Monthly Archives: October 2012

XC. The Swinger

Friday, October 26, 2012 — I went to our big, local senior center the other day.  I arrived at lunchtime.  The vast hall, reminiscent of an elementary school cafetorium, was filled with large round tables and had come to a rolling boil of seniors dining and chattering over clashing dishware and jangling flatware.  I was there to meet with the various women who would help me set up my two December book presentations (one for the caregivers’ morning group and one for their evening group). I also filled out the form about income and how many meals I eat a day, wrote them a check for $15.00 and joined the center. This is the Modern Maturity Center in Dover, Delaware. It is a multi-tasking, rambling, substantially funded affair: “Oh, we just built that additional building last year.”

I walked to the desk to ask directions to the women’s offices. The woman behind the desk said, “Aoshgjk uioepws.” I thought maybe she was Turkish. “What?” I asked.  My left ear has been closed for two weeks, and with all those people in the room chattering …, I fit right in; I couldn’t hear any better than any of those geezers.  I looked around at all of them.  They’re all so old, I thought.  I will tell you this, though, if you, a woman my age, want to get looks from every man in the room, go to a senior center.

I met with the women to set up my presentations. I learned that there are caregivers centers funded by our state and this Modern Maturity Center hosts one. Through this caregivers organization which has existed since 2002, I could have gotten respite care for Emma, payable based on income, the balance paid with state Medicaid grant funds, before I got standard Medicaid respite care through the state; in other words, they could have provided me with help before I got help – right away rather than my waiting months for our state Division of Aging to get up out of their rocking chairs and away from their computers. Although this caregivers center has been announced and promoted via the media, I think I was so busy and stressed simply taking care of Emma I didn’t notice this availability or didn’t know where to look. So, be aware when you become a caregiver – and chances are good that you will – that you must look beyond the obvious. Go to your senior center first; they can give you the best direction. I didn’t do this. Why? Probably because I didn’t want to get involved with a lot of old people.

Of interest, the center has just initiated, on their enclosed porch, a group called “Front Porch,” for Alzheimer’s/dementia beginners. (Doesn’t that sound awful? – “Oh, I’m just an Alzheimer’s beginner.”) Front Porch is for those in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s and dementia, those who don’t quite get the whole discussion or who cannot remember small things. The sessions are geared to their level.

Before I left the center, I made plans to give a writers workshop starting after the first of the year; that is, if anyone signs up.  I understand that at first only a few sign up, and then for the next session, more, as word spreads. I should expect $10 per person per six-week session, they tell me.  That’s my 60 percent cut; the center keeps the remaining 40 percent. So let’s hope I’m a success.  Oh, and I should offer the workshop attendees some sort of premium for signing up – like cookies or note pads from the dollar store, I’m told.

When I got home, my friend Jackie came and candled my ears.  My left ear is still closed, but better.  It will take about a dozen candles to clear, I think.  Hopefully I exaggerate. Jackie is coming back another day.  We have Hurricane Sandy coming Monday and Jackie had to go get her mother-in-law, who has dementia, out of Cape May, New Jersey, supposed to receive a direct hit from the storm, to nearby Maryland here. What a pleasant, relaxing experience the ear candling is.  Jackie is expert.

I primed myself the night before I went to the center by watching one of the best ever movies for old people – The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – poignant, humorous, and perfect for us young old-agers – those of us in our 60s and 70s.  It is insightful, honest and very well done – the British return to India, as one reviewer put it – with Dev Patel and a cast of venerable British actors – Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton – the list goes on.

Up until a few years ago, I thought old people just got old and tired and didn’t want to do much, didn’t fall in love, weren’t interested in sex. When I was in my 40s I was amazed that Emma and my stepfather, in their 70s, got divorced. Why would they do that when they’re already so old? I wondered. The truth is, as demonstrated by this movie, that maybe your body gets old but your mind doesn’t; it still thinks like that of a 10 year old, and you still have those desires, feelings and feistiness; you want to be useful in life.

I cite myself as an example. All of my neighbors are out riding bikes in the nice weather. I wanted to go out bike riding, too, so I got a bike, a used one, a cruiser.

I’m a swinger. I attended a potluck near home this past Sunday, when after eating we went to the local elementary school grounds and played a ball game where one-by-one, team members get eliminated, like chess pieces. I was the first eliminated, wouldn’t you know. So being old and tired I walked over and sat on a swing. And then I began to swing. And I swung higher and higher, and higher and higher. How free I was, and felt my exercising muscles massaging my organs. I haven’t swung since I was, oh, I don’t know, maybe 10. What intrigued me was that my mindset that got me on the swing matched my mindset at 10; as does that of my bike riding. I think hereafter I will ride my bike over to the school and go swing.

Orhan Pamuk in his novel The Museum of Innocence has his protagonist, who is counting the days and weeks and months until he rendezvous with his lover again, bundle the time; that way the time goes faster, or seems less expansive. So, six is a small number: it was only six decades ago that I was 10, a bike-riding swinger eyed by the boys.

—Samantha Mozart

LXXXIX. Early Morning Prose

October 15, 2011 — “Thanks for the kisses for us,” I emailed my friend who had sent cyberkisses to our Linkedin women writers caregivers group members. “We always need them; at least I do,” I told her. Somewhere along the line very early in my adult life, I effected my moving to Southern California where I was fortunate to meet guides who led me to a room with a big window where I could get a clear picture of my erroneous views. I flung those views into a flaming hearth, and assumed responsibility for my thoughts and actions. But the hearth must be big and ever tended. These phenomena arrive on my doorstep without ringing the bell, often are unwieldy and I struggle with them daily.

I don’t mean to sound overstuffed here; I am humbly offering a view of my cauldron of experiences as I understand them. That understanding could become tomorrow morning’s ashes swept out of the hearth to be replaced with fresh kindling. Sometimes I feel like I’m swimming in porridge.

I am receptive to what comes, think it’s the right way to go, later learn it was the wrong way – or was it? It led me to where I am today. Could I have chosen a smoother path? Maybe. Still, 30 years since reading it, my favorite book on this subject is a little book by Richard Bach, called Illusions. He presents it as “the messiah’s handbook,” and for me it is, no matter how reluctantly I accept the gift it places into my hands.

This is what steams from the brew of thoughts sparking in my awakening head early this morning as I roll out of bed and stumble straight to my computer. My hands are cold and my fingers can barely move to type to keep up with my unedited thoughts that pour out onto this page.

I lean back in my chair. I ruminate.

I take a break from my writing, exit my blog and amble out across the meadow to the broad brook at the edge of the woods. I pick up a long stick and poke at the ground as I wander. The shimmering water rippling over the stones recalls Franz Schubert’s lied “Auf dem Wasser zu singen” (D. 774, transcribed for piano by Franz Liszt; currently no. 22 on my “The Dream” playlist, here performed by Evgeny Kissin).

I find a boulder and sit down to rest. I think of the journeyman who upon his wanderings comes to a brook which he follows to a mill. There he encounters the miller’s beautiful daughter – “Der Müller und der Bach.” I look across the brook to the woods. Which is the better side? To contemplate alone in the deep woods or to go out into the bustle of humanity and exchange information and ideas? Which is the better way to achieve enlightenment and ultimately liberation?

Someone said to me of her man friend whom she has met only a few years ago: “I feel like we were stuck together in a past life, and then someone in this life peeled us apart and sent us out into the world separately. Only now have we come together again, yet we remain separate.”

I seem to have reached the end of my path. I don’t know where to turn next. My question becomes Faustian. Do I continue putting one foot in front of the other along the bank of this brook, do I ford the stream, or do I wander into the water, deep into the center until it rises up over my head? How do I bring this together?

The sun warms me here by the brook. I haven’t seen The Blue Deer. I wonder where she is?

My friend who emailed us the cyberkisses sent me a copy of the September 3, 2012, People magazine story about singer Amy Grant’s caregiving for her dad who has dementia. Her mom suffered from dementia and passed away last year. Ms. Grant said that in the beginning she felt angry and overwhelmed because it wasn’t like it used to be. No, it isn’t.

For me, so much of her story rings true, especially the parts where early on her dad asks, “How do I do this?” Or his smiling when she points out nipping the dead buds off the daffodils to encourage fresh blooms and he smiles uncomprehending and says, “I guess.” Emma used to do that. And the look in his eyes: it’s the same as Emma’s. You can see in the eyes an intelligent person (he was a prominent radiation oncologist in Nashville) and the vacuity or opacity at the same time. It is heartrending and frightening, because you know you may be next. As Amy Grant says, she sees him as the person he was; I see Emma as she was – that the one with dementia is not really she. She simply got sick. I find it intriguing that Amy Grant’s mom’s and dad’s dementia showed up in brain scans. Emma’s did not. Odd that there was no history of dementia in Amy Grant’s family – none in ours, either – yet both her parents got dementia so young, in their 70s. I wonder what caused that? Emma was much older, 90.

It’s not only hard to let go of your loved one; it’s hard to let go of the life that used to be or could be.

I glance at last summer’s irises here in the meadow. The long leaves flow lushly and gracefully from the rhizomes, their tips now turning yellow, like elderly hands. Dead buds remain. Maybe I need to stay where I am and pick off the dead buds to encourage fresh blooms.

—Samantha Mozart

Lulu, The FurReal Kitty

October 6, 2012 — Moriarty, The Phantom of My Blog, is so allergic to cats that he nearly blew the fur off one, sneezing. The cat was not pleased. Recently, my friend Gwynn Rogers, out in the Seattle area, whose beloved tuxedo cat, Domino, after living with her many years, finally acquiesced and went off to tuna heaven, emailed me a funny story about a cat. I asked her to send me the formal version so I could publish it on my blog. Moriarty, muttering under his breath, has been tidying up all day creating space for it. Here it is:

 

LULU, The FurReal Kitty
By Gwynn Rogers

Sienna, my granddaughter, from the time she was born had tried to be friends with our old kitty, Domino.  Domino’s life was pretty quiet and staid; and that was JUST the way he liked it.  However, my granddaughter, being a mini-tornado, tried her hardest to get Domino to like her – with no success.  I simply explained that Domino was a “cranky” kitty, as I needed Sienna to stay away from Domino to prevent his hissing at her.

One day prior to Sienna’s third birthday, she announced out of the blue, that she wanted two “nice kitties” for her birthday, and that Grandma was going to give her a nice kitty.  The problem is that Heather, Sienna’s mother, my daughter, is severely allergic to cats.

So as we struggled with what to do for Sienna for her birthday, Heather called to say that in Toys R’ Us she had found Lulu, The FurReal Kitty.  Sienna would LOVE her.  Ahhhh, the answer to my prayers.

However, my local store did not have Lulu so I ordered her from an on-line site.  The reviews said, “this kitty is exceptionally ‘life-like’ and can even fool real cats” so I eagerly awaited the day for her arrival.

The big day came when Lulu arrived, shipped via UPS.  Of course I had to check out this supposedly life-like cat so I opened the box and there perched on a pillow was a big, life-sized, white and tan cat that slowly blinked her beautiful brown eyes as if inspecting me as I surveyed her.  She gave me the OKAY sign by lifting her paw, purring, and then meowing as she turned over for me to rub her tummy.

I was about to learn that every time I turned the bedroom light on and off or whenever I moved the box where Lulu resided, that Lulu would go through her routine of blinking her eyes, lifting her paw, purring, and meowing as she turned over for a tummy rub.

Interestingly, Lulu got tired of waiting to be presented to my granddaughter, Sienna, so she would periodically, let out a loud, “MEOW!”  I assumed that eventually Lulu would be quiet when I wrapped her box, but even after I wrapped her box she clearly would say “LET ME OUT OF HERE!”

Finally, the big day came for me to take Lulu, the “nice” kitty to Sienna.  But the problem I had is that since Sienna’s birthday is in December, we had been having horrific storms around the day of her party, and true to form another storm was scheduled.  Since I couldn’t get to Sienna’s birthday party, I decided to meet a friend, who lives near my daughter’s house, for lunch.  I would deliver the kitty to my friend, who would deliver it to Sienna for her birthday.

I put the gift wrapped large, kitty-sized box in a huge gift bag to make carrying the box on the ferry easier. On the drive to the ferry, Lulu frantically “MEOWED” as if she knew she was getting closer to her destination and a little girl who would love her.

My plan was to park my car at the ferry landing and walk aboard the ferry.  As I walked toward the ferry, Lulu seemed to become even more frantic and she alternately “purred” and then “meowed,” as if she truly was real.  I assumed that when I stopped walking that with the lack of motion that Lulu would cease to complain.

Shortly after I reached the ferry landing to await the arrival of the ferry, two burly construction workers arrived to also wait for the ferry.  The men stood at the opposite end of the landing conversing with one another.  Then, as we waited, Lulu would periodically, plaintively, and loudly voice her exasperation with being boxed up.  I just stood there trying to pretend that I hadn’t heard anything.

Eventually, the men stopped conversing and eyed me and my wrapped “MEOWING” box. One man turned to me and said, “Lady, do I hear a cat? Do you have a cat in that box?”   I think he noticed that there were no air holes in the box either!

I began to panic as I envisioned these men turning me over to the ferry security for cruelty to animals, so I blurted out “It’s a FurReal Kitty, named Lulu, for my granddaughter’s birthday so that she will have a “nice” kitty to play with as her mother is allergic to cats!”

These men stared at me, and then burst out laughing.  By the time the ferry arrived and we could walk on board these big, burly men were in a state of the giggles listening to my unhappy kitty.

When I reached my friend, Lulu was strangely quiet.  Maybe she needed a nap while we lunched.  However, when my friend put Lulu in her car to run some errands prior to dropping the gift off at my daughter’s house, Lulu consistently and loudly “MEOWED” the entire time. When my friend arrived at Heather’s home she thrust Lulu at my daughter and quickly left.

Amazingly, my friend is still my friend and Sienna is happy with her “exceptionally life-like” kitty, FurReal Lulu. However, I did notice that the battery seems to be missing.

***

Gwynn writes her own blog, “Gwynn’s Grit and Grin,” telling stories about her own life,  often funny, sometimes deeply serious, and always poignant. I recommend you visit her. I think you’ll like her as much as I do.

Here is the link to Lulu, the FurReal Kitty presently available at Target stores — I don’t know for how long, though, because not many remain available anywhere:  http://www.target.com/p/furreal-friends-lulu-s-walkin-kitty-white-and-orange/-/A-11933990

Samantha Mozart