My Mother's Red Coat, etc.

When I arrived at Friendship Haven Sunday morning, my mom was sitting in the cafeteria, staring benignly ahead--at nothing. 

I had not seen her in six weeks. My sister had updated me on the subtle decline, but I was still taken aback to see a film of confusion over her eyes when I said "I'm Allison, your daughter, and I'm here to take you to church." 

"All right," she said, accepting but aloof: I was a stranger.

I brought my mother's "good wool coat" from her room and buttoned it across her increasing midsection. For 93 years, she'd been trim. Over time she has shrunk to 5'2", but after nearly two years in memory care, she's now closing in on 170 pounds. She eats whatever is set before her, determined to prevent waste. We've asked the staff to monitor her portion size, but does it really matter? Only that it makes the one remaining button of her favorite coat hard to clasp. 

Yes, we should maybe buy her a new coat. But she loves her red one, and changes rattle her. There is no way to win this fuzzy game we're playing.

By the time I had my mom in the car (no small feat), she seemed accepting that I was--if not specifically Allison her third daughter--at least a pleasant person willing to take her to church. 

On our five-minute drive, I sifted for safe conversation and landed on poems. My mother, of course, said yes when I asked her if she'd like me to recite "Invictus." I then veered to Edna St. Vincent Millay (her favorite) and she chimed in, laughing. In these moments, she is her best self, pillowed in deep memory. 

Lesson: Whatever it is you commit to memory--poems, Bible verses, the Lion King script--might someday bring you comfort--maybe even joy. 

-------------

My mother had several good moments during my visit. Four years ago, when she and my dad lived in my home through the first months of COVID, she was still writing in her journal and reading the dictionary. Now she no longer reads on her own, but on Sunday, I was happy simply to hear her read the Sunday school prayer aloud along with the class. I am watching the peeling away of her identity. Writing is gone. Reading independently is gone. Reading aloud is still there.

My sister had told me that Mom no longer stands up during the church service. So we stayed seated, holding hands. How subtly a mother's hand becomes the child's. 

Our never-very-good voices scratched out the hymns. When the acolyte brought us communion, Mom was confused. I held her chin in one hand and tipped the small cup of grape juice to her lips. She was my baby bird.

-----------

As we pulled away from the church parking lot, I made an effort to re-orient her by saying "This daughter is happy she could take her mother to church!" She responded with a laugh: "This mother is happy too!" Her flash of cognition delights--and stabs.

-----------

We arrived back at Friendship Haven an hour before the noon meal would be served. I expected my mom to be tired, and I suggested she lie down before lunch.

"Should we look at some things?" she asked. In the moment, she wanted our time together to continue. In the moment, I did too. I also wanted to keep my place on life's treadmill and get home and take my nap and write lesson plans and make supper and read and go to bed and wake up and take a shower go to school... 

So I told her I needed to get on the road. 

"I won't see you for awhile," she said with teary eyes. 

"I will come again soon," I said, my eyes matching hers.

"I love you, Mom," I said.

"I love you, sweetheart," she said.

It wasn't my name, but it was close enough.

Yes. Enough.
Be well.
Write.

Allison

Ready to Talk?

I 'm not ready to talk to Trump voters about politics. I simply don't trust myself. I might cry. I still feel a raw sense of betrayal. Weren't we, Americans, better than this? 

In the past three weeks, I've welcomed an easing of post-election heaviness. As in 2016, I am intentionally hosting joy and calm in my personal spaces: my home, my classroom, my mind. 

I am redoubling my efforts to juggle clubs (you know you want to!) and teaching my grandbaby to find her eyes, her nose, her neck. 

At school, I'm distributing little hand-shaped finger puppets to applaud good tries. We continue to laugh often. 

In my mind, I am reciting small poems and remembering the smell of homemade bread from my childhood. 

These are good things to do, regardless of election results. But in this moment my actions are attempts to protect my anxious heart. And even if the purpose is understandable, the time I spend buffering myself from reality is time Project 2025 unfurls without my resistance. My desire to tuck my head gently under my wing conflicts with what history tells us: silence is the friend of tyranny.

----

This is all to say that I realize I'm hiding from what comes next. The president-elect is daring Republicans to refuse his flagrantly abominable appointments. The world is responding to his tariff grenades with outrage. Mainstream media is quietly falling into line. Billionaires are lining up for Mar-a-Lago tet-a-tets. 

---------

I was a highly distractible student, but a few things from Mr. Carr's civics class have stayed with me: democracy, distribution of power, rule of law. 

How much of democracy's tenets are Trump voters willing to abdicate? I want to ask. 

And I want to hear their answers without crying.

Enough.
Be well.
Write.

Allison

Rule of Law? Meh...

Friday, Nov. 22, 2024

Today Trump selected Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget.

Vought is a co-author of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025--remember that? It's the blueprint for what the American Civil Liberties Union calls "a roadmap for how to replace the rule of law with right-wing ideals." 

Think about that: "replace the rule of law." 

Consider what will replace the rule of law: the rule of wealth?  the rule of might? the rule of whoever can strong-arm power from others?  Yes, there are countries that function outside of the rule of law. We call them North Korea. China. Russia. Did Trump's voters understand they were voting to support this trajectory?

-------------

I know not all who read my words share my political perspective. A reader recently sent me a Bible verse "reminding me" that "there is no authority except that which God has established." This is a favorite quote shared by people who say Trump's re-election was ordained--while simultaneously denying such deference to Democratic administrations.

Square that circle.

I will try for a more cheerful tone in my next post. 

Enough.

Be well.

Write.

Allison

For the Record

History is written by the victors.

A year from now...
Four years from now...
A decade out...

I don't know who will be the victors writing history. I only know what I experienced today.

I canceled my account on X, née Twitter. I joined Twitter in 2009 when the site was young. I amassed a decent following and shared ideas about teaching and parenting and (eventually) politics. When Elon Musk bought the app a few years ago, I lightened my foot traffic, but still hung on. It is now a bridge too far. I really can't support anything--even using the free version of X--connected to Musk. I moved to Bluesky. Join me there.

I'm gobsmacked to see Musk glued to Trump's hip as the president-elect taps choices for appointments even The Onion didn't imagine.

My thoughts vacillate between two poles:

Pole 1) We'll get through this. Much of America understands checks and balances and the value of a shared understanding of freedom, democracy, and common decency. 

and

Pole 2) The boulder is rolling down the hill. We cannot stop it. Trump has made it clear he disdains the mores and civility that gave politicians guardrails in the past. He is ready to use recess appointments to people his power with yes-men (and god help me, yes-women).

-----------

I mentioned in yesterday's post that I'm now reading/teaching Animal Farm and In Cold Blood. As it goes for English teachers, I'm also reading Our Town with my AP lit kids, Catcher in the Rye alongside a precocious freshman, and The Bell Jar (because I haven't read it before). Plus I have a slim volume of On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder deskside.

But what I really need to re-read right now is The Handmaid's Tale. I have forgotten too much since I read it--rather late--a few years ago. What I do remember, what I've been thinking hard about, and what I now need to revisit is the blind-sided dismay experienced by Offred as the life she knows is sucked so swiftly into the unimaginable.

----------

I hope I can look back on these posts with a chuckle. Oh, how dramatic! What a worrywort you were! What a waste of emotional energy!

And that reminds me of what I tell my children when they come to me with anxious thoughts. In our anxiety, we experience the sensations of dread and hurt even if the events have not, actually, transpired. 

Let's not give our anxieties control of our guts.

But let's also not turn blindly away from the history now in the making.

Enough.
Be well.
Write.

Allison

onward

It is now Friday, 10 days post-election. I have come to this page several times to jot notes, but I've been unable to draw my thoughts to cohesion. Tonight I will post come hell or high water--and I'll say the past 10 days have felt like both.

I made a commitment to blog through THIS on Oct. 27 as we were headed into the final days of the campaign. THIS has not turned out to be a Harris win followed by god knows what. Instead, THIS is day after day of watching a slow-motion train wreck. 

Here goes:

On the morning after the election, I told my husband Dan I was gutted, maybe I should call in sick. If I ever questioned the mental-physical health connection, my doubt was wiped clean on Wednesday. My heart was a heavy lump in my chest. My bones cried. My thoughts and my body were one in pain.

I was determined to just get through the day. And the next. And the next week. And the next four years. And then...it won't be a lot longer until I die.

Sheesh.

Let's just say I (you too?) visited some dark places.

------------

I survived Wednesday with blinders on. I stared straight ahead, doing the next thing in front of me, which was teaching. Then when the bell rang between classes, lightning shot through my stomach as I remembered the election. 

I am grateful to have a job that consumes me. Once in the flow, I have no space for thoughts of...tyranny? authoritarianism? the demise of democracy?

In the stages of grief, Wednesday was numbed denial.

It was also on Wednesday that Dan checked the messages on our landline (which we check only about every two months...) Turns out our neighbors had left a message that yes, they would post a Harris sign in their yard. 

It wouldn't have made a difference, I know. But I appreciated the solidarity.

-----------

On Thursday I awoke feeling better. On a scale of 1-10, I went from -3 to a solid 1. I could face the day. 

It was later on Thursday that I learned a student had, the day before, come to school wearing a Trump flag wrapped around his shoulders. I've been told that during at least one class he affixed the flag to the white board at the front of the room. The teacher was absent, but the substitute both allowed the student to post the flag and also addressed the class with comments supporting Trump and disparaging those who did not support Trump. The fallout of the episode is still up in the air.

-----------

I was about 13 when Watergate unfolded. I remember feeling a surge of patriotic pride when Nixon resigned and our country said "no" to insidious attempts to sway elections. That time now looks benign. We did not know what we did not know.

----------

I scheduled an appointment in Des Moines for Friday. I've been in need of a new breast prosthesis (19 years out from my cancer diagnosis now), so I harnessed my blue mood and scheduled a fitting, then headed to the city for a day of soft quiet and pretty lingerie. 

On the drive over and back I listened to In Cold Blood on audiobook. Not your general cheer-me-up fare, but it's a book my AP Lit kids are reading, and it took my mind off the whirlpool of dread that sucks me down if I let my thoughts roam untethered.

In Des Moines, I bought lacy bras and then ate lunch at Thai Flavors, as my sister had suggested. I sat in the warm sun and read a book (Distant Sons, the All-Iowa Reads choice by Tim Johnston *****). Again, not your feel-good story, but consuming, and I needed to be consumed.

So I'd say Friday was another day of denial. I avoided the news. I avoided social media. I drew my focus into a very small space called me.

-------------

On Saturday I hosted a neighborhood coffee. Since my son moved into our old house a half mile down the road in August, I've intended to introduce my daughter-in-law to the other young mom across the section. 

This past Saturday, I needed to take a positive action. I needed some joy. A three-generation coffee (with accordion music!) was the ticket. 

But the next day: Dan was crabby. Our gravel roads were muddy. It was Sunday, always a blue day.

-----------

Sunday night was rough. My 9th-grade students are beginning to read Animal Farm, and I read the opening chapters before trying to sleep. 

I'm ashamed to admit how many years I've taught this book with insouciant confidence it was a cautionary tale for others--not for the United States of America. 

This time, each line stabs.

----------

Monday...Tuesday....Wednesday....Thursday....

This week has found me moving out of paralysis and into dismay.

The Onion itself could not have selected Trump's advisors. 

For now, Friday, Nov. 15, let me say I feel ragged. 

Enough.

Be well, if you can.

Allison

ohmyohmy - my unposted post from election night

It's 7:39 p.m. as I start this post.

p  e  n  n  s  y  l  v  a  n  i  a

Dan and I are watching CNN, reading tea leaves and bird formations.

Pundits are parsing approval ratings of Biden, then pivoting to North Virginia, Michigan, and again to  

p  e  n  n  s  y  l  v  a  n  i  a.

I feel like I'm watching a slow-motion movie with manic voice-over. 

-----------

Now Phoenix. Maricopa County, to be exact. (But only the early voting results...)

Still long lines.

Mesa Community College...

Mesa Community College! - Like Proust's Madeline cookie, Mesa takes me back to Diana, my high-school friend who headed to Mesa after our 1978 graduation, eager to shake off (I can only surmise-- Aren't we all trying to shake something off after graduation?) her Ft. Dodge stomping ground. Who did she vote for? Who do we know?

--Time out-- 

It's now 8 p.m. and a new batch of election results are pouring in.

Oh. North Carolina, home of my sweet grandbaby Roger, hang in there.

I want to see Iowa. I've been overly hopeful since the Ann Seltzer poll was released over the weekend.

-----

It's 8:22 p.m.

We are seeing more projections.

------------------------------

-----------------------------

----------------------------

That was my last notation of the night. I stopped watching and went to bed.

Enough.

The Next 48 Hours

 

Thanks, Katie Howland.

Last night my sister made a batch of Pakistan goulash, a favorite food from our childhood. She said she plans to eat this cheesy comfort casserole for the next three days.

I'm buffering myself in a Harris-blue shirt (today) and a new (Harris-blue) blouse and patterned slacks tomorrow. I'm ready to wear my Harris-blue RAYGUN "Books Build Better Brains" T-shirt on Wednesday.

I'm also giving myself, my students, and those around me all the grace I can muster.

---------

We are tense. 

This feels like applying for a new job: We have to convince ourselves the work and effort are WORTH it, while simultaneously reminding ourselves that if we lose, we'll be okay.

Or will we? 

Serve me up some of that Pakistan goulash.

Enough.
Be well.
Write.

Allison

It's Not Over

We know it won't be over on Tuesday. 

This from Reuters :

Nov 1 (Reuters) - Democrats are readying a rapid-fire response to flood social media and the airwaves with calls for calm and patience with vote-counting should Donald Trump try to prematurely claim election victory, as he did in 2020, Harris campaign and party officials told Reuters...

It has been eight years since a presidential candidate has delivered a conceding phone call to the winner and a concession speech to the nation, modeling for the free world what Democracy looks like. Hillary Clinton, despite winning the popular vote by almost 3 million, called Donald Trump :

"I congratulated Trump and offered to do anything I could to make sure the transition was smooth," she wrote. "It was all perfectly nice and weirdly ordinary, like calling a neighbor to say you can't make it to his barbecue. It was mercifully brief ...."

-----

Four years later, the tradition of conceding an election was jettisoned when Trump not only refused to make "the phone call" and "the speech," he also refused to attend Biden's inauguration or assist in the peaceful transfer of power. 

You all know this. 

But think of our first-time voters. They were in the fifth grade in 2016. They likely don't remember watching the Obamas, with utmost grace, welcome the Trumps to the White House in January 2017. Watch it here, but you might want to have Kleenex handy.

Our youngest voters have grown up seeing a good chunk of America decry its democratic principles during elections. To them, our elections do not come with calm assurance that this nation can move forward, guided by Lincoln's better angels of our nature.

I don't think Trump will concede a loss tomorrow night without months of fractious, litigious post-election disruption. He has already told us what he will do if he wins--which frightens me even more.

Regardless of the outcome of the vote, nothing will be over for some time to come.

Peace be with you.

Allison 

A Golden Ball

A gold mirrored disco ball hangs in the center of my classroom. It is there to remind students that we are in a place where we are kind to all, welcoming, forgiving, and patient. The expectation is civility, and students get it. 

This doesn't mean we never hear an insult or see rudeness. But such behaviors are the exception. Students even admonish each other: "Look at the golden ball!" which is a happy way of getting us back on track.

It's taken me years to hone an effective classroom management style, and besides my selfish preference to work in a peaceful space, there is a pedagogical reason for my attention to decorum. You see, when students feel safe from ridicule, they are more likely to share their opinions, try new learning, and explore their creative selves. 

This is also why civilizations have developed expectations for public interactions. We (generally) do not accost one another in the grocery store or at work or in the library-- We agree to behaviors that allow us to go about our business with some confidence and security.

Which brings me to Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024.

In the preceding 72 hours (not to mention the preceding 72 months) our news cycle roiled with "he saids--" and "she saids--" There no longer seems to be a basement to abasement. 

We've heard "comedians" riffing on ethnicity and gender; news anchors excusing racism; "serious" politicians condoning violent rhetoric; we've even seen a candidate for president miming a sex act.

The current atmosphere of public political exchange is the polar opposite of what I work to create in my classroom, where ideas are expressed with supporting evidence, with respect to people with opposing views, and with adherence to social norms.

----

It used to be teachers taught students the civility they needed to function as adults in the world beyond the schoolhouse gates.

Now it seems we have turned this model on its head. I am preparing my students for a civilized public sphere that no longer exists. There is no golden ball.

Enough.
Enough.
Enough.

Allison

Family Matters

This afternoon one of my sisters sent me an unsolicited text, asking me to explain how farmers, teachers, and rural Iowans could possibly vote for Trump, given his history (and promise) of tariffs. The last line of her text read "What is the thinking of the men who seldom talk, but vote Republican?"

This sister and I share space on the same end of the political spectrum, yet she riles me with such messages. (This is not her first.) It seems as if she wants me to explain--and justify--tariffs and subsidies and all things agri-politcal.

Her line about "men who seldom talk" is code for my husband Dan, a reserved man who--until 2016--voted Republican. 

---------

Two weeks ago I sent a text to Dan's brother, asking if we could post a Harris sign at the mailbox of his property. He lives out of state and is on his Iowa farm a few days a month. He responded saying he'd prefer we don't. "We try our best to seem politically agnostic...I'd rather stay off the radar of the nut jobs." I responded with "Gotcha," but I felt betrayed by his unwillingness to take this small stand.

---------

In both of these examples, the upcoming election incites family tension--even when we (basically) agree. Many families feel such fissures break into crevasses, polarizing dear ones, freezing out once-warm relationships. 

----------

I'm thinking back to learning about the Civil War in Mrs. Housman's room. "Brothers fighting against brothers" was a possibility my fifth-grade brain could not accept. I could not mesh war with family into a cohesive narrative.

I lived another 55 years before I began to see the hairline cracks.

Enough.
Be well.
Write.

Allison

On Staying Above the Fray

I've taught George Orwell's Animal Farm to freshmen for the past several years. If you haven't read it recently, it deserves a re-read. As an allegory for the Russian Revolution and Stalin's rise, the story is unflinching in showing how those in power, repeating lies and hoarding resources, bring the masses into submission.

There is complicity enough to go around (the church, the press, the enablers, the "allies") as the pigs in power benefit from the other animals' loss of freedoms. 

But the character I've been thinking about today is Benjamin, the donkey.

Benjamin is an aloof, crotchety beast. He can read, a sign of his intelligence, but he doesn't use this trait as leadership or speak out against what he clearly sees unfolding. Instead, he says "Donkeys live a long time. You've never seen a dead donkey." His cynicism holds him above the fray, where he seems unfazed by the crumbling hope of prosperity for all.

Until. 

Until the climax of the book, when Benjamin's best friend Boxer, the hardest working plowhorse on the farm, is sold to the knacker. As the rendering truck rumbles down the road, Benjamin roars to life, chasing after the knacker and shouting to the other animals: "Fools! Fools! Do you not see what is written on the side of that van?" (It says "Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler," although the pigs had told the animals it was an ambulance taking Boxer to the hospital.)

Benjamin's belated spur to action cannot save Boxer. While he rails against the "dumb brutes" who failed to realize what was happening, he himself is not without blame. His failure to speak out, to act, or to use his years of wisdom to speak against tyranny makes him a silent accomplice to the fall of Animal Farm.

------------

Whew. I didn't mean to rehash the whole book. But I understand Benjamin. He wants to stay above the fray. He wants to ignore the pettiness of politics. To keep his hooves clean, so to speak.

Over the past months and years, I've seen good-hearted people hover above the squalor of political squabbling. Who can blame them? Paying attention is exhausting. And expressing an opinion in this current climate veritably invites a vitriolic response. I myself have deleted social media posts after finding myself on the receiving end of incredibly hateful insults ("Menopause got that ghoul good" one man said when I posted in support of women's reproductive healthcare. It was almost funny, but mostly just cruel, especially if you know menopause "got me" during my breast cancer treatments at age 45.)

So I understand Benjamin's desire to stay quiet. Stay cynical. Stay aloof. It's easier that way.

Until it isn't.

Enough.
Be well.
Write.

Allison

From Nobelprize.org

Paying Attention

I awoke this morning with a sense of existential dread. But it wasn't a vague dark curtain or a bleak anonymous doom. It had a name: election. It had a date: Nov. 5. 

Last Sunday I knocked on doors for the Iowa Democrats. I have been donating to campaigns, putting up yard signs. I've already voted. But last week's phone scrolling was wrecking me. I needed to do something proactive with the jitters of my pulse. So I joined one of my daughters canvassing.

Our door-knocking was aimed at helping registered Dems make a plan for getting to the polls, so the interactions were positive--joyful even--as we chatted with the sprinkling of like-minded Harris voters in this deep red county. But two of the women we talked to said they were scared. Scared. 

I've knocked on doors for previous elections, but have not heard those words from voters. Both women (two different houses) were over 70. And they were scared. 

So this morning's anxiety was not unexpected. But what had been edginess last week felt like gut-gripping alarm today. Ten more days. 

Until?

That's what I'm realizing. None of us knows what will happen after the election. What I do know is that it will be something. 

When my school shut down for COVID, I came to this space. None of us knew what would happen, what would unfold. But I thought I'd better sit up and take note. This page gave me a place to sort out a chaotic experience. It gave me a needed focus throughout the day: a command to pay attention. The uncertainty, the unknown, the ominous sense that our world is about to shift that I'm feeling today feels a lot like those first days of COVID.

----

I didn't knock on doors today because I have somehow strained my back. I visited my neighbor. I read a book. I caught up on the laundry. I tried to stay away from my phone. 

Tonight at supper I asked Dan: Are you scared about the election?

Well, he said, I don't think anyone's going to come shoot us. 

----

I'm not writing in this space to push my politics or persuade anyone to adhere to my beliefs. I am here to process what I'm experiencing in rural Oakfield Township, Audubon County, Iowa, in these United States of America.

Enough.
Be well.
Write.

Allison

And Meredith

When the world shut down in 2020, I used this space to chronicle the months I spent with my aging parents, who'd moved into my basement to isolate from COVID-19. Our time together was an unexpected, tender gift. With life as we knew it on hold, we found our way through days of poems and puzzles, reacquainting--forgiving--each other 40+ years after I'd left home as an angry, stubborn teen.

-------------------

My parents returned to their care center in the fall of 2020, when school resumed and I could no longer ensure their protection from the virus. Shortly after that, one of my sisters moved in to provide caregiving that allowed our parents to live together despite our mother's increasing dementia. My father died in September of 2022. The following March it became clear that our mother Meredith needed to move to the dementia unit. 

Meredith has been at "Journeys" for the past nine months. The caregivers are skilled, cheerful, and well-intentioned. Any concerns we've had (Why wasn't her clock adjusted at DST? Why is she in bed with her shoes on?) say more about us as anxious (guilty?) children than about her quality of care. 

My mother voiced a repeated wish while transitioning into memory care. She wanted to attend Sunday school and church each week. My sister who lives in Ft. Dodge manages this request with fidelity, and we other siblings fill in when needed.
-----------

Last summer, I drove to Ft. Dodge weekly with my accordion in tow. I played old-timey tunes on the patio or in the common room, and residents tapped their toes and sang along. Meredith beamed. She was making a gentle adjustment to her new living space. 

When school began in late August, I slipped back to monthly visits. This worked for a month.

Then, as life does, mine unraveled: I was needed in New Zealand, where two of my sons live. Within days of my return to the States, my mother-in-law, 94, was hospitalized for an infection that ultimately necessitated her move from her beloved farmhouse to an assisted living facility. 

A week later I headed to Utah to welcome a new grandbaby and offer a pair of hungry grandma arms.
------------

The short of it is this: I only visited my mom once between November and January. I excused myself with the sad truth busy children of demented parents lean on: She didn't know I wasn't there.

It was the third Sunday in Advent that I was again in Ft. Dodge. My sister and I took our mom to Sunday school. Meredith only speaks when the class (usually about five people with an average age of 70) reads in unison short prayers from the study book. Her classmates are generous to our vacant mother: "You pointed this out to me once, Meredith," one says, noting a scripture.

After class, we moved into the sanctuary for the service where my sister and I sat on either side of our mom. Throughout the service, we held her hands.

------------

Three weeks after my advent visit, my sister sent me a text:

In church today there was communion, and Mom didn't remember what that was. I had to whisper instructions to her, like "He's going to give you a little piece of bread to eat." "Drink that juice and put the cup in here." "Now we go back to where we were sitting." She literally had no idea what we were doing. It was surreal and sad. It reminded me of that day Mom forgot what commemorative stamps were. Communion and commemorative stamps are two things I thought would be in her brain forever. 

Commemorative stamps. 

Communion.

------

Enough.
Be well.

Allison

How Did We Get Here?

The decline of an aging parent settles as soft layers of dust: first a forgotten name, a bothersome wart, a repeated story. Each increment is barely noticed, certainly not demanding commentary. Now and again something rises to the level of an "event”: a misplaced check, a fenderbender, a broken tooth. 

As my 94-year-old mother-in-law Janet’s primary caregiver for the past several years, I visited her in the evenings, enjoying our shared accordion practice and rounding off the rough edges of her isolated days. She had lived independently a short mile from our house since her husband died in 2010. Our routine was manageable, even pleasant. Until it wasn’t. We were the proverbial frogs swimming in water heating too slowly to be noticed. 

Then one day the water was boiling. 

And that day--or more accurately, that month--Janet developed a blistering skin rash that required twice-daily application of ointment to dark crevices that she couldn’t (and I didn’t want to) reach. An added steroid to her medication list shook loose confusion that had hidden beneath years of an unchanging medication routine she'd managed by herself. Her worries, always plentiful, ratcheted up to all-consuming. And then the bloody noses started. Then the UTI. Then a week in the hospital.

In short, my dear mother-in-law had lived a life of physical and mental stamina well into her 95th year. And now she wasn't. November and December were a blur from hospital to assisted living, back to the hospital, back to assisted living. The experience sucked us into a swirl of measureless days.

Dan's sister flew in from Tacoma and stayed three weeks, sleeping on the hospital's pull-out bed(ish). His brother from Minneapolis drove down multiple times. Their help--and sanity--cannot be overstated. This work took many hands.

----------------

So. Now we are here.

This afternoon, Sunday, I arrived at Allen Place an hour before dinner. Walking to Janet's room, I passed the exercise nook, where I met up with Annabelle as she climbed off the Nu-Step. 

Before moving to assisted living two years ago, Annabelle had been our country neighbor for decades, which means she lived within five miles of us. My husband rents two of the family's grain bins and 230 acres of their land. We attended neighborhood corn boils in their shed. When Annabelle's husband passed away last year, he left a life-sized hole in the southeast corner of the county. Two of Annabelle's granddaughters work at my school, and I've taught several of her great-grandchildren, including one currently in my classes. Such are the tendrils of neighbors in rural Iowa.

During Janet's past six weeks of adjustment--perhaps the most daunting adjustment of her life--Annabelle has been my mother-in-law's guardian and cheerleader. Since I usually visit in the late afternoon, I often sit at the friends' table and get in on suppertime conversation.

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As we walked from the exercise nook to Annabelle's room (across the hall from Janet's), she gave me her perceptions of the day: Janet seemed more cheerful. She had eaten all of her noon meal--although after lunch she'd said "See you tomorrow!" and Annabelle had corrected her, "We'll have supper first!"

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When I knocked at Janet's door, she was busy at her ironing board, cutting fabric. Sewing continues to be her most meaningful and calming work. She has been making beanbags of late, but she said she was cutting quilt squares. Small confusion.

We then practiced accordion. Yesterday she played the right hand on her small instrument through two verses of "Edelweiss," but tonight she chose to sit in her chair and encourage me to "play that section again, four or five more times." Always the music teacher.

It was then time to head to supper. As usual, Annabelle knocked on Janet's door. Residents take care of each other here. No one is left behind.

As we've done nearly every evening for weeks, Annabelle (with her cane), Janet (pushing a small wheelchair as a walker), and I headed to the dining room.

Janet then turned to me. "Allison," she said, "Do you know Annabelle?"

"Yes," I said. "I do."

Enough.

Be well.

Allison