Monday, July 31, 2006

Like a weed

My long and lean daughter must be heading into another growth spurt. She's been ravenous lately.

This time of year--getting on towards late summer, school starting in a couple of weeks--gets me thinking about growth. Weeds are beginning to win the battle in my garden. My more green-thumbed friends and family are starting to overflow with produce. The trees are as dark green as they'll get. Undergrowth is lush.

Plant growth is relatively gradual. I can watch my weeds go from pinch-sized to grab-it-and-yank, and it all seems pretty steady. But we humans seems to do it in fits and starts.

I think I've been going through a growth spurt myself lately, although fortunately it's been the visible-only-to-me variety. "Personal growth," as the self-help industry calls it, I suppose. I noticed myself noticing today, caught myself in the act of recognizing my typical reaction to an emotional event, giving that reaction a nod of greeting, and letting it pass on by.

I'm quite sure I won't be able to maintain this zen feeling indefinitely, but I'm appreciating it while it's here. And maybe, just maybe, it'll be a tiny bit easier to get to this place next time around.

Growth. Fits and spurts. And mighty cyclical. Being alive is a fascinating proposition. Especially when you can pay attention.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

What's Left

Yesterday we moved Mom to the rest home. It felt more like an installation to me than anything else. So many people to move a small roomful of stuff, sisters cloaking feelings behind masks of efficiency. But the feelings sure leaked out around the edges. My own mask is a lot more transparent than it used to be. Supposedly that's healthy.

At one point I looked at my little stooped mama, never wavering in her decision, resolutely helping to carry way-too-big boxes. I said aloud, "she's so brave," and burst into tears. As I hurried across the porch to recompose my mask, I came to a windchime, hanging limply in the still morning air. No more chimes left--just the gonger in the middle, and wispy strings all around it. Nothing left to make music.

It's time.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

The Calendar

The other day, my sister Janet found an old briefcase in the back of her closet. In it was another gold mine: Dad's week-at-a-glance calendars from 1964 to 1972. Tonight I dove in, and saw up close and personal his path from frenetic pastor of a Birmingham Congregational church split down the middle, to Koinonia radical farmer, to Atlanta civil rights worker, to Cabbagetown ambulance attendant, to new age hippy.

In the Birmingham years I found the Selma march, and countless meetings with the minister and members of First Congregational, the black church in Birmingham. I found the frenetic pencilled scribbles of a manic mind trying desperately to hold all the details together in an impossible situation.

And looking through the Koinonia years, I figured this one out: my parents' anniversary is, almost to the day, nine months before the day of my birth. Oh, I got a good chuckle out of that one!

As Dad would say, "Don't that beat all?!"

Generation

My mom made a lot of my clothes, growing up. I remember going with her to the fabric store, running my fingers along the different-textured bolts on the shelf. They were as tall as I was. Flipping through the big pattern books, dragging my mom by the hand to see the bolt of lavender checkered cloth--I couldn't wait for it to take shape into my very own mama-made dress. Made on her slender black Singer sewing machine.

We just don't do that anymore. Moms like me are too busy checking our email, writing our blogs (!), and answering our cell phones. And knitting--after all, we can take that with us. It doesn't tie us down like sewing machines, pin cushions, bobbins, and patterns. With knitting, you can grab it and go. Off and away.

Beside her slender black sewing machine (the one she still uses), Mom had a pink plastic ferris wheel to hold her thread. It had different compartments for the different size spools. Some would stand up straight on posts; others would recline in little spool-shaped beds. I loved to play with that ferris wheel, spinning it as hard as I could, many colors of thread first making a blur, then flying out in all directions. Or sometimes I'd move it slowly, each row of colors making its dignified way to the top, then relinquishing, cycling down, giving up its topmost spot to the next ascending row.

Mom's moving to a rest home in two weeks, and she gave that little ferris wheel to my sister Janet. Janet doesn't sew any more than I do, but that pink plastic gizmo means just as much to her as it does to me, and she'll make sure it doesn't get lost in the shuffle.

One row slowly descends, as the others rise up.

Down, and up. Down, and up.

And my heart cries out.

I'm not ready!

Monday, July 10, 2006

Side Effects

One bummer of aging, according to Mom, is the raft-full of medicines she has to take daily. Of course, compared to most people her age, Mom’s got it easy, but she still hates it. The side effect she hates most is the cost. But though she tries to buck it sometimes (“I don’t have asthma anymore!” “That’s because of the medicine, Mom.” “Well, I don’t believe you, but I’ll take it if it makes you happy.”), the benefits for her far outweigh the costs, including the financial ones.

My book journey has had some side effects as well, mostly positive ones. Getting to know fascinating, legendary people. Unexpected, delightful gifts. The occasional flow of inspiration. So many things. Really, this journey has been almost universally positive and gratifying.

Almost.

Lately I’ve been wrestling with an unintended consequence that’s affecting my entire family.

You see, on my Atlanta foray in May, I found yet another old friend of the family, and reconnected the ribbon of friendship. Long ago, when I was just a saucy toddler with golden curls, this friend of my parents was one I really latched onto. And seeing her again brought it all back—in my childhood mind, she was one I could count on. I think, somewhere deep down there, I’d decided that if it ever got so bad that, well—she’s the one I’d go to. And seeing her again, 35 years later, brought back all those feelings of love and vulnerability. We sat in my cousin’s living room, shared our stories, and cried together. Though she was my mother’s closest friend and confidante when things in our family were at their worst, she never knew the truth. A hard thing to hear from the grown-up toddler, all those years later.

But the fact is, Mom survived it. We all did. And now here we are, with a new challenge to face.

Mom’s dementia is far enough along now that it’s time for a new plan. She’s lived on her own long enough—she’s ready for someone else to do the cooking and cleaning, ready to have people around to visit with, ready to be taken care of. Ready enough to move from her home into an assisted living facility. And hard though it is to accept (after all, she’s had the same phone number since I was 10 years old—funny what becomes important), we’re ready, too. It’s happening in two weeks.

The only person who’s not ready is this long-lost friend in Atlanta. After my visit with her, she came up and visited Mom, and decided she just doesn’t feel right about Mom moving to this place. Not right enough, in fact, that she’s tried to redirect the whole thing. She’s called my sisters and me, trying to talk us out of it. Then she even called Mom, inviting Mom to come to Atlanta and move into her condo.

At that point, it was too much. I was getting frantic—what if she changed Mom’s mind? This is hard enough as it is!

So this morning I called Mom and asked her about it straight-up. “Yeah, she called me,” Mom said, “but I got away from Atlanta 30 years ago—why in the world would I want to go back now?”

She’s clear. She’s ready. And once again, I just need to take a big breath, and let myself have faith in the process. All will be well. Sometimes side effects are just side effects, and they don’t even matter. The key thing is to focus on what does.