Dad's back in the hospital again. Fredericka, his nurse, called me at work. "I think Mark has aspirated his oatmeal." Fredericka is my age. She's from up North--around Macon. She looks like a gypsy. She has dark hair and big eyes. She used to be over 400 pounds, but had a gastric bypass, and now is about 180. She used to work in the clinic,but started taking care of my dad in January. She's not perfect. She lost her job over some petty bit of dishonesty, but she loves my dad. As all women love my dad. She's the only one of the nurses seeing to him 24/7 who will face down my mom. , e He's failed numerous swallow studies, but has repeatedly refused a feeding tube. There has been a lot of drama around food. He desperately needs calories, but my mom feels that feeding him is too intimate and something she should do, but she doesn't. She's like an anorexic by proxy. Endless ritual accompanies the preparation of food, and meals take hours and are hours late. Battling about it, as I have done, gets him so upset he can't eat at all. So he has slowly starved. The question is--is that what he's intending to do? He's smart. Surely he knows he's killing himself. Now he's decided he wants a feeding tube. But he's too debilitated to survive the surgery to get one. So he's in the hospital. And he has aspiration pneumonia. My mom roots around his room like a mad little animal. She has a notebook and keeps a record of everyone who enters the room, and what they do and what they say. Lots of underlinings and exclamation points. She hides the book when you ask her about it. She frequently threatens to call a lawyer. Then she's appeasing and ingratiating. "I like you... you're a good nurse," she'll say. Classic splitting. I find myself filled with this constant dry heat of anger now. It feels like a dry woodstove fire. It's never gone. I can hardly say a word to her, without hearing the tone in my voice--full of contempt and weariness, and I hate myself for it. My husband, though, has proved himself a saint. He stays buoyant and kind, matter-of-fact, deals with this terrible situation. Deals with me. Has spent the night, wiping my father's ass. "We're people who love." He told me last night. He never talks like this, my Catholic school juvenile delinquent. That's my half hour.

Mr. Reality

My father has been diagnosed with something called Multi Systems Atrophy. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. He started showing signs at Lilly's graduation. He was walking oddly, hips thrust forward, as if his body had become a stranger to itself. "What's going on?" I asked, thinking he was having a stroke. "Don't make a scene." The ancient WASP magic of ignoring the inevitable and unpleasant. From that point it took 9 months to convince him to see a neurologist. Then another 5 for him to start taking the levodopa prescribed him. Then he stopped taking it on the sly, and fell. He was immobile for 6 weeks, incontinent, lying in my parents' hoarder den on the couch. Both my parents refusing to go to the doctor. Terrible. Finally, we convinced them to move to my house in town (it's empty, and clean) and to hire a nurse. He got better and started walking with a walker. But then, one bright Sunday afternoon in March, while my mother was in the kitchen, he decided he could manage without the walker and fell, breaking his left hip. Now he's bedridden. My mother resists every bit of care. Infantilizes him. We try to get him to eat on his own--she fights with us. We encourage him to use a bedpan, rather than going in his diaper--she tells him to go ahead and poop in his diaper. She's taken his phone. She goes through his texts. This is her heaven--complete control over my wayward, squirrelly, secretive father. What she's always wanted. She emotionally tortures the nurses--one or the other is always calling me, crying, threatening to quit: "I just can't take this any longer." And the hoarding continues unabated. Every day she shows up at the house with carloads of things she has brought. I clear the hallways. I cart food out when she's not looking. She calls me 5 or 7 times a day with small complaints--the cable, the nurse gave her 'attitude'. She fills up my voicemail. She looks over at me, and her eyes are amber, pupils small. She looks like a snake. There's no love in her. I think about mental illness, and I know this is really the ugly deal. I sit zazen and it gives me about three inches of mental space--enough to keep functioning, to keep making choices that keep them safe. How does it get to this? How does it get this bad and wrong? Man, watch who you marry. Think about what the End Game will be like, because it will be all theirs to play. It's Father's Day today. I'll go over this afternoon, relieve the nurses until the night nurse shows up. I'm a good nurse. I'm efficient and nice and a little tough. I hate having to take care of him like this, though, having to engage the clinical self with the family. It's so very, very sad. One of my younger colleagues said, casually, "I'd change my dad's diapers--no problem." But does she understand what that means? Seeing a parent this debilitated and vulnerable is the most grinding, soul-wrecking thing you can imagine. And it never ends. And it never improves. It will just get worse and worse. Despite the fact that he is very clearly dying, my parents refuse to talk about hospice, refuse to talk about end-of-life issues. I have to give them some props for this crazy optimism. At least they're committed to it. It's like the Christians refusing to renounce Christ and being eaten by lions for it. They're martyrs to their beliefs, but there's strength in their dedication to delusion. But then, of course, I am the one left holding the bag. I'm the one who gets to talk to Mr. Reality. As it always has been. It's hard to be critical of someone with a terminal disease. You just don't know what you'd do. And it's a waste of effort, which, at this point needs to be focused on making his last days as decent as we can. And there are big questions. Do I sue for guardianship? It's hard to prove someone incompetent, and, crazy as it seems, you have a right to make terrible choices. If I sue and fail, do I lose all influence and contact with my father? At least I have some ability to make a difference now. It's a terrible situation. That's my half-hour.

It's been another long time. Nick moved home after college, his heart broken, but it has slowly recovered.

Dress-up

Been a while... Here's what's happened: I married Jay. I finished my Masters. I'm working as an advanced practice nurse. I just bought nice underwear. My favorite cat died. From competitive eating syndrome. We got married at the church I grew up in. It's funny, I always had this fantasy of walking down the aisle in my little stone church, with the light pouring in from the beautiful windows. I thought about how much I would relish that moment. I lived it over and over again in my head, switching out fantasy grooms over the years, of course. And you know something? I don't even remember doing it when I actually did it! I had a beautiful, simple lace dress from Ann Taylor, and a veil. My dad walked me down the aisle, wearing a grey suit. There was a lot of kerfuffle over the suit. And I saw a side to my father I never imagined existed. Right after we announced our engagement, my father called me and asked, "What do you want me to wear to the wedding?" "Oh, I don't know, Dad. I don't even know where we're going to have the wedding." "Well, I need to know early." "Ok," I said, "just a nice black suit." Just to say something. A week later: "A black suit will make me look like an Italian waiter. Is the wedding going to be in the morning, evening, or afternoon?" I had no idea. "Ok, grey suit then." It was February. We'd set the date in June. "Single breasted, double breasted, what shade?" "Just grey." "There are thousands of shades of grey. What is Jim wearing?" "A grey suit." "What shade?" "Just get something you feel comfortable in." "What are the bridesmaids wearing?" "Hyacinth." "Oh--the dresses in J. Crew? Is that the color? Which dress?" He knows the J. Crew bridesmaid dress selection? "I told them they could pick their own...suggested the Haley, strongly." Just to confuse him. But he had me. "Ummmm.....I don't know. Cotton Cady. Are you having the wedding outside? And the Haley is a little--I don't know--plain. What about the Anita?" "Why do you know so much about dresses?" He got offended. "I'm looking at the website!" "Why do you care?" "Because I don't want to look like a piece of shit!" This is the man who, to avert a conflict in the Libyan desert with a nomadic raiding party, bowed and handed over his shoes. What he was doing in the Libyan desert in 1977, we still don't really know. So, I ended up choosing the Anita. And my father wore a slate grey suit (and so did everyone else!), with a tie that coordinated with the bridesmaids dresses. That's my half-hour.

Nick--his due

Nick is reading my blog. He says that I portray him as being more clueless than he actually is. He wants me to point out that he did, in fact, bring back a real present for Gina, in addition to the chocolates. I told him the story was funnier the other way. He agreed and said he’d let it stand.
So—let’s get a few things set straight about Nick.
He’s 20 now. He writes A LOT. He just finished a 400 page novel called The Harwood Burials. He’s evolved into a very handsome character, and makes sartorial choices inspired by Spike Spiegel, which isn’t the worst fashion role model. He looks exactly like Harry Potter, and there is a really funny picture of him holding up the Harry Potter calendar next to him—separated at birth? He knows some really great jazz bars in New Orleans. Random strangers come up to him on the street everywhere we go and tell him their secrets, a sign of sainthood. He will ditch his friends without shame to sit on the couch and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer with me and Lilly.
He is maybe too tolerant of crazy women, but he comes by that honestly.
He knows how to salsa. His literary hero is Don Quixote. He’s funny and pure, can remember endless plots and historical facts. He never thinks he’s nice enough. He tips well.
To pay for his trip to Belgium, he spent 6 weeks working the third shift at a warehouse.
He’s really, really, really hysterically funny.
He has no sense of direction, and he’s weirdly good at math. He doesn’t even realize how good at math he is.
And he smells good. He still smells like he did when he was a baby.
Since his birth I have loved him almost too much to look at him straight-on. Maybe that’s what they mean by blinded by love. He was this little, scrawny, violet baby who would only nurse if he had his hat on. I’ve never met anyone like him. He needs to eat better.
Hope that’s a little better, my dear Nick.

Mothers

I got scared. The statcounter on the site told me that someone from the hospital where I work--that was where the IP address traced back to--had spent almost 4 hours on the site. So I stopped posting. I didn't want to lose my job. I still don't want to lose my job, but I also want to write about what I do and get it out there, and I've been reading Jack Kerouac, so I'm all full of myself.

I don't think this will be as interesting as it has been. Both Nick and Lilly have gone off to college. Well, Nick is still here for a few more days, sitting beside me on the couch, Tonks in between us, watching Castle reruns. He's such a beautiful boy. He just got back from Belgium. He's trying to figure it all out. In a way, I want to see a little more questing spirit in him, a little more of the rambler I was, but in another, I'm happy he's more or less a homebody. Jay says he's going through his Bukowski phase...He's skinny, but sort of soft--he never exercises. He lists his home as New Orleans now, and is moving into a little wooden house on Freret on the wrong side of the garden district with a few buddies this year. He has this Miami Vice-esque fuzz on his face that is a little more than a five-o-clock shadow and a little less than a beard. All the young men at this wedding we just got back from in Aspen had this, so I guess it's the thing. He's so joyful, though. He hasn't figured anything at all out about women. He spent all his money on TinTin comics in Belgium--because, even though we already own the whole set, "the European versions are a little different than the American ones." Which I guess is true, but to make this purchase, he couldn't afford any gifts. He brought back one box of Leonidas chocolates and gave Lilly and I instructions to "only eat the top layer" because he planned to give Gina--the girl he's dating that I haven't met yet--the bottom layer. I told him that was a really bad idea. So he gave Lilly and I the whole box of chocolates (my secret goal--I'm the MOTHER for chrissakes and I get a WHOLE box of chocolates, because I'm the one who worked all the overtime), bought Gina something local and told her it was from Belgium. I felt bad pulling one over on Gina, but, oh well, to the victor go the spoils. All mothers are secretly in competition with their son's girlfriends.

Lilly went to college last week. Nick and Jay and I dropped her off. The college application process was brutal, with a lot of disappointments. Mostly traceable to a very unfortunate error on her common app and some screw-ups on the part of her well meaning, but very new, college counselor, Mrs. Bass. Anyways, she ended up at Sewanee. "The universitay of the Sayh-outh" Jay says at every opportunity. It's a beautiful campus--uncannily beautiful. More beautiful than Dartmouth. I didn't cry when I dropped her off--but I burst into random tears at every opportunity. The mothers are out in force, dropping their children off every where--we can spot each other. Every where I went, I found another mother, just like me. Dropping off her youngest kid in Boulder, at UK, --one told me she'd gotten diarrhea, another had just bought a puppy. We would spot each other, tell our stories, and burst into tears. Our men would stick their hands in their pockets and look uncomfortable.

I don't know. This sounds cliche, but I don't know who I am without my children. I don't know what will motivate me. I don't know what will sweeten life. All the hard times. All the poor times. I had two sweet little babies, and no matter what happened, they were always there. They were worth every shelved dream, every bad day, every break-up, every stupid boring job.

Well, that's my 1/2 hour.

Code Books

We found out who sent the book. It was Lilly's friend, Kelsie. The girls were all over at my house, sprawled around the living room after a tennis match. All these sweaty long limbs! Where did they come from? I felt so good seeing Lilly with her friends, taking over the room. I never had easy times like this growing up. I so envied the girls who did. Girls who laughed loudly together, in their tennis skirts, easy, physical. Raiding the refrigerator, catty and gossipy and funny.

And they always include me. I feel like I gave birth to my own member of the popular crowd to ensure my acceptance.

"So," Kelsey asks me, as she's making herself a peanut butter sandwich. "Did anything exciting happen to you this summer?"

Well, a lot. But of course the most recent thing was the mysterious book. I tell her all about it.

"Wow," Dorothy says (she's on the tennis team, too) "The exact thing happened to me. The same book."

"That is so weird," Carolyn, Lilly's best friend adds. "I just got that same book in the mail."

"Oh my God!" Kelsie says. "Me too!" We all look at each other.

"Did you guys read it?" Kelsie asks. "It's a great book." And she has this funny look on her face, as if she's trying not to smile.

And I know all of the sudden.

"It is a good book." Carolyn agrees. Dorothy nods. "I'm not through with it yet."

"Oh, my God, I am so not going to read it," Lilly says. "It's probably from some creepy stalker."

"No it's a good book." I say. It is. Nothing really happens in it, but it's a pretty sweet little story. I decide to play along. "I wonder why you're all supposed to read the same book..."

"Creepy." Lilly says. My streetwise daughter. All the romanticism leached out of her already.

Kelsie looks nervous.

"It's kind of like a Nancy Drew mystery." I offer.

"Yes! Exactly like that!"

"Maybe they're clues in the book."

"I never thought of that!" Dorothy says. "Lilly, do you have your copy?"

"My mom's been reading it," she says dismissively.

I go get it. "Ok. Let's look at the first picture..."

Kelsie is getting more and more jittery.

Lilly looks at her. Lilly knows. "You did it." Lilly says. She starts laughing. "You sent us each the same book!"

"First editions, too. Only like 5 bucks" Kelsie adds. "Well, I was stuck at my grandmother's house in Maryland and it was really boring, and she had all these books in the basement. Do you ever just pick up a book and start reading it because you like the shape of the cover or something? So I started reading this book, and I couldn't put it down. So I thought it would be fun if something mysterious happened to all of us this summer and I ordered copies over the internet and sent them to you all anonymously."

I like the book because it starts with the heroine sitting in the kitchen sink. I often sit in weird places in the house when I write to shake up my perspective--often on the kitchen floor. (I would catch something if I sat in my sink).

But I think Kelsie was trying to tell her friends something about herself. She and Lilly had a terrible fight in the spring. She was really mean to her. Refused to give her a ride, turned the other kids against her, and abandoned her at a study group. I'd about had it with Kelsie, even though I'm friends with her parents--Larry is a former nurse--tiny frenetic--I know I've talked about him before. He's the one who buried 12 feet long copper poles in his yard to prevent the house being struck by lightening. The character of the father in the book a lot like Larry, I think. I think the book resonated so strongly with Kelsie, that she felt it would explain her to her friends in ways she never could. I felt it was an apology.

What is that quote? I read to know myself? Maybe it should be I read so that others may know me. We're all here in code, aren't we? Even to the people who should know us best.

That's my 1/2 hour.