Bows and Flows
of Angel Hair
On the day of Mom’s appointment I was
up at midnight beginning my day the way old people get ready too soon for an
appointment. I felt the irony in the
fact that my mother was to be evaluated for Alzheimer’s the same week I was
being evaluated as an instructor at City College of San Francisco. But in my case, the evaluation was routine
and came around every three years, and I was my harshest critic—if we go by
official evaluations and not those found online, which varied from
“Excellent!” and “Wonderful teacher!” to
“Mean” and “incompetent.” How did I rate
myself? I honestly think I was a better
teacher before I had so much experience.
But my mother believed her only
problem was her IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) and we thought her main
problem was her OCD ( Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.) She couldn’t remember that she had short-term
memory loss or that she had just come out of the bathroom. She really didn’t believe she had short-term
memory loss or OCD although once, just once, she said, “I think I’m going crazy”
when I was with her during Kathy’s absence.
So the evaluation she underwent at
the Neurology Clinic was a reality check.
The morning before we took Mom in, I
updated and added instructions for the extra credit reports for the students in
my ESL Advanced Academic English class.
I sent my usual “social” messages—a way of keeping in touch with friends
I didn’t see every week or even every day.
I drifted off to sleep for an hour, and then I drank my breakfast and went
to the Y, where I did strength and conditioning with others in the 5:00 AM
group. At school I ran off a pair
dictation for my listening and speaking class and a Round Robin group
activity. I got to class in time to give
a student a make-up quiz she missed when she had to be absent, and then my ESL
150 students turned in their essays comparing their moms with Amy Chua, Tiger Mom. I was glad I never had a tiger mom, and yet I
knew that I had once thought I’d do much better with the push I never got. I got other things from this mother who now
needed a push to get out of the house, even out of the bathroom.
My classes went fine. Like most teachers, I was constantly
evaluating myself, judging what I was doing well and not so well, sensing when
I was connecting and not connecting. The
students in my Intermediate Speaking and Listening class were particularly warm
and supportive that day—almost as if they knew that I needed their warmth and
support as much as they needed mine.
I left my ESL Speaking and Listening
class ten minutes early—something I never did because I was an
overly-conscientious teacher--and I had cancelled my Beginning Listening and
Speaking class with written instructions on how they could spend the hour. I didn’t feel guilty because in my thirty
years of teaching I had been absent only for the death of a sister and the
death of my father. Now it was for my
mother’s life.
The sun was out as I got on freeway
from the Multi-use Building of the Ocean campus to Ocean Avenue and then to 280
North for the first time. I was supposed
to be at the house my mother and Kathy shared in Pleasant Hill by noon, but I
made it by 11:30. Our 1:30 appointment was
only thirty minutes from Pleasant Hill, so we had time to help Mom relax and to
coax her if she didn’t want to go, didn’t want to leave the bathroom.
But she was very “up.” She had in her new dental plates and flashed
her new smile, which she said was much prettier than the one she had before her
teeth were pulled. They looked the same
to me. I always thought she was so much
prettier than she thought she was.
Mom was wearing a bright red wool
sweater and navy blue sweatpants with tennis shoes. Her beautiful white hair had grown an
unbecoming long during the period of time she’d been afraid to leave the house
to get it cut.
I got in the back of Kathy’s van,
and Mom sat in the front with Kathy, and as we went, Mom rhapsodized about the
clouds. That was one of the things I
loved about her. She helped me see
things I might have missed otherwise. I
don’t mean the shapes of the clouds she was describing but just the concept
that clouds are beautiful and deserving of notice, as she had always said they
were. But that day I got the impression
that Mom was trying to buoy her own spirits.
We wanted to give her confidence, and she was helping us out.
I sang the Joni Mitchell, Judy
Collins song “Both sides now,” but I knew when to stop.
Bows
and flows of angel hair
And
ice cream castles in the air
And
feathered canyons everywhere.
I’ve
looked at clouds that way.
I
didn’t sing about how now they only blocked the sun and rained and snowed on
every one. Mom continued to talk about
the shapes—the way a child would. “See
that man with the big nose? See the girl
lying on the beach?” Then she wanted to sing hymns and patriotic
songs she remembered from her childhood.
We arrived thirty minutes
early. The registered nurse xxx had
four sessions with us. First the three
of us were all together, and she explained that she was going to be testing
Mom’s memory. Then she saw Mom without
us. Next she called Kathy and me in to
consult with us. She would try to be
gentle in what she told Mom.
Then we joined Mom, and xxx told her
that she had “global memory loss of the Alzheimer’s kind.”
Mom asked, “So what can I do about
it?”
But after the nurse had talked about the
mental exercise to do and medicine to take, Mom seemed to forget what the nurse
was talking about. She said she needed
to go to the bathroom. Then, soon after
she was out, she spotted another restroom and said she had to go.
Outside the clouds were still
beautiful. I asked Mom to pose for a
picture, and she said, “Gladly, with my new teeth.” She smiled and I took a portrait picture of her with her new, lean
form, and a landscape one of her and all the fat, white clouds. Her overgrown, willowy white hair blended
right in to the fantasy shapes she saw.
She had no recollection of her
diagnosis.
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