I'm Cheap And Easy

Yeah, this is original, but I hate Valentine's Day. And yeah, I don't have a single original reason why.


I don't have much use for cards and jewelry and candy and all that claptrap either. Mom always told us, "Write me a poem." ..which spawned some of the most godawful poetry ever committed to paper, but saved a fortune in card money. For Daddy, she'd grab a paper towel and write "Happy Valentine/Birthday/Anniversary" on it and stick it at his place at breakfast. So you can see that I do come by it honestly.


I did insist on a honkin engagement ring which you can see in the flickr pictures if curiosity consumes you but it's put together like this: My ex bf said he'd like to buy me a "promise" ring. Sadly, I was so pathetically thrilled at this "promise" that I immediately went out and paid for it myself since he was a little short of money.


Unfortunately, the only "promise" he kept was to rip me off and break my heart. Anyway, the ring is beautiful. It's 2 diamonds with a sapphire in the middle. Well, I'm too practical to ditch an expensive ring that I paid for myself so I just had Roger buy a diamond for the middle of it to replace the sapphire.


I didn't get a thing for my birthday, but Roger did make me a computer printout card and one from the kids. He refused to write me a poem, though. Creep.


Roger bought me roses for our first V-day together and was thrilled when I thanked him profusely and got him off the hook for the rest of his life. He didn't get me a thing for V-Day, and I got him a box of candy for 1/2 off at a local drugstore on Friday and wrote on the receipt: "My love for you is as large as my ego" and slipped it to him in private so the kids wouldn't insist on reading the card.


Some people have accused me of being a man in disguise.


Update: Now with the most spectacularly bad poetry ever written!!


Mother, you are so nice.
You are sweet as spice.
-me, age 7


Without your love Mom I don't know where I'd be
But with it I'll be editor of the Washington Post eventually
-me, age 19

Alzheimer's

Started on Monday.....


It's a quiet day at the office. There is no traffic on the roads. I expect to drive home very fast tonight.



Right now I'm enjoying a minute of solitude in my office. No frantic clients are beating down the door, no students are begging to register, it's just me and Corky (the name inexplicably given to my laptop computer my Meredith). And I have a minute to breathe and talk about Alzheimer's.



As most of you know, my mother has Alzheimer's. "She's dying of Alzheimer's," I used to say. Now I look at her and wonder fearfully if she will live. She would not want to be alive with her brain destroyed. She grew up on a farm where they still chopped heads off chickens and was potty trained in an outhouse. (They got indoor plumbing when she was four). She and Dad were fiercely determined not to live assisted by machinery. Fortunately she has ironclad documents that will allow us to forgo them when the time comes. Fortunately my sister and I are in complete agreement about that.



She sits in a wheelchair now, eyes blank. They light up when we come into the room. I noticed that her room had dying flowers the last trip, so for Mother's Day I was seized with an inspiration. During all the ballet recitals we had attended, I noticed kids being presented with flower bouquets. Too cheap to buy new ones that were ignored by the kids, I went to the dollar store and bought a gaudy bunch of red carnations and a pretty bunch of pink roses. I grabbed the pink roses to take to Mom for Mother's Day. They really are pretty and you would have to look carefully to see that they are

fake.


Finished today...

Inherited? I'm adopted, and glad to be so. Let's go back to the olden days. My maternal grandmother, Mary, was born in 1888. In 1953, she was a farm wife. Her husband keeled over from a heart attack one day. She kept the farm going with the help of her youngest two sons for several years, then the land was divided into plots and both sons began other careers. My grandfather had asked-no-demanded--that his children pursue careers that were safer than farming.


In 1955 Mary into a small trailer to make her housekeeping duties easier. Somewhere in there she lost her sight from untreated glaucoma, and most of her memory. She kept going until about 1967 when her mind began to fail and the siblings decided to ship her around so each one had his turn at taking care of her. She was very sweet and vague. I couldn't carry on a real conversation with her. She would just sort of smile.

Naturally, being a know it all teenage snot, I informed my parents that Gram probably had Alzheimer's. I refused to think that it could be inherited lalalalalalalala fingers in ears I can't hear you. It became a lot more obvious when Mom's oldest sister was definintely diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

Here's what they don't tell you about Alzheimer's. The net makes it sound like you start out not being able to remember things, etc., and then eventually you lose the ability to function, and you go a nursing home, and eventually you die, as we all do eventually. Sounds like a gentle walk into the night--or down a strange street if you escape from your house in later stages without being caught.

Here's what they DON'T tell you. The worst thing about Alzheimer's may surprise you. It devastates me to see mom staring blankly into space most of the time but the worst part is over.

You see, in 2002 or so Mom's whole personality changed. I do not know if my aunt or grandmother's experienced this, or to what degree. They lived in different places, at another time. But she became a raging, needy bitch. There really is no tactful way to put it. She became nothing but a voice on the phone, whining and demanding. The kids were used to hearing me scream "if that's mom don't answer it!" because her conversation consisted of

1. Her bowel movements
2. Her "low down" feeling--like a drag in the pelvic reason. Why? She had that for 30 years and nobody ever figured out why.
3. Drop what you are doing right now and bring me a hamburger/change the oil in my car/ drive me to the doctor/ run an errand. Of course we didn't mind helping her out at all. The tone of her voice changed from asking nicely to demanding, though, and everything needed to be done this exact second.
4. How unhappy and miserable she was.

My sister and I begged her to take antidepresants. Her doctor gave her a prescription and she took one and decided it didn't "agree with her." I actually considering mashing up the pills and putting them in her milk.

The night that stands out in my head began with a dream party in 2004. A Saturday night in the summer. You know the party where everything is going right? You look good. Your dh looks good. Your hilarious, intelligent friends are at the top of their game. The food and drinks were ambrosial. And it was well worth the 50 mile drive to their place in the country.

The girls were 6 and 4 and behaved like angels. We relaxed in the light of a thousand Christmas tree type lights strung on trees surrounding the huge outdoor eating area.

At 9:30 my cell rang. To this day I wonder why I picked it up. It was mom ordering us to leave the party right this minute and drive her to urgent care for some non emergency condition. I don't remember what; the evening is a merciful blur at that point. I told her we just could not do that. If she was ill, call an ambulance. Call a friend to take her. In desperation I offered to pay for a taxi. No. She wanted us, and she wanted us NOW.

I said no. She did not go to urgent care and the next morning she was just fine.

I carried the guilt around for years, and the party fun was of course ended with that phone call for me. Now I feel even worse knowing it was the disease talking and not my fan-frickin-tastic mom.

I guess the lesson is that if an older person suddenly morphs into an alien being you ought to be looking for nursing homes.

I keep going around saying, "Well at least she is not in any physical pain," but one tiny, hideously selfish part of me wants her to have a disease with pain (just a little bit, controlled by drugs) and have her mind intact. But you can't bargain with the Deity. You play the cards you get.

I say this and yet the mental distress the poor woman suffered was immense and went on for years. Already afflicted with both agoraphobia (fear of leaving home) and hypochondria (I have never once in my life heard mom say she feels great), the disease fed off of these the way gasoline feeds off of a fire. The result was such sadness, and such depression.

So...I'm wondering if this is the last Mother's Day that I'll ever spend with Mom.

We took the girls and they played the violin for Mom.

Mom enjoyed it.

And I hugged her and told her goodbye and that I loved her and that she was the best mom ever. Here's the deal: I have some mild hearing loss. Had it since birth. Could never hear the secrets little girls whispered in my ear. I just looked at them and smiled or frowned, depending on the look on their faces.

Roger said that he heard mom reply, "I love you too, Lorrie."

I missed it.

I hope I will hear it the next time.

If there is one.

Alzheimer's
Alzheimer
Alzheimer's disease