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This afternoon I dressed up (earrings! lipstick!) to attend an online wedding. I didn't realize until it started that the video feed was mono-directional. I looked nice for no one but myself and my daughter who joined me for the ceremony on the porch where we could avoid breathing each other's air.It was lovely to sit outside and watch a dear friend's daughter say her wedding vows. All the wedding feels were there--just distanced. And it did me good to scrub up a little.
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Most evenings, I help my parents choose a movie to watch. Usually, my dad makes the selection and my mom demurs, both because this has been the dynamic of their relationship for 65 years, and also because she will watch anything and not remember it the next day.
But tonight my dad planned to do some writing on the computer, so the movie choice was up to Meredith. I clicked onto Amazon Prime. We were presented with a list of films that "ACCORDING TO YOUR VIEWING PREFERENCES" we'd likely enjoy.
I clicked on a "West by Orphan Train" as a possibility.
"I've seen this one," she said.
She hasn't. She did, however, watch "The Railway Children" a few days ago. I clicked past it without arguing.
The next description began with "During Stalin's reign of terror..." That was all I needed to see. Click.
Then "Breathe," a film that claimed to bring to life "an inspiring true love story..." After 12 weeks of living with these nonagenarian lovebirds, I know the only love story my mom wants to think about his her own. Click.
"Barn Red" looked like a contender. "Ernest Borgnine gives one of his best performances in this heartwarming, award-winning drama ...(about) a simple farmer who refuses to sell his family farm..."
"I've seen that one," she said again. (Not possible.)
When we previewed "Mokolai" about a priest who worked on a remote island tending people with leprosy, I thought we'd nailed it. My mother, the organizer of the United Methodist Church School of Missions every year for as long as I can remember, should have jumped at this film. Religion! Documentary! Leprosy! Instead, she gave it a shrug. I clicked on.
We looked at a film about Holocaust survivors and my mom said, "They all look old. I look at old people every day."
She dismissed the 1968 "hilarious true story" of "Yours, Mine and Ours" by saying "Hilarious for whom?"
On we clicked. As I read the descriptions, she either dismissed it as "seen it" or shrugged it off with indifference.
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This is why writing is important. After 10 minutes of clicking through rejected movies, I should have felt frustrated.
"Barn Red"? She'd seen it.
"Saint Ralph"? Yawn.
Instead, I watched our slice of life, June 13, 2020, unfold. I would put it on a page.
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When my children were young, I watched intently each day to see their new thinking. At two, Brigham called the toilet paper tube a "bone" and I delighted in her clever metaphor. I remember Eloise at four explaining that yes, she was the one who had drawn with marker on the furniture, but she'd done it because she "didn't have any manners."
These silly and confusing moments of growing were treasures to me.
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Is it possible to watch my parents' decline of mental function with a sense of wonder and appreciation of the body's arch, rather than with only dismay? How can I tilt my lens to accept my mother's and father's denouements as gracious patterns in the human experience?
Is it possible to honor lives well lived by holding moments of decline with tenderness?
I want to try.
Enough.
Be well.
Write.
Allison
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