visited my possessions at the storage unit. I was looking for my APA manual. I couldn't find it. It's in a box or bag, somewhere in that dark closet. Boxes are stacked ten high. There is no room to maneuver, open boxes, and see what is inside. Finding anything on purpose is impossible. Finding things at random is the only viable strategy, not that useful when I'm looking for something specific. I ended up buying an electronic version of the book when I returned to my laptop. I won't miss the print version. 

What really got me was seeing my stuff. Seeing all the boxes with their optimistic hand-lettered labels: paper, paper, paper. I saw like five boxes labeled paper. What the heck, Carol? Looks as if I paid a fortune to ship a bunch of paper to Tucson. Clearly I was not in my right mind during those last few weeks in Portland. 

I've heard people say it's okay to look back at the past. Just don't stare. I don't regret my move to Tucson. I certainly don't want to stare at my past. I just miss my stuff. I know it's silly. I don't have much stuff, and none of it is important. But it's all I have left of my previous creative life. I don't know who I am without my stuff. I feel ridiculous saying it. I see the news. Many people around the world don't have stuff. A lot of people recently lost a lot of stuff, including people they love. 

I've heard people say suffering is optional. Maybe it is true I have a choice about how much I miss my stuff. Maybe I can decide what meaning my stuff has for me. Stuff is impermanent, I am temporary, and life can only be lived in the here and now. All that may be true. I don't know. I still hope to be reunited with my stuff someday before I get dementia and forget where I stored it.  

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.

Dodged another opportunity

I'm hoping my housing search is going to be a Goldilocks tale of too much, too little, and just enough. If I were any normal person with a normal life and a normal job, the just enough housing option would look something like a modern apartment in a safe walkable neighborhood with stores nearby and no snakes, lizards, or roaches living under the sink. However, as all seven of you blog readers know, I don't tend to take the road most traveled. Last week I dodged the opportunity to live in a tiny stone casita in the desert. This week I toured a tiny mobile home in an RV park situated by an open field next to the freeway that would take me south to the border or north to Phoenix, depending on my frame of mind. 

Mobile homes are bizarre, present living situation notwithstanding. Having grown up in an old farmhouse solidly squatting over a concrete basement dug into wet Pacific Northwest soil, this newfangled mode of building feels oddly unfinished. I'm not used to the prefab, temporary nature of mobile home living. These buildings begin their existence in a factory, getting outfitted with lightweight accoutrements made of plastic, fiberglass, and fake wood paneling. Then they get loaded on a massive truck for an aggressive trip to the mobile home sales lot. You've probably been stuck behind half a house leisurely blocking two freeway lanes during rush hour traffic. From the sales lot, they get purchased and trucked to their final destination, usually a mobile home park, where they perch primly on concrete piers a few feet above dry dirt. And there they sit fading in the sun, changing owners from time to time and moldering into vinyl dust. Manufactured homes aren't quite the same thing as mobile homes, being somewhat, well, less mobile, right? To be honest, anything that doesn't require a constantly replenished coat of paint on its peeling clapboard siding doesn't really deserve the moniker house. Just my opinion.

On Friday I found my way south and west to a straight two-lane stretch of road edged with several RV parks and mobile home parks. These are not the same thing, by the way. RVs, no matter how big their widescreen TVs, are not considered mobile homes, even if you live in them full time. As soon as the temperature hits 85°F, RVs unplug their shore power cables and drive away to cooler climes, leaving vacant concrete slabs. In RV parks, a few folks park their travel trailers and never leave. As gravity and weather take their toll, these little trailers sag and sink toward the dirt, weighed down by homemade awnings, canopies, gewgaws, and strings of lights. They start to look like weird plants that grew up out of the ground. To keep out these bottom feeders, mobile home parks don't allow transient RVs to overwinter. If you have an RV, you park it offsite in a respectable storage facility and fetch it when its time to make like a snowbird.

The property I sought was an RV park with a mix of buildings (can I call them buildings?). Some were tiny travel trailers, a few were larger trailers no longer near any sort of tow vehicle, and a couple were single wide mobile homes. The rental I was going to tour was one of these single wide mobile homes, renovated in the recent past with a small addition built to the side to create a dining area. This mobile home had three doors to the outside and a postage-stamp size yard that butted up next to the side yard of a heavily decorated sagging travel trailer parked in the next lot. I found this trailer mesmerizing. All my gypsy nomad genes sprang to attention. (I'm not sure I actually have any of those genes but I'm a romantic at heart, drawn to the caravan lifestyle, and I don't mean Dodge Caravan! More like circus wagon, festooned with flags and ribbons.)

I sort of wanted to tour that travel trailer but I dutifully followed the manager into the mobile home. Fake fireplace, check. Multiple doors, check. Oh hey, vinyl floor in imitation hardwood. That was a nice touch throughout. There wasn't much to see. The place was pint-sized, chopped into a tiny living room, a dining area, and a bedroom in the back. The kitchen was carved out of the space in the middle, edged in a half-wall like a taco bar. The sink was okay, the fridge was big, the cupboard under the sink was clean and mold-free. The bathroom was next to the kitchen, also very small, with a pale brown plastic tub circa the 1970s and a white porcelain toilet that looked much older. The owner apparently renovated the kitchen but spared the bathroom, no doubt wanting to retain some of the quaint old-fashioned charm. Well, who wouldn't.

Is it time to explore my prejudices at the idea of living in an RV park? As the manager advised me on how to present my finances for best results, I imagined myself telling my sister I rented a mobile home in an RV park next to an open field by a freeway. It took me a moment to identify the feeling that frissoned up my spine. Was it . . ? Yes, it was shame. Why? Who do I think my ancestors were? My grandmother came from South Dakota and put half-and-half on her Rice Krispies. I cannot deny my roots. My genes would fit right in at a trailer park. It's just my snobby education and upbringing that tells me I deserve something better. 

I’m really out of my comfort zone here in the desert.  Landowners own the wealth and rent slum-pit trailers to elderly, low income, and undocumented. There are no laws to protect tenants from unscrupulous slumlords. Maintaining trailer homes and mobile homes is expensive. People in RV parks are often living in substandard housing with no recourse. Complaining results in evictions. The only way to win in the desert is to own the land.

Homes in Tucson's neighborhoods reflect the culture and the weather. Buildings are low profile, built out of cinder block or brick, stucco or adobe. The architecture is so different from the northwest. The heat dictates design. There is no water here, not in the air, not in the soil. Lack of water dictates landscape design. I'm shocked at the rare sight of green lawn. The ground is dust. There is no dirt, just dust. Roofs are flat (no need for slopes to handle snow). Awnings are deep to cover doorways and windows (or they should be, but not all apartment windows have awnings). Windows are tiny, barely letting in light. Everyone covers their windows to ward off the blazing sun. In the middle of the day, they hunker in their dark air-conditioned caves or blaze around the streets at 50 mph in their air-conditioned SUVs. 

The light here is a miracle. The moment I step outside, the heat is a strange toasty blessing I can't refuse. It envelopes me and sucks the air from my lungs. It cannot be ignored or avoided, only embraced. Bare mountains encircle the city, crisp and clear viewed through air that contains zero moisture. The blue sky canopy beckons me up, up, up. This place is closer to God than a lot of places, I bet. It's bathed constantly in raw sunshine. The sun strips off the veneer of lubrication and hydration and leaves only the parched elegant bones. No meat, just a bit of tough sinew holding moments together in a string of experiences, which I gather for blog fodder when I venture out to compete with the speedsters. This is not an oasis. This pueblo is not built on clouds but on desiccation and dehydration and dryness. D-words denoting desertification. The only waves are in my inner ear, washing me up on the shores of BPPV where I’ve been many times before, hoping to find a place to rest without losing my balance.

Which is why I can’t take showers.

Wait, time out. Joe Biden needs me to send money right away. Sorry, Joe. Okay. I'm back.   

Digging for drawings to illustrate my blogposts is fraught these days. To find the drawings I scanned last year, I have to scroll through photos of my former life. It hurts. I scroll past photos of my domicile, my neighborhood, my mother, and the one I really want to avoid, the last one of her lying dead in the ER, eyes closed, mouth open. I see photos of all the stuff I donated on Freecycle and Craigslist. I get weepy over photos of my efforts to downsize, to sort, to pack, and to pare my life to fit into a U-Box and a Dodge Grand Caravan. (I don't know what is so damn grand about it.) 

I filled out the application for the mobile home, attracted to the open fields next door, which reminded me of the fields behind the farmhouse of my childhood. It would only cost $35 to apply and I would probably be approved. But after a night to contemplate the prospect of living in an RV park, I decided once again that I'm not the right person for that place. I don't know what interesting experiences I'm passing up, but we know that when we turn away from one path, we end up going down another. No matter where I end up, there will always be things to blog about, and as long as I have internet access, I remain your faithful chronic malcontent blogging from the Hellish Hand-basket. 

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. 

Things in the mirror are closer than they appear

Moving day came and went last Thursday, sandwiched between two days of heavy rain, and nobody died. In the morning, I spent two hours feverishly packing acres of knick-knacks, worn out clothes, and well-loved books no one reads anymore into boxes and garbage bags and tagging furniture for the movers while my mother reclined on her bare mattress, snoozing under a layer of fleece jackets. Right on time, the movers arrived, masked, eyes neutral, hands gloved. Within minutes, they loaded up the big red truck. The last thing to go was the bed. I rousted Mom and parked her outside in a patio chair. A few minutes later, the movers were on their way to drop half the load at my brother's garage. I fetched my car, loaded up the precious cargo, and off we went to the new place.

For weeks, Mom had been saying to me through the baby monitor, "Get me out of here. I want out of this place." I counted down the days with her, taping notes to her window every night. Five more days, four more days. The night before moving day, I took down the photo collage and all the notes. I thought, whew, finally she can grow old in a place that won't kick her out when she runs out of money. 

When we got to the new care home, Mom sat at the marble dining room table with another old lady, displaying her best social skills, while the movers traipsed around the corner with her couch, coffee table, end table, armchair, end table, and a little round table to go next to the armchair. I directed them where to place things in this new room, a quarter of the size of her old apartment. The new care home care manager, Eren, helped me make the couch into a bed, laying down a foam rubber slab over the old couch cushions and covering the mess with a king-size dark gray cotton sheet. I thought it looked pretty good.

Eren invited Mom in, and she entered, looking shell-shocked. Soon she was prone on the couch with her head under a blanket. I went back to the retirement place to fetch her clothes, lamps, and more hygiene gear. She was still sacked out on the couch when I returned to the care home. I thought, okay, is that a good sign or a bad sign? I went home and ate dinner. At 5:45 pm I walked over from my place for my usual after-dinner outside the window visit, now at a new location, through a new window. 

Mom was sitting on the couch, awake and cranky.

"How is it going, Mom?" I asked through the baby monitor. Eren hovered near the closet, putting away clothes.

"She ate a good dinner," Eren said, coming through loud and clear over the baby monitor.

Mom glared. She looked like a two-year-old woken up too soon from a nap. 

"I just want to sleep," she said.

"Okay, Mom, I love you, I'll see you tomorrow," I said and hiked home, enjoying the fresh air, thinking, okay, maybe this will work. She'll settle in, start enjoying all the attention . . . right?

The next day just after lunch, my phone rang.  

"Your mother wants to talk to you."

"Hi Mom, what's up?"

"Carol? Come and get me out of here!" The desperation in her voice made my heart fall into my stomach. 

"Why, what is happening?"

"How soon can you come and get me? I want to go home."

"But Mom . . . we can't go back to retirement home. We had to get you out of there."

"No . . . I don't know. I just want to go home." Terrifying visions of taking her to my house passed before my eyes. 

"Mom, take it easy, you need to give it a little time."

"I don't like this place."

"Okay, let's see how it goes. Everything is new, it's scary. It will take time to get used to it. It's like going from grade school into high school, right? Remember how scary that was? Take a nap and things will get better."

Poor old Mom. Nothing is going to get better. Dementia is a terrible disease that kills in excruciating slow motion. I look at her and wonder how anything that decrepit can still be walking and talking. But clearly I have no clue what her world is like on the inside. My mother lost more essential brain cells in that move, and it's all my fault. Over the past few weeks, when she begged me to "get her out of there," I thought she meant out of the retirement home. What she meant was, get me out of here, this horrible present where nothing makes sense and I can't control anything. 

I visited her later in the afternoon and she didn't remember anything about her tantrum. Eren told me Mom had bolted out the front door, heading for the gate. Where would she go? She has no idea where she is. In the evening, I brought her a map and traced the route from her new place to my place. It's all uphill, she'd never make it. We would find her expired in juniper bushes.

Three days later, she's still alive, still cranky, and from the good people on the internet, I know that when a demented person asks to go home, they mean back to where they felt safe and in control. Mom hasn't felt "in control" since 2014, when her brain still worked pretty well, she was still smoking and driving and eating what she liked. Now she thinks I moved too, and keeps asking me where I moved to. Good news, a hair stylist came and gave her a haircut. Mom looks like her usual disheveled self, but with less hair. 

In the evenings after I return from my visit outside her window, I sort through the boxes and bags of stuff I moved from her old place to my place. My living room looks like a thrift store. The bedroom is in similar disarray. I'm taking inventory: Boxes full of cards from everywhere, mostly France. A box of Dick Francis paperbacks. A hardback dictionary and a thesaurus. A softbound medical dictionary and pill book, with her maladies and medicines bookmarked. Even as she was losing her mind, she wanted to know the side effects of donezapil and mirtazapine. Open seed packets in a rusted coffee can, pruning shears, three huge plastic bins full of mostly acrylic yarn, Christmas decorations, including the felt stockings my grandmother made for our family when I was a kid. (Do I still have mine, somewhere? I don't know.) Handwritten notes, including instructions for writing a private Facebook message. The birthday of her youngest great-grandchild on a heart-shaped sticky note. I found a diary she started in 2005 . . . not many entries, pretty terse. Fell outside Carol's apartment, broke pelvis, in rehab for three weeks. The final entry was four months before she moved into the retirement home in April 2017.

When we moved Mom from the condo to the retirement home, I remember standing in her derelict condo, looking at the detritus she left behind, thinking this is how it will feel when she dies, but she was still half-alive, like Schrodinger's cat, just downsized to accommodate the loss of her brain. I have the same feeling now, but the clock is closer to midnight. She's slightly less than half-alive. 

I am resigned to a long drawn-out death. I don't know why this is her path or mine. Our paths intersected when I was born, split apart for many years, and then cleaved back together in 2015 when she realized her brain was going gunnysack. Now we are stuck like glue to the end of the ride. Thelma and Louise, frozen in our descent. 

Getting things done

It was one hundred degrees today and I feel like a new person. The ear hissing is still digging into my skull every twenty seconds but I don't care. It feels so great to be warm. Like a cold-blooded lizard, I'm reveling in the heat. I was born to die in the desert. Someday maybe I'll get my wish. Meanwhile, here in Portland, if the city doesn't burn down first, we'll have a few days of heat, and being warm always makes me feel like getting things done.

To that end, tonight I ambitiously embarked on a new project: making a new face mask. The two masks I made back in March from old plaid cotton pajamas are holding up well, but I feel so . . . what's the opposite of possessing style and panache? That. You know, like, oh, plaid? That's so early curve. I really want one of those jet black masks that suck all the light from the room. Besides, a 2020 accessory wardrobe really should rock a selection of stylish face coverings. So I got busy.

I pawed through my box of old fabric scraps and found some black cotton knit containing liberal spandex . . . just the thing to cling but still let in a little air. I held two layers up to the light. No light seeped through. Perfect! I found the pattern my sister sent me a couple months ago. I arranged and pinned, snipped and clipped and sat down on Grandma's old sewing chair to start sewing.

If you've ever sewn on something stretchy with a twenty-year-old plastic Singer that cost $79.99 new, you know that it's all about pushing and pulling at the right moment to coax the weak tired machine over the lumps. The cool thing about this stretchy jersey is if you cut long strips, the strips automatically roll into skinny tubes that make perfect ear loops or ties. First I sewed the mask pieces together. Then along the top edge I inserted one of those wire gizmos that close the top of coffee bags. You can shape them to fit the bridge of your nose! How cool is that. To really put paid to the whole thing, I sewed it in purple thread. 

I used to be a professional seamstress in one of my former lives, no lie, but you wouldn't know it by what came out of my machine tonight. Jet black it was, there's that. Can't deny it. The purple thread looked ridiculous but when have I cared how I looked? I stopped caring when I turned fifty, which was a long time ago. The cotton knit was thick and bulky but the nose piece really held its shape. I took the mask to the mirror for the fitting.

I took off my glasses and looped the loops over my ears. I stared at my reflection. Something didn't seem quite right. The thing seemed to droop. I couldn't keep the loops around my ears. My ears seemed to be bending forward. Were the loops too big? Too stretchy? It seemed to me that the arch over the bridge of my nose was too high, which made the ear loops positioned too low. I folded over the top edge of the mask, making it four times as bulky and peered over the top of it into the mirror. Better, but still not quite right. 

I fussed in front of the mirror, tugging and pulling, huffing and puffing, and finally figured out what was wrong (besides the fact that I was hyperventilating because the fabric was too tightly knitted to make a good mask): My ears were simply too high. It's my damn ears. They are like elf ears without the points. When did that happen? 

Apparently my ears sit too high on my head, compared to my eyes. If I looped the mask over my ears, my eyes were covered. (This would not be an ideal mask design. We all know it is hard to drive without being able to see—hard, but not impossible.) On the other hand, could it be my nose? I don't know. I do have quite a large nose. Maybe if my nose were smaller, the mask wouldn't need such a pronounced arch. My ears are Lilliputian compared to my proboscis. I'm feeling out of balance. 

It's so embarrassing that my sewing skills are so rusty. I used to sew clothes for a living. No kidding. I really did know how to sew once. I never really enjoyed it, well, let me be honest: I have despised sewing since I learned at age nine in 4-H. Still, you'd think I could figure out how to make a workable face mask. 

In my defense, I do have some challenges. The vertigo and ear hissing are distracting, but I hope that will someday resolve. In addition, now that I'm well north of sixty, I can't see up close, with or without my glasses (hence the purple thread). On the bright side, my fingers still work okay, especially when it's ninety in the Love Shack. But now my darn ears have migrated upward. I really can't imagine how that happened. 

Speaking of getting things done, tomorrow is my mother's ninety-first birthday. I'm ready. I plan to hang some colorful balloons outside her window while she is in the dining room eating dinner. If I can find something chocolate and gluten-free that resembles a cupcake, I will put a candle on it and ask the nursing home staff to present it to Mom as she finishes her dinner. Whether they light the candle will be up to them. I have already notified the owner of the facility that I will be parading outside the dining room holding a Happy Birthday Mom sign. I think I can figure out how to attach some balloons to my straw hat. I'm guessing I'll do a little dancing. Maybe the other residents will think I'm a clown or something. If I can make them smile, that would be great, even if they think I'm a nut. I can think of worse things.

Routines will not save us

I have fervent appreciation for the power of routines. Life is precarious, and precariousness is stressful. Routines hold us together. Routines give us the illusion that we are in control. These days, I find myself refining my routines, honing my tasks and plans to achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness. I'm really into it. Just look at my custom-designed, color-coded calendar. Nobody can call me a slacker.

I realize now why Mom beat it back to her condo after moving to a retirement community didn't work for her. It wasn't the big impersonal place or the money or the lack of social interaction—all the reasons she gave for dragging up and moving home. I'm guessing it was the massive disruption of every single routine she had patched together over the years to maintain her life as her brain lost its ability to function.

She knew her brain was stuttering before 2014. In 2015, she moved to the retirement place. She was there a month and a half. Now I see it must have been a particular subtle form of hell. On the surface, it had seemed like a great solution to help her move into the next phase. Instead, it was as if she had voluntarily set off a neutron bomb in her life. Nobody anticipated the consequences, certainly not her. Well, how many of us have actually seen the consequences of a neutron bomb exploding in our kitchen, let's say, or in our home office?

For most of the next two years, she white-knuckled it in the condo, trying to keep it together, with increasing help from me. There were many clues, I realize now, looking back, but I didn't know what I was seeing. The dirty kitchen, the rotten food, the mice, the ants, the misfolded towels . . . all signs of her mental deterioration.

Now I realize how desperately she clung to her routines. Once the routines failed her, she had to let go and admit she couldn't maintain the facade, she couldn't manage the details of her life anymore—the preparation of food, the cleaning of kitchen counters, the washing and folding of clothes. All too much. It was as if she had been clinging to one little branch of a wizened shrub growing at the edge of an abyss. Whether the branch broke or she let go on purpose, she fell.

She came to rest in a retirement home with levels of care. Levels of care means that as long as she can pay for it, they will take care of her until the end, but of course, it will cost more as her care needs increase. She entered in 2017 at a Level 2. Now she's at the top end of Level 5. Soon she'll be a Level 6, out of seven levels.

I cling to my routines. I realize they cannot save me, but they give me comfort, a sense of false security, which helps whenever I reflect on the precarious of life, which I do daily.

As a researcher, I'm always reflecting. Given my current situation, I often reflect on life and death. Before I lose my ability to maintain my routines, I would like to plan my exit strategy. Knowing this about me, a friend gave me an information sheet about the efficacy of suicide methods. I thought that was very thoughtful. In this study, about three hundred people rated twenty-eight suicide methods used in about four thousand cases of attempted suicide according to their perceptions of lethality, time, and agony. You can look it up. I did. Just Google lethality, time, and agony, and it will pop right up. It's a 1995 study published in a journal about suicide behaviors.

If you are shopping around, the most lethal method, not surprisingly, according to this sample, is a shotgun shot to the head. According to this sample, that action would be almost one hundred percent fatal. However, about one percent of the cases would live, probably not too well after such a traumatic incident. Perhaps not even well enough to think, gosh, I wish I hadn't done that. I'm guessing. However, if you are in the lucky fatal group, you can enjoy a low amount of agony (5.5 on a 100-point scale) for fewer than two minutes. Not bad, as suffering goes. I know people who suffer a lot more than that just trying to balance their checkbooks.

If you are in a hurry, pointing the shotgun at your chest instead of your head will get you there a fraction of a minute sooner, but your odds of surviving go up a few percentage points. Darn. Not only that, it will hurt more too (16 points compared to 5.5 for the head shot).

If it's agony you want to avoid, overdosing on illegal drugs is the way to go. You can expect about 5.25 worth of agony on the 100-point scale, whatever that means. However, your time to die could be almost two hours, and you'll only succeed half the time. Which means you might live to tell your sad tale of enduring two hours of slight suffering before somebody saved you. However, keep in mind, this study was conducted way back in 1995, which means the opioid epidemic hadn't been invented yet. I'm pretty sure adding fentanyl and its ilk to the list of methods would knock shotgun to the head right out of the top five.

It's helpful to remember that the values are the respondents' perceptions about the lethality, time to die, and amount of suffering. As far as I can tell without paying to download the article, none of them had direct experience with the phenomenon.

Well, I'm off to visit Mom. If we are lucky, some reruns of the Three Stooges will be on MeTV. It's great to hear Mom laugh.

The risk of living

When I was a young adult, I dressed to be noticed. Being in the garment industry, I felt I had a professional obligation to experiment with norms of decency. I could design and sew just about anything, and I did. Appearance was everything. The goal was to shock and provoke.

In the late 1970s, I made strapless blouson dresses of gaily flowered cheap poly-cotton, accessorized with chunky beads and a crown of pigeon feathers. I let my artist friend draw circles of purple, white, and black makeup around my eyes and on my cheeks. The outcome was a weird white-girl interpretation of a generic African native dance ensemble. My best audience seemed to be old men at bus stops, who indicated their approval by . . . you know, letting it all hang out. My friend and I rode the bus to dance clubs, so we saw our share of weirdos. We fit right in.

In the early 1980s, jumpsuits made of vinyl with shoulders the size of small turkeys were my favorite for going out. Back then, I was about twenty pounds overweight; thus, I believed the wide shoulders made my waist look smaller. I didn't have money for nice fabric, opting instead for cheap vinyl, cotton chintz, and antique faded rayon crepe excavated from the attic of the fabric store that employed me for $4.75 an hour. With my spiky hennaed hair, I was quite a sight.

Gradually, over time, a few run-ins with crazies motivated me to shift my attitudes about attracting attention. I began to think it might be safer to be invisible. Age did the rest. Now I can go just about anywhere, at least in this white part of America, and be unnoticed. I have grown to prefer anonymity, except when I'm trying to get service at Best Buy or Target.

These days, I pray to outlive my mother. I am well aware that leaving the house is risky. I could slip and die in the tub, I know, but my chances of survival decrease the moment I walk out the door. To avoid incurring the wrath of other drivers, I drive carefully and courteously. I admit I sometimes drive too slowly, and that behavior on occasion has inspired people to honk and speed around me. So far no one has pulled a gun and taken a shot as they roar by, but I am aware it could happen. Hey, guys, I drive an old Focus. It has a top speed of 35 mph.

Getting out of my car in a parking area makes me a target. To avoid attracting negative attention and possibly tipping a passerby into a rage, I paste an inane smile on my face. I dress in shapeless unremarkable clothes. I have no bumper stickers on my car. I try to look harmless. I hope to be invisible. I don't want any random psycho to see me as a threat. I probably look like a nut myself, grinning and talking to myself. If you must know, I'm praying. My prayers are along the lines of please don't let me hurt anyone today and grant me the serenity. You know the rest. This is how I remain calm.

After the sad events of the past weeks, well, really of the past few years, well, really of the entire history of America, I realize I am always walking the moment between life and death. A stray bullet, a wildly swung blade, or a curb-jumping SUV could take me out in a few seconds. I could be a random victim, I could be a target. Wrong place, wrong time. Just another casualty of western civilization. It's not that I want to die. It comes when it comes. I just don't want my family to experience the grief and inconvenience of losing me. Mom would have a harder time getting her gluten-free cookies and cashew milk ice cream.

Last Friday evening I caught the tail end of a documentary on the 1966 Clocktower shooting. Reeling from the recent mass shootings, I found this show both riveting and horrifying. Oddly enough, I have compassion for people who come to believe the only way out of their misery is to take others out with them. From a certain perspective, their actions make sense. They aren't insane. They may have lost touch with the reality we all sort of pretend to agree on, but they aren't nuts. They are hurting.

Fear drives us to see the other as an enemy. Fear drives us to elect leaders who say they can keep us safe from people who don't look and think like us. I doubt if there is much hope for the human species if we don't figure out that love is the only path to peace. It's deliciously ironic though, that our effects on the climate will take us out before we can spread our madness outward into the universe. Maybe there is a god.

I can't leave it there, I suppose. Please don't text me to find out if I'm okay. You know I use this blog as a vehicle to express my feelings. Once expressed, they often dissipate. So weird how that works. Anyway, now that my fears are on the page, I can continue on with my day. For example, I washed some clothes this morning while I was cooking breakfast (multitasking, look at me go!). My next action item is to design a new course to help artists figure out . . . stuff. I don't know. I'm an artist: I haven't figured it out. But I will by end of day, I promise.

I don't subscribe to the idea that life is so precious, I should focus on sucking from it every drop of pleasure. I don't know what the purpose of my life is, but I don't think the end goal is just to be happy. I'd be thrilled if I could unravel the mystery of disappearing socks before I die. Happiness is dandy, but the real challenge is bringing more love and less fear with me as I go about the job of living. What do you do to bring more love and less fear into the world?

Rejection is a form of protection

In recognition of my need to increase my income, last week I applied to a local home improvement box store to work as a part-time merchandiser. In my previous blog post, I predicted I would not receive a response. In fact, a few days later, I received an email inviting me for further screening. Am I willing to work night shifts? Am I okay with working part-time? Am I okay with earning $13.00 per hour? Am I willing to take an on-the-spot drug test after the interview? Answering no to any of these questions means I would be disqualified, so of course I answered yes, thinking, if nothing else, it will be something to blog about. The final screen was a calendar inviting me to choose a day and time for the interview. I set the interview time for today at 11:00 am, a nice civilized hour, thinking it might be a while before I see such a civilized hour again.

As I closed the web page, I thought, all right! I made the first cut! Well, really the second cut, but who is counting. I immediately went into interview prep mode. What would they be likely to ask me? I pictured myself sitting across a desk, well, more likely a folding table in some dark corner in the off-stage storage warehouse. The traditional first interview question is Tell me about yourself.

I pictured myself saying, Well, I like to build things. In accordance with the adage of show don't tell, I decided to wow the interviewer (interviewers? Would it be a panel?) with some photos of things I have built over the past sixteen years with lumber purchased from their store. I took photos of the cat tree, my umpteen shelves, more shelves, and the aqua-topped table in the bathroom that shelters the cat box (strategically omitting the box itself, no easy feat). I artfully arranged the photos in a Word document and enhanced the color saturation of each one slightly to really make them pop on the page. I printed the photos on one double-sided sheet of card stock (to give it substance in the hand) and slipped it into a non-glare plastic sleeve left over from my teaching days.

Now, what should I wear? The interview instructions required “business casual.” I looked up the term on the Internet to make sure my idea of business casual conformed with current style. After perusing multiple websites aimed at much younger audiences, I realized I should focus on being myself. I wanted to be comfortable, not too casual, not too weird. And not too old. I dug out my black pinwale cords and, in a nod to current fashion, altered the flares out of the hems. I'd altered the waist and hips several years ago but after I lost a few pounds over the past year, the pants gape in the waist. It's hard to get pants to fit given my unique set of figure flaws, I mean, figure challenges. I planned to pull a long t-shirt over the waist and try to remember to suck in my gut. Once I was seated, my bulging tummy probably wouldn't show much if I sat up straight. Besides, I anticipated they would be too busy admiring my photo portfolio.

The unspoken elephant in the room would be my age. As I mentioned last week, the job application website would not allow employment dates older than 1993. Perhaps it was a web development error; maybe the prohibition was intentional. In any case, I knew that I would have to acknowledge openly that I am experienced. To appear younger, I decided to wear flat and perky white-laced gray tennis shoes.

Finally, I wondered, did I need to bring a resume? I reviewed my myriad resumes and CVs written over the past few years. All the jobs focused on teaching and academics. None of the jobs I listed were older than 1993. Hmmm. I started to add the art-supply sales job I held in 1985, thinking it might be relevant to this merchandising position. After looking at the date 1985 in black and white, I decided to print a copy of my current CV. It's two pages, focused on my short list of publications. I anticipated the interviewers might not care but at least I had something to show them if they asked for a resume. And maybe I could score some wow points for having a PhD. Maybe I would be the overly educated mascot of the merchandising team. Maybe they would call me Doc.

I got dressed and left the Love Shack in plenty of time. I drove to the box store and found a place in back to park in the shade (it's going to be 90°F today). I hiked across the parking lot to the mall entrance.

In the 1970s, my friends and I visited this mall often. I bought fabric at Discount Fabrics and many pairs of shoes at Thom McCanns. I bought a rayon print dress in 1975 at Casual Corner—I wore that dress once. I shopped at Montgomery Wards, White Front, and the Emporium and watched movies in the cineplex (multiple theaters in one location, how novel!).

Today, the mall air was refreshingly cool. A few mallwalkers strolled to the 60's musak. I walked around the corner toward the door into the home improvement store, noticing the fitness gym was still there but the bike store was gone. The one remaining food stand, a hotdog kiosk, was shuttered.

The door from the mall into the home improvement store opened as I approached. The overweight employee manning the register looked up from his phone and said “Welcome in,” the phrase recently adopted by my bank. Must be a customer service trend. I acknowledged his welcome, feeling self-conscious that I might soon be sharing an employee break room with this guy.

I shuffled through the store to the service desk and asked for the merchandising manager. In a few minutes, a burly young man with pink cheeks and wire-rimmed glasses appeared. We shook hands.

“Let me do a quick walk-through with you so you know what we do,” he said. He pointed to the display of patio furniture at the front of the store. “We organized that display a few days ago. It's looking a little . . . ” I didn't want to complete his sentence. I would have said frayed. Tatty. Disheveled. Neglected. Being highly educated means I can usually draw from a deep repertoire of adjectives. Perhaps not an essential trait for a merchandiser, but maybe some customers would be amused.

“Okay,” I said, thinking, I could move around patio furniture.

 Next, the manager hustled toward the garden center. I scuttled along in his wake.

“We work for a company that is hired by the store,” he said over his shoulder.

“Oh, okay,” I said. Huh, did not know that. The merchandisers are not actually store associates.

We went through the sliding doors into the garden center. Past the rows of potted azaleas I could see a half-dozen people in orange vests milling around between twenty-foot high warehouse shelves. I quickly gauged ages and genders. Mostly men, mostly young. One robustly built young woman with long blonde hair. One older guy with a grizzled beard and glasses. I thought, okay.

The manager grabbed the older guy's smartphone and quickly scrolled through the screens, explaining how the team received and followed plans for building the displays. I barely heard what he was saying. Next to me was a row of tall cardboard boxes wrapped in strapping tape. I could not tell what was inside. I reached out and gave one box a tentative shove. It barely budged. It was clear the box was taller, wider, and much heavier than me. There is no way I would be able to lift or even move that box.

I tried to make eye contact with the older worker, looking for some encouragement. He did not look at me. For a tiny moment, I thought about what I would tell Mom. Then I remembered, I don't tell my mother anything about my life anymore. I tell her stories about the neighbors, the birds, the cat. I show her pictures I take on my walks in the park. I share with her the photos my sister sends from France: rainbows, sailboats, and red alstroemerias. We discuss the fascinating lives of Chip and Joanna, the stars of Fixer Upper, and I remind Mom of their new son's name. We marvel at the height of the Property Brothers. I joke that we should start our own mother-daughter demolition team.

The manager turned to head back toward the store. I followed, feeling fragile and delicate. Who do I think I am?

“So that's what we do,” he said. “Day in and day out. Every day.”

“I don't think I would be able to move boxes that heavy,” I said.

He stopped. “Thanks for coming in today, Miss Carol,” he said. We shook hands. I turned and headed back to the entrance to the mall.

The entire “interview” took less time than it took me to walk back to my car.

I put on my baseball cap and drove home, admiring the blue sky, breathing in the warm air, and reveling in a fizzy sense of freedom that comes from not knowing what comes next.

Feet don't fail me now

The cat materializes out of nowhere as soon as I sit down to blog. I assume he has some ideas about what I should write. Or else there is a blob of barf that needs my immediate attention. On this rainy cold January morning—well, it's afternoon now, but it's Sunday so cut me some slack—it's hard to motivate. My eyes are bleary with winter. My vertigo comes and goes with air pressure and gravity. My sinuses are often clogged, granting me intermittent relief from the fetid smells that have accumulated in the Love Shack. Sometimes I smell old socks, overcooked eggs, and mildew, but by the time I get the energy to do something about it, my sinuses swell up and shut down the olfactory factory.

Last night I dreamed I was about to undergo a lengthy dental procedure. I asked to use the restroom first; they gave me the door code but I promptly got lost in a mall, searching through smeared glasses for clean toilets. Then I lost my car. I wrote the dreams down in my journal while I waited for my eggs to overcook. Then I practiced my Spanish (me gusta dibujar y pintar). When I tried to salt my eggs, the salt was clogged by moisture from coming out the little holes. I poked them open with a toothpick. I do this every morning in winter. The cupboard doors don't close, and the cutting board balks at being pushed in and pulled out. Anxiety and moisture rule at the Love Shack.

We had a windstorm last night but it didn't keep me from sleeping. This morning while I wrote, the only sound was the intermittent whooshing of the space heater that heats my main room. Sunday mornings are usually pretty quiet around the Love Shack. I hope someday to move to a place that is quiet most of the time, not just on Sunday mornings. I would like to live a few blocks off the bus line. As long as I'm envisioning my perfect habitat, it would be great not to have to hear people snoring, peeing, or having sex on the other side of thin apartment walls.

I dread what is coming, and yet I know it is the price of admission to freedom. I don't feel brave enough to witness the daily dissolution of my mother's once competent life, yet I show up and witness it every evening at six fifteen. I restock the gluten-free bread and cookies, the rice milk and gluten-free Cheerios, the cigarettes. I write the checks for her pull-ups, wipes, and medications. I watch her bank account slowly dwindling. Her dissolution scrapes at me, too, even though I'm not the one nearing the end of life (as far as I know today).

A couple days ago I visited my mother during the day to be present for her appointment with a foot care nurse. Mom was sacked out on her couch when I arrived. She popped right up when I came in. We sat and watched day time TV while we waited.

In a few minutes, Sandy arrived. Sandy (not her real name) happens to be a family friend; in fact, she used to live three doors down the street. She was one of the gang I grew up with. Her cousin Kim lived next door; Kim was my best friend. Sandy was one year older, one of five girls. Sandy became a nurse, and then transitioned into providing foot care for seniors. She lugged a big box and a bag of gear into my mother's apartment. I moved the coffee table out of the way so Sandy could kneel on the floor in front of my mother.

She peeled down one white tube sock, exposing my mother's purple foot.

“You have very straight toes!” she said, smiling up at my mother. “You know this is fungus, right?” I looked at my mother's bulging big toenail in squeamish horror. Was I supposed to be checking her toes?

“Don't they check her feet here?” I wailed.

“Most places don't do a good job of checking residents' feet,” Sandy replied. I wondered, is that supposed to make me feel better?

While she trimmed my mother's toenails and filed down her two hideously enlarged big toe toenails with a Dremel, spraying toenail dust into the air, we chatted about our families. She asked about my sister (in France) and my brothers (working full-time). (“It's all on you then,” she noted, to which I nodded gratefully). I asked about her parents. 

“I do my mother and father's feet once a month,” Sandy said. “Dad is ninety-seven.” I pictured her on her knees attending to the feet of her mother, the 4-H leader who taught Kim and me how to sew and thus gave me the skills that enabled me to spend ten years doing something I despised. I had several thoughts: Wow, I thought my parental payback scenario was gnarly, and Oh lord, what if my mother lives that long? 

“You heard Nellie's husband died?” Nellie was one of Sandy's older sisters. I didn't know most of her sisters well. Her oldest sister tried to teach me piano for a while, without much luck. When I was ten, Sandy's next older sister, Layla, explained the rudiments of sex to me as she pedaled her bicycle with me on the back fender. (I didn't believe her; did I mention I was ten?)

“I'm sorry to hear that,” I said, watching Sandy scoop detritus out from under my mother's toenails. “Would you be able to trim her fingernails as well?”

Eventually the mani-pedi session drew to a close. I wrote a check from Mom's funds. Mom walked us both to the front door. I told Mom I would see her later. I helped Sandy load her gear into the trunk of her car. We exchanged an awkward hug. I wanted to bask in the remnants of our safe childhood a little longer. But we've both changed. And childhood was never all that safe.

Sandy turned left. I turned right. Mom waved from the window as I drove away.

'Tis the season to remember

Back in 2014, I knew something was wrong with my mother when she stopped folding her towels correctly. The proper way to fold a towel (any towel larger than a washcloth) is to fold a third lengthwise toward the center on both sides of the towel. Then depending on the size of your storage space, you fold it crosswise in half or in thirds, or you roll it up if you are inclined toward creating an elegant towel display. The point is, all edges are hidden. All you see are folds.

I was shocked to see that Mom was folding her towels in haphazard fashion, lengthwise, crosswise, no care given to exposing raw edges, no thought paid to making an attractive towel display in the cupboard.

Now, I realize towels can be folded anyway you please, or not folded at all. Who cares, not me. What I am describing here is the way my mother taught me how to fold a towel. This towel-folding habit is deeply ingrained in me. I fold all my towels like this. No rough edges, only folds. I'm all about attractive towel displays even though I only have two bath towels (one lime green, one green striped) and six mismatched hand towels. I even fold my dish towels like this, despite the fact that they reside out of sight in a dusty cupboard next to the stove.

Looking back, I realize now that improper towel folding was just one of several warning signs that should have tipped me off that Mom's brain was starting to slip. However, my tendency all my life has been to pay attention mainly to me—my life, my fears, my agenda. I noticed the improper towel folding pattern, and I remember being shocked, but I wasn't able to translate it to the next logical thought: What was happening to my mother?

Mom knew her brain was no longer performing optimally. I thought she was doing okay. She had always been so competent. I assumed she would always manage independently, right up to the moment when she gasped her last from emphysema. She had her pill management system. She was still driving (albeit somewhat sloppily). She knew what she wanted to do, I thought, and knew how to do it. I didn't question her abilities. It never crossed my mind, until the day she told me she needed help.

That's when I saw that she was messing up her checkbook. She was leaving half-nibbled muffins out on the counter. She was eating food that had been in the fridge way too long. She was spraying ant poison directly on cereal and crackers in her pantry. She was blowing stop signs and sideswiping garbage cans with her car. She was forgetting how to access her email.

Honestly, given my preoccupation with self, I doubt if anything would have unfolded differently had I noticed all these early warning signs. Thus, Mom was the initiator of our search for an independent living facility. She decided to move, where to move, when to move, and she decided how long to wait before she couldn't stand it and moved back to her condo (a month and a half). I gave her increasing support when she admitted she was having trouble shopping and managing her finances. I didn't want to force help on her. I wanted her to be independent as long as she could, even if that meant her safety was at risk.

She was okay giving up check writing privileges. But she balked when with her doctor's help, we took away her driving privileges. She wasn't happy about the loss of her independence. Who can blame her? Gradually her autonomy eroded to the point we are at now, four years later. She moved into the retirement home as a perky Level 2 (mostly independent) resident. Now she's a Level 5 (frequently ringing her call button when she can't figure out what to do). I write a monthly check to pay for adult underpants now, along with wipes and gloves. She can no longer turn on her computer, much less access her email. She can't knit anymore. She can read, but only books she has read many times before. I help her make phone calls and write notes to friends who write to her. She doesn't think about money, except when she needs some cash to pay the hair stylist every other month.

She's still walking, but with a walker (those glider ski tips really help, in case you are considering some for your parental unit). She knows where the food is, and she can get herself there on time. She remembers to ring the call button when she has an accident (she blamed ranch dressing for today's blowout).

I imagine this gradual unraveling is confounding for her. However, she's in the moment, living it one breath at a time. Me, I'm lost in the wreckage of the future. I've seen independent people, and I've seen people drooling in wheelchairs. What I think I'm witnessing is the process by which they get from here to there. I'm watching the disintegration of a life. At what point do I need to rent a wheelchair? At what point do we need a bed with plastic sheets and bed rails? At what point will I greet her and find her staring blankly at me, trying to figure out who I am?