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| May 2006 My little patio container garden is vivid this month with a rainbow of roses, pansies and sweet peas set off by a huge pot of lavender and some yellow Dutch iris. On the trails, white, purple and button sage, thistle, wild pea and wild hyacinth blossom in endless shades of lavender and purple. Vast spills of mustard flower wash the mountains and the sides of the trails in joyous yellow. In some places, the mauve of clover and red of penstamen have joined the wild flower palette. Spring is here in all its wonder. Though I miss being surrounded (as I was when I lived in the orchard) by the voluptuous scent of orange blossoms, the blooming orange trees along one of my evening walks still evoke that sensual magic. It's such a glorious time of year here in Ojai. I've been traveling this month, two separate East Coast trips; a lot for someone who prefers to stay at home in Ojai. One trip to my parents and family in Florida, the second to see my god-granddaughter graduate at U Penn with a brief stop in New York City to see my sister, my book agent, an aunt and two old, dear friends. So much people contact, so much city-energy: sleeping on the 34th and 20th floors instead of on the ground, waking to the sounds of traffic and sirens rather than birdsong; walking miles through oceans of people rushing all around me rather than alone on trails in the mountains. I slip easily into the rhythm of this other kind of life; my being and body remember it well. It amuses and amazes me how easily I make the transition. I'm touched and delighted to visit with and celebrate with the people I care about but as ever, it is sweet relief to come back to my gentler, quieter, more solitary world. The lesson that's most up for me just now: letting go of struggling against circumstances over which I have no control, over situations in which I am helpless to impact the outcome. My quarterly weekend visit with my eldering family in Florida was a major case in point. Both my father (almost 90) and my great aunt (almost 96) are beginning to show signs of slipping off track mentally. My great aunt speaks quite openly about her frustration, grief, upset and fear around these changes. My father, as has been his lifelong style, is dismissive of any concern and clearly unwilling to discuss either the changes or his feelings about them. My step-mom on the other hand, both alarmed and distressed, gives me sotto voce updates about his slippage. In what I know to be quite typical for the partners and children of people in early stages of dementia, she reacts with anger and frustration to his slips. She rages at him, responding as if he's doing (or not doing) these things intentionally to aggravate her. It's been hard to cope with hearing her yelling at him while we're on the phone each week. Being physically present in the middle of it was excruciating. Her critical condemnation of him is nothing new. He deals with it as he has for the past 34 years, by what he describes as “tuning her out.” He doesn't engage or respond because he says, “it takes two to fight and I won't do that.” Of course, this drives her wilder. But, this is their dance. It always has been. He tells me that it happens most when she needs to blow off steam and that it passes; that it is more upsetting to my sister and me than it is to him. I can see that her situation is overwhelming and devastating. As he declines both physically (from the progression of his Parkinson's) and mentally (from the Parkinson's, the Parkinson medication, depression and/or beginning dementia) every aspect of their formerly shared lives falls on her almost 88 year old shoulders. She's exhausted, frightened, and miserably unhappy. She feels trapped and at the end of her rope. She has a myriad of concerns and considerations that, as yet, make every potential option for support or help completely unacceptable. While with them, I feel enormous compassion for her as well as for him. Their circumstances are overwhelming to witness much less to live in. There truly seems no way out of their impossible situation at this moment. All last year her daughter and son were actively engaged in trying to get them into an assisted living situation in Maryland, near the daughter. They got the folks as far as making a deposit, ordering furniture and having a buyer for their Florida house before the whole enterprise tanked. Moving that far from their familiar setting and from all their medical support systems ultimately raised as many challenges as it promised to settle. Our folks just weren't ready for all that radical change. From that months long experience it became clear that they, not any of us children, had to be the initiators of their next step. So I witness, I express my caring and concern. I offer my willingness to emotionally and/or financially support any option that she/they think might help them cope better. I deal with my helplessness and my grief when I get home. I rage and slam around my house with the frustration of having to cope with her abusive treatment of him and his impassivity. I surrender into the sadness of seeing my dad losing ground. I know and hate that there is nothing I can do about any of it. It takes me almost 10 days to get over the upset. My distress is exaggerated by the daunting struggle to come up with a plan for celebrating my dad's 90th birthday that might keep my step-mom from raining on his parade. I obsess endlessly, caught¬-as with my birth mother in days of old-trying to find some way to make her happy, to make her feel cared about so that the rest of us might relax and enjoy our celebration. My sister reminds me repeatedly (while she goes through her own parallel obsessing-albeit for a shorter time) that this is as impossible with our step-mom as it was with our birth mother. Our step-mom is as filled with anger, bitterness and resentment toward our dad as our mother had been. Her children repeatedly assure us that she was much the same with their dad before he died. It seems clear that both she and our dad have made the same kind of painful partner choice twice in their lives. Because my step-mom can be so warm, sensitive and caring with me-more of a mom than my own mother ever chose to be-I am still sometimes seduced into believing that this time there really is a way to help, to improve her life or her outlook. I finally remember the truth and let go of the obsessive exhausting search for a magical resolution. It astonishes me how easily and completely I could be swept up into the old and futile pattern of my childhood. When at last I'd come back to some semblance of calm, it was time to prepare for my six day Pennsylvania/New York City excursion. The second trip was neither fraught nor challenging but still intense and very full. Now, four days into my re-entry I'm comforted by sleeping outdoors on the ground again, happy to be messing about in the dirt: adding new plantings, re-potting and dead-heading the flowering plants in my container garden. Wrapping myself in the lush pleasure of my solitary quiet feels so nourishing after all the high energy and peopled-ness of the trip. There is news on the book front. My at-last-in-person meeting with Debra (the agent) was a joy. She's totally dear and delightfully excited with my work. There's one more round of revision to do on the introduction, changes that make good sense to me. Then there'll be the gathering of blurbs from two friends before Debra will be ready to move onto hand-selling the project. This summer looks a promising time for that next step. It is just this week a year since I completed the original manuscript. Clearly we are going only as fast as the slowest part feels safe to go. To visit the Bulletin Board Archive Table of Contents Site Directory (for non-frames viewing)
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