At Home with Mom

I've been messing with the settings on this blog to make that new header look the way I want. Eh, forget it! I want to tell you about my summer. At last.

X, D and I lived at my Mom's house this summer. We had the basement--my childhood bedroom, and the couple other rooms down there--to ourselves. It's a daylight basement and my sisters fixed it up very nicely for us.

Good thing, because I spent a lot of time down there. Just as in my adolescence. But this time, I had work to do. Hunched over my computer, I had meetings over Skype, tried to write papers, wrote memos and emails, and whatever else occupies my workday.

The idea was that we would live there, D and I would work, and then we would run around enjoying the Pacific Northwest. Well, I forgot how adolescence can creep up on you in, um, middle age, when you go home, go to that home. I am not sure what gravity keeps me pulled into the living room, but it is a powerful force. That was part of the experience.

But more to the point...

My Mom has Alzheimers. Without a lot of help from my sisters, she wouldn't still be living in her home. She will, for example, forget what a phone is for or how to use the microwave. She still looks perfect--flawless makeup, outfits with matching necklaces or scarves. We didn't have any big jobs to do for her--my sisters had people lined up for those. We would just keep her company, buy sandwiches and cookies, make sure her clothes matched the weather, take her out to dinner and  help her find her keys and her purse. Oh, and take her to Dairy Queen. Mom was really into Dairy Queen this summer. I think I overdid it a bit, myself. OK, I know I did. But it made her so happy when we got Dilly bars or sundaes that I milked that  Dairy Queen.

I spent a lot of time  talking with my Mom. She liked to talk about the past, although she announced, once, that she was through with the past.

She liked to talk about my Dad. She would ask me if he and I had a good relationship by the time he died. Yes, we did, I told her. It had been rocky when I was a teenager with a mind of my own. My Mom told me that she worked on my Dad, explaining that he was the adult and had to reach out to me. That rebelling was my job. He got the message.

She allowed herself to be the hero in these family stories much more than she used to. But she also told me that her sister and mother had been good cooks and she had been a bad cook. I had never heard that before. Maybe the  boundaries  between her  thoughts and her face to the world are breaking down.

One day she asked me, maybe 25 times, about the age difference between my Dad and her. Of course, that is what people with Alzheimer's do. But I wondered if there was any particular concern that was driving that question, that day.  She told me that facts like these are important and she wanted to have someone around who knew them, so she could check on them when she needed. I understood that.

One late afternoon, my Mom and I walked down the main street in my hometown. We talked about the department and variety and hardware stores that used to be there. The street's current knick-knack and second hand stores went out of focus as I  puzzled out which side of the street Miller's department store had been. Images of the glass figurines in the window of Miller's were way more vivid than the slightly grubby looking dolls in the bin set outside the second hand store. Maybe that is kind of how the world was for my Mom, those summer days,  where the past was still with her but the present was fragmented, at best.

We spent good time with my sisters, and some with D's siblings and mom. We took one trip to Vancouver, BC. I had a lot of headaches. X got to play with a cat a lot and arrange flowers some--and these were really delightful for her. We spent one night at a "family retreat" in an idyllic setting. Then we went home. This home.

One important part of the summer, the lasting effect, is that I better understand what my sisters are facing in helping my mom and  making decisions for her. I hope that makes me better at participating in those decisions, though the amount of help that I can offer seems limited. Maybe I just haven't thought about that carefully enough.

The most important part of the summer was being with my Mom and X being with my Mom---just then.