My Father's Dignity in Alzheimer's

After 50+ years of marriage... Marylyn and Frank

For the past few years, we have been blessed to watch my father cope with Alzheimer's.  You may not expect to see the word "blessed" and Alzheimer's together.  But I suspect that's because you haven't met my father.


My father is one of those human beings who has always been competent--a hard worker, a smart man, a provider.  Always busy. I grew up watching him work long hours, regularly change the oil in our cars, make home repairs, pay the bills, and fill up college accounts. He rarely sat still. He coached my soccer team, supported me emotionally, gave me away in marriage (that took awhile), and cheered on our adoption of two daughters.  He's always been a solid presence in our lives. That hasn't changed.


His memory started slipping several years ago. The mental changes became much more concerning the past few years, when he began to consistently forget where he parked his car and to ask questions more than once.    Before Alzheimer's, he fretted about getting old and eventually ending up in a nursing home.  He told me once that he wanted me to shoot him if he ever got to the point he couldn't take care of himself.  That appalled me.  My assurance that it would be an honor to care for him (just as he has cared for us) didn't make him feel any better at the time. If anything, my response might have sounded trite in the face of his real concerns about aging. However, I meant what I said. When someone has been so great a presence in your life, you want to give back to them if you can. But my father was still in his super-competent mindset.  He didn't want to ever be "needy."  And if I'm honest with myself, I never want to appear weak or "dependent," either. The truth is, we are inter-dependent; it's only the pathologically insane who completely disengage from community. Ironically, my father has thrown us all a curve ball by gracefully dealing with his Alzheimer's as it takes him on a journey into new territory.


One example of grace:  Eighteen months ago, he took me and my brother aside during one of the rare times we were all together. (We live in separate states.)  He told us what we already suspected--that he had been officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's.  Then he added that he loved us; that my Mom had been a great wife and mother; that he wanted us to support her as best we can during these years; and that after he is gone if she ever wanted to remarry he would want us to support her in that -- because she deserved to be happy.  It was an extraordinary conversation.  He had rehearsed what he wanted to say.  His sincere dignity was remarkable--because he wanted to clearly express his thoughts and desires before he couldn't remember what he wanted to say or how he wanted to say it. The fact that he wanted to say these beautiful things at all is a real testament to his inner character.


Then there's the dilemma of DRIVING.  Many families struggle with telling the older members of their family that they should no longer drive.  Driving and the freedom to come and go is something we are loathe to give up.  For a man like my father--who likes to get up at the crack of dawn everyday and go to the YMCA to work out --driving has been essential to his routine.  But last year he came to realize--on his own--that it was unwise for him to drive the 15 miles to the YMCA in downtown Colorado Springs.  He initiated a conversation with my Mom and told her he had decided to curtail all his excursions to a four-mile radius (of sorts) -- to the new local Y and his favorite grocery stores.  He essentially said, "These are my limits; these are my boundaries."  A great load was lifted off all our minds; he took responsibility for limiting himself.


And then, extraordinarily, he did the same thing again just this week.  He got lost in his four-mile radius.  He spent an hour looking for a store he usually drives to everyday.  This was huge, and he knew it.  After he made his way home, he told Mom what happened.  Later that day, after doing some reflecting on his own, HE decided that he could no longer drive at all.  Obviously this decision was coming.  But his making the decision on his own was not only poignant but remarkable for such an independent man.  When my Mom asked if this decision made him sad, he said, "Well, I have Alzheimer's and that's just the way it is."


Will he remember this decision?  He remembered his first self-limitation.  Maybe if he owns the decision, it will be easier for him to remember it.  We'll see.  We just marvel that in the midst of struggling to remember basic things, he can reason logically and make such difficult decisions for himself with such grace -- without complaint, without self-pity, without rage.  He gave my mother a great gift in that: all of us, really.  He also gave us a fresh glimpse into his character.  Perhaps, without knowing it, he is showing us once again how deeply he loves us by living within the limits his body is imposing on him--and doing it with an unconscious dignity which is a witness to us all.


This is why we are blessed.  Because my father is an extraordinary man.  He is giving us new insights into his character that we will remember on his behalf.  ...Thank you, Dad.  You are still teaching me how to live well.  I am so grateful for you.


Entering 2012.  Peace.

To my daughters' birth mothers

I sometimes imagine the day when I will be in a room with my daughter’s two birth mothers.   I so want to meet with them.  What did the Chinese mother think when she learned that she was pregnant?  Was she excited?  Sad?  How was she living at the time?  Where was she working?  Was her daughter, little Xiao Qing Guo, smaller than they expected?  She was tiny when we adopted her, so I suspect she was a peanut at birth.  And then there was her clubfoot.  Perhaps that was the reason you decided to risk leaving her at the Hygiene Station, where she was found.  You could have been arrested for “abandoning” your daughter, but you chose a place where she was sure to be found by authorities and taken somewhere for care.  She was newborn when you left her.  Did you even get to hold her?

I want to ask, how did you function in the days and months following her birth?  Did you recover alright?  Could you do your work, live calmly, move forward? 

If you could have named her yourself—rather than the orphanage caretakers—what would you have named her?  The caretakers gave her a name meaning “Spring-light green,” or “to celebrate.”  These are happy names.  Was there a special name you wanted to give her?  A name you hold in your heart whenever you think of her.  If you met her again—now—you would be amazed at how well she is doing, at her musical talent, the potentially rich voice, the humor, the mischievous way she torments her sister…her sister from Ethiopia.

I could just imagine Bekelech, of Ethiopia, listening intently while we talked.  She would have her own questions, even her own exhortations (I would expect) that she would add to the conversation. She might be wearing the beautiful white overdress accented with an embroidered orange-bordered shawl, and a pristine turban crowning her head—the one she wore when we met her in Hosanna, Ethiopia.  Or, she might be wearing something even more beautiful and celebratory.

The burn scar on her neck might be erased, or it might be ornamented with an elaborate, beautiful tattoo.  Her strong cheekbones, broad smile, and penetrating eyes might well remind us of her strong will, faith, and integrity.  She might be the shortest one in our group, certainly shorter than me, but maybe not shorter than you (Chinese mama), because who knows how petite you are?

I want to ask Bekelech, how are Uncle Wolde, Girmachew, Birtukan, and Birihannesh, your children? Were your children able to go to school?  Did you finally get a permanent home for yourself and your children?  Were you able to escape the scourge of malaria that killed your husband?

I could tell her that her daughter, who she named Mekides (meaning ‘temple’), has done very well in school.  You said you wanted her to be “well-educated,” I'd remind her.  How often I have thought that you yourself could have excelled in whatever field you chose, so keen is your own intelligence--if not for poverty and lack of opportunity. 

And then there is Mekides’ physical strength.  She tries to pick everyone up—even older children—and often succeeds.  She is intent on testing her strength, and she is always taking things apart and trying to put them together again, or asking questions like “How are we standing upright when our side of the planet is upside down?”

The world is upside-down, in so many ways.  But in the end, everything will be righted.  I believe that. And I look—very hopefully—toward a time when I will be able to have a conversation with you, my daughters’ birth mothers, in a place where Cantonese, Mandarin, English, and Amharic flow into a common language that we all understand at once.  The nuances, beauty, and complexity of the languages will be perfected and commonly held…their linguistic integrity and richness equivalent.  There will be no "stranger", no "alien."  Division by poverty, race, capacity, and gender will dissolve into a final realization that all such things are nothing but figments based on pride and rationalization...unacceptable and unjust in every realm of the Divine.

In the meantime I long to know you—the women who are embodied in the gift of daughters we share across continents and time.  I thank you for your gifts from the bottom of my heart.

You're What?!

You’re what?!

I’m 48, I told my dad, who shook his head in disbelief. 

“Susie, that is just not possible.  What does that make me?”

“You’re almost 80.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Well, it’s true.  And we won’t talk about how old mom is.”

Mom had just celebrated her birthday, and I wasn’t going to ruin it by using the number that accompanies it.

The truth is that my kids think I am 47, and they’ve religiously recited this number for the past two years.  I like the number 47:  it’s a prime number, which somehow makes it feel positive:  so I’m sticking with that number until they wise up to time's real progress  There’s another truth, though, agreed upon by me and my mom—we don’t feel our age.  We still feel like a much younger version of ourselves.  When we come to a mirror, we still expect to see someone with fewer chins.  I have quit dying my hair and the gray that is threading through my brown is like the expensive frosting jobs that women actually paid for in the 1970’s.  Remember the 1970’s? That was 4 decades ago in another millennium.  Remember Farrah Fawcett and her long ash-brown locks?  Most of us probably remember more her lightening-white smile and brown clingy top, but her long, feathered tresses had that brown threaded with silver/blond look that many women tried to emulate.  (It was easier to emulate her hair than the rest of her.)  That’s almost the hair color I have now, and it’s natural, too.

Here’s something else I recently discovered:  my mother and her gorgeous friends are not only unafraid of their age; they embrace it with few reservations.  Among the 10 women who recently celebrated my mother’s birthday at an exquisite luncheon featuring bawdy humor, not one woman was fading on the vine.  Not one flinched when it came time to pass my mom her R-rated cards.  Their humorous stories about some of their own risqué moments, flavored with anecdotes about being flipped off while driving (and their responses there-to), would perhaps shock some younger women.  But as I have grown older I have definitely come to appreciate honest, down-to-earth, I’m-not-putting-on-any-airs humor.  And I admitted to some of the women there that I had inherited the family “smart ass” gene from my mom.  (Since my children are adopted I hope it passes out of the family this generation.  But if environment plays as much a role as genetics in personality development, there’s an unfortunate 50-50 chance they might carry on this trait.)

Dad continued lamenting.  “Susie, I still can’t believe you’re 48.”

It’s true, Dad.  It’s true.

“How did that happen?”

Good question, but my husband is 52, so I know it’s true that I’m getting up there.

“Deane’s 52???  Good grief.”

Yes, it’s good.  But I don’t grieve it.  In fact, I’m glad.  I like this age more than any other.  In fact, I’ve always known I’m a late bloomer, and lately I’ve been feeling like blooming even more.  Not bigger, I hope, but better.   There’s an up-side to getting “up there.”  One up-side is that you don’t care so much about what other people think about you.  Another up-side is that you can freely be silly because you know silly is freeing.  Yet another up-side is that you can be honest about your inadequacies because you’ve embraced the reality that no-one is perfect, and trying to be perfect is a perfect waste of time.  Pretty soon I’m going to be 49.  My kids might start to catch up and think I’m 48.  I don’t mind if their counting is off.  The actual number is irrelevant to most everyone except the Department of Motor Vehicles.  I’m not going to worry about going a year ahead.  The time gives me more stories to tell—the bawdier and more poignant, the better. 

Mom, tell your women friends I had a ball.  And I’m really glad I had a chance to see what I have to look forward to when I am their age:  R-rated cards and four-star food.

Whiplash Parenting

I have two beautiful daughters, both of them intelligent, kind girls with different learning styles and ways of expressing themselves.  They are more opposite, though, than I ever dreamed they would be.  The older one from China (now 8 and named April on this blog) is intelligent and gaining confidence as she grows.  Her abilities are in doubt only to herself.  She has a wealth of common sense, an invaluable and under-rated quality in our over-the-top society.  And because this child has a tendency to be reserved, understated, and subversively resistant to answering adults' questions, she sometimes recedes to the background and gets overlooked when her younger, more voluble and outgoing sister takes the stage.

Bee (a pseudonym chosen for our second child because she is "busy as") is from Ethiopia.  She is six and we adopted her when she was 27 months old:  Her age technically made her "special needs" in the adoptive world, where parents frequently request infants. Very fortunately, we were able to meet Bee's birth mother-- a woman of immense integrity:  it fairly radiated from her from her small, mighty frame.  She told us in her tribal language that she wanted her daughter to have a good education.  She told us her daughter was "our daughter" now.  She completely released this beautiful force of energy into our lives--a little girl who is passionate, mischievous and prone to testing every limit.  A kid who reads at least two years above grade level and tries to take apart and construct new things out of old things (including her bike, which I recently found in her bedroom).  A kid who rarely walks when she can run, unless you want her to run and then she walks.  A kid who insists on the last word, even when that word is irrelevant (a word she can use correctly).  

When parents relate stories about how smart their kids are, there is often a hint of awe in their voices.   Because my kids are not physically related, I can't do anything but marvel at their remarkable, unique selves.  They are their own people -- in sometimes shocking ways.  Bee is so outgoing she can take my breath away, whereas I have to coax April to even say "hello."  Bee is not the least intimidated by adults, not even me when I'm angry. When asked, she admits that she likes to make me angry sometimes, because she thinks I am humorous when I am trying to be serious.  She lets me know in all sorts of ways that she thinks she's smarter than I am.  Because she is not intimidated when I discipline her, I sometimes wonder if I lack authority and if she respects me as a parent?   April, on the other hand, is devastated at the least hint of criticism and will put herself in time out before I even mention the possibility.  I constantly shift parenting gears between these two kids...  It is a dizzying ride some days.

Recently we went to the county fair where there was a midway full of noisy, perilous rides.  At the entrance of every ride were measuring sticks to assure all riders' were large enough to safely embark on the whiplash contraptions.  There were also signs stating that all rides had been inspected by experts to assure their safety.  Supposedly, when we were picked as parents for our kids, a lot of "experts" sifted through the reams of paper we submitted to assure we were the right people to nurture the specific kids we were matched with.  Social workers, doctors, directors, consulate folks and even a biological parent waved us onto the ride of parenting:  We climbed into our cars and took off on a twisting, twirling, climbing centrifugal race.  As parents, my husband and I looked forward and immediately saw a steep, intimidating curve ahead of us.  As speed picked up we began to clench the lap bars and pray our keys and wallets wouldn't fall out of our pockets onto the earth that blurred below us. One kid from the beginning raised her arms over her head and began whooping and hollering:  the other sat straight and kept her arms in the confines of her car, but she began to smile, her eyes agleam with joy.

Maybe I should just hold my hands up in the air and whoop and holler like my youngest.  Maybe being louder and bigger might increase my authority and stature in her eyes.  But I don't think that will work.  In fact, I think the opposite is called for:  quiet, deliberate CALM.  For both the ultra-thick-skinned and the ultra-sensitive kids in my life. ...Sigh.  That means I have to exercise more self-control, and that is a hard exercise to take up when I'm making dinner and feeling at my limits. My strikingly opposite kids are going to teach me a lot.  It's going to be an interesting ride--because I am sure I will whoop and holler on occasion, especially when I hit the curves and begin to plunge at high-speed on the rickety rails of parenting.

As my husband does dishes on Father's Day...

Here I sit, letting my husband do dishes, eating the strawberries that have burgeoned in his well-kept garden, enjoying the music he has put on the CD player, considering the many ways he makes our life good.

Deane is an easy guy to take for granted...one of those quiet, steady types who goes about everything without drawing attention to himself.  Within a few months of meeting him, I realized "I'm going to marry that guy."  And I wasn't looking to get married.  I had plans:  finish grad school, work for an international nonprofit, live single.  Yet that didn't keep me from flirting with the quiet writer who worked in the sweltering office in UW's old Ag Journalism building.  All the international students seemed to find their way to his office, too--the guy from Indonesia, the agriculturalist from Brazil, the journalist-survivor of Tiananmen Square --they often found their way to his office to chat with the kind, unassuming guy who had an appreciation for their alien journey. 

For some reason I liked Deane's "style".  What style? you might ask.  Well, he always wore flannel shirts with one sleeve rolled up and the other sleeve flapping unbuttoned around his wrist.  He wore work boots and gray socks -- always gray athletic socks -- even with a suit at a wedding.  I asked him if he had blue socks, and he said that it was just easiest to have one color because they would always match.

The gray socks tell you a lot about Deane.  He's a guy who wants to keep things simple.  He doesn't want a lot of stuff, nor does he need it.  He plays his mandolin, grows a garden, plays games with his daughters, grills and cooks delicious food, and generally keeps all our wheels turning in the right direction.  He's a great dad and husband and friend.  So, for the record, I'm glad I flirted with him and took the relational left turn that landed me in Wisconsin.   And for the record, he's a great dad.  We love you, Deane.

The best type of help

When friends come by to wish you well...  When your daughter, all of 8 years old, works by your side (and sometimes bosses you around)... When your husband gives you space and encouragement to pursue a goal, no matter how whimsical... you know you are wealthy in more ways than one.

I sometimes forget to count things -- like money.  But yesterday, as I was counting the change of my first jewelry sale, the intangibles struck me forcibly.  My table was situated next to a friend's.  Another dear friend was selling her pottery nearby.  I was surrounded by beauty.  My family and other friends dropped by to encourage me.  This day was full to overflowing in all the things that mattered... not to mention the amazing people I got to meet and talk to in the course of the day.

So on this lazy Sunday I'm grateful for a lot of things, including the precious kid pictured below, sporting a silly grin.

Get your Color Fix June 11th - Creating for Causes is coming!!!

After exhausting all the ways I can avoid doing laundry, I have decided that the act of creating -- whether it be making funky jewelry or writing words that ring with their own rhrythm -- is my favorite work.

This Saturday, for the first time ever!, my Random Numbers" will be on display for sale.  I'll be part of a small group of artists participating in "Creating for Causes." A portion of my profits (25%) will be donated to A Fund for Women (affw.org) to support grant programs to improve the lives of women and girls in our area. It's a worthwhile organization and I'm glad to finally be able to support it in my own small way.

Please come by and say "HI!" this Saturday, June 11, 9-4 PM, at the Middleton Hills Art Fair at the Corner of Frank Lloyd Wright Ave. and Pheasant Branch Rd., in front of the Prairie Cafe.  The cafe is fabulous, and the art you will find on display should bless your eyes.

If you see something here that you like, let me know!  I have more and will be posting items for sale at Etsy.com (Random Numbers Jewelry), starting the week of June 13.

Blessings!
Susie