Escape Route

I’m not sure where such a strong drive for self-preservation came from, that I need to have an escape route ready. 

That’s my van in the above photo, parked at the end of a U-shaped driveway in front of a senior center where I was speaking recently. The parking spot was deliberately chosen so that I could just hop in, back out and shoot straight down the road past theose green trees in the middle.

This is no unusual thing. I tend to park on the street facing the direction by which I will leave. In a parking lot, my vote goes to the space near a quick exit. The idea is to have my escape pod ready so I don’t have to turn it around, drive through a long driveway, or navigate obstacles when I leave. I make sure to plan a departure route that encounters fewer stoplights and stop signs, and think of alternate ways I can go if blocked. I don’t want to be cornered.

The quick getaway makes me feel secure. It's always been my habit to plan an escape route, based on what-ifs:

• What if I don’t like the date I’m with? Let me set up the date so I meet him there, so I have my car with me as a potential getaway.
• What if my date is boring or offensive? Let me eat something with corn or milk (my food allergies) and then plead that I’m feeling flu-ey, and cut the time short to go home and lie down.
• What if we have an earthquake and I can’t get home? The earthquake kit is always present in the back of my van, and I think of ways to get home that don’t require passage over bridges that might be down.
• What if I lose my job? Let me keep my teaching credential current so I can still return to classroom teaching.
• What if there is no one to take care of me when I’m old? Let me set aside money now, so that I have enough to support my stay in a nice senior care facility for a number of years if need be.

I’ve realized that the “I’m Outta Here” option is my go-to whenever I feel discomfort or threat of any kind. Fight or flight, right? I’m not much of a fighter, so I make sure the flight route is clear.

It’s not always the most constructive way to live. 

The Grey Blanket

Just over four weeks ago, my mother passed away at the age of 91. There is no age when it's not too soon to lose a mother, not even at 91 years and a full life. Despite her Alzheimer's disease, and whether she knew my relationship to her or not on a given day, she always lit up when I walked into the room, always loved me. Okay, maybe she didn't love me the one time she yelled at me in the hospital to "get out," but that was my "Alzheimer's mom," not my real mom.

In real life, grief doesn't work like it does in the textbooks. Forget Kubler-Ross's stages. I haven't been in denial or angry or bargaining. Just very, very sad. Overwhelmed at times by the magnitude of the loss. The best I can describe it is to say that it's a heavy grey woolen blanket that weighs down my worldview and my spirit. Sometimes it lifts and sometimes it's just there, like a fog around me. I can function to take care of the must-do's in life, but my "joyful woman" spirit isn't functioning very well right now.

At one point while I was driving over to see my dad a week ago, the immensity of the loss overcame me and I nearly blacked out as I was driving the freeway, sobbing. The closing in of the darkness from the outsides of my vision, along with some dizziness, scared me so badly that I will not let myself cry while driving anymore. I didn't know that grief could crush a sturdy woman like me to that extent; I've never in my life been close to blacking out from anything at all.

So that's how life is.

Being Schooled

Considering I’m a lifelong educator, I surely have been “schooled” a lot in my life. I can remember every one of them clearly. I will spare you the details of most of them, particularly those that still sting, because frankly, I come out looking bad in every single one of them.

“Being schooled” happens when someone calls you out on something you have said or done, regardless of your intent or thought process, that you shouldn’t have said or done. You try to defend yourself, you rationalize, you chalk it up to your ignorance or intent or well-meaning carelessness, but if you’re honest with yourself, you “shouldna dun it.”

If you want to defend me on some of the examples I’m about to share, hold your horses! It’s my life and my education. I’ve thought through and agonized about each one ad nauseum, and I know that “being schooled” was precisely what I needed in that instance. I share these to get you thinking about times you have been schooled, and about the grand education God gives us via other people throughout life.

The first time I remember getting schooled was when I came home from high school in Singapore for my first vacation. It was the first time my mom had seen me after several months of intensive peer influence without her presence. I still remember where I stood in the kitchen as she told me off for having just used the word “crap.” It was a low-class word, she said, not befitting of the kind of young lady I had the potential to become. My mama was right. I have rarely ever--and only deliberately with a certain calculated purpose--used that word since then. Schooled.

Another instance during my high school years: I had the distinct shame of being pulled aside by the principal’s wife and told with some energy that I was out of line for speaking ill about another student who would be joining the student body but had not yet arrived. Reputation is a precious thing, she told me, and I had no right to steal that from this boy. I was poisoning the well for him. She was right; I had zero defense. Ouch. Schooled.

As a college professor I was surprised to hear that a student had taken an intense dislike to me. I got her into my office to ask how we had gotten into this place. She recalled that a few months back, I had informed her casually as I met her on the sidewalk, that I’d looked over her program and it looked like she would not be able to graduate that year as expected. She was devastated. My “by-the-way” approach left her feeling disrespected, alone and unvalued. I never did manage to climb out of that hole with her; with some people a thoughtless action can set a trajectory that you can’t recover from. Schooled.

And then there was the time that I used the word “pickaninny” when I was saying something. As a child I’d heard it in an Australian song about aborigines, and thought it was such a cute term. A dear friend privately drew me aside and informed me that the term is racist. At first I was taken aback and resistant. When you’re being schooled you have to work these things over, and there is no escaping the reality of another person’s offense. I had to realize that just because I had thought a word meant something cute, doesn’t mean that to everyone else. And in fact, the word is offensive. Schooled.

You may be a better person than I when someone confronts you about your words and actions. You may instantly accept it and apologize and never do it again. Not me. My knee-jerk reaction is to resist, to excuse myself, to explain it away, to rationalize, to defend myself, or to go passive aggressive in some way. “Being schooled” feels personal. Well, it is, I suppose.

I wish I could say, as did one of my direct reports to me not so long ago, “Thank you for confronting me about this. It means you care about me, and I really appreciate it.” (What a classy response.) 

Nope, I’m far less gracious than that. When someone is good enough to “school” me, they typically have to leave it sitting there with me awhile, so it can work its way past my defenses. But I eventually get around to apologizing and changing my ways, because I want to be a better person. Not only that, I really do—as my faculty member did—appreciate the true caring that goes into schooling me. If you love me enough to address my character as viewed through my actions, you really love me.

Let’s just hope you don’t have to school me too often. Because being schooled is exhausting work.

Poppy Peepin'

It's been a long time since I last posted. The winter quarter (speaking in academic terms) has been brutal. On top of my regular work I have been teaching a course for a colleague who is out fighting cancer. And I was bringing up a new doctoral program and participating in all the interviews of applicants for it. And I was fighting the university's CFO and Provost on some budget issues related to the new program; their philosophy of budget differs greatly from mine, and I see it as an ethical issue, so I have refused to budge. And on the deepest emotional front, I was signing my mom onto hospice care per the doctor's recommendation, and making a field trip to the nearby cemetery to learn about arrangements and costs, because the hospice paperwork requires that.

I have learned much. 

And there has been neither the emotional reserve or time block to write, which I so much love to do, so there you go.

Sunday mornings tend to be a wee bit slower, so I'm going to take the opportunity to share with my readers a collection of pictures from our recent poppy-peeping trip to Walker Canyon, about 15 miles from our home. The California rains this winter have not only replenished the reservoirs, they've provoked a showing of rare effusion in terms of flowers on the hills and in the deserts. And people are heading out in droves to enjoy them, creating traffic jams all over the place. No gripes, though; this is such a healthy way to spend a day.

It's a good thing we left home early, as there were only about 10 people in the first blanket of poppies we came to. By the time we left there were five times that many.

The highway you see in the distance goes to Las Vegas and Utah to the north, and San Diego to the south.

These sweet little faces are the emblem of California flora. They just get prettier and prettier, the more of them you get together in one place.

We hiked on up the access road into the canyon and rounded the first bend to see a frosting of poppies covering many surfaces ahead of us.

One of the best things about flower color, I think, is when you put complementary colors together. Here's the complement to poppies.

It's like someone pulled out a paintbrush and placed big sweeping strokes of orange on the hillsides.

While husband employed the "big guns," I shot with my phone camera. I do pretty well with the one he's using, but I think it suits his detail-loving temperament to be the guy using the Nikon when we're traveling together.

See what I mean? Complementary colors. Oh, the joy of this feast for the eyes!

Walking further up the fire road we came upon interesting vistas like this one, with the poppies creating almost a highlighting to the folds of the hills.

The southern California landscape is typically dry and golden at best. It was so lovely to see all the green as a background for the blooms.

Nothing prettier than backlit blossoms!

The frilly poppy leaves create a balance of texture for the flowers, I think. Nature is so often just perfect.

Here we are, the happy poppy-peepers--Husband sporting his slouch hat and me sporting my usual chia-pet vibe, de rigeur for getting out and walking together. Our souls full after a couple of hours out in the hills, we headed for home.

The Tantrum

When my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, I approached the news the way I have approached things for many years of my life--as an academic. Read up on it. Find out about it. Ask questions. Google it. Observe.

The three best resources I found on Alzheimer's were "The 36 Hour Day" by Nancy Mace, "Creating Moments of Joy" by Jolene Brackey, and the blog Alzheimer's Reading Room, which is a nearly daily wealth of information and tips about the disease and caregiving. That's a trio of resources I recommend to anyone who has a family member with the disease.

From all my reading I thought I was aware and prepared for each stage of the disease, including the times when the person becomes difficult or anxious. I forgot about the difference between intellectual readiness and emotional readiness. You can know that something is coming, and how it's going to be, and research every detail of it in advance, but it doesn't prepare your heart for the emotions of the event.

I knew that eventually my mom would forget who someone was in the family. When that first person was my dad, to whom she has been devoted all my life, I cried. Couldn't she have forgotten some other relative first? Why the most important person in her life? It hit me hard.

Yesterday dished up another milestone: I saw my mother in a full-blown fit of obstreperousness and hatefulness. And I was included in those who were the brunt of it. I knew her caregivers had dealt with some tough times, and the nurse at the hospital had told me that morning my mom had been combative and had yanked out her IV. But personally I'd not seen anything more than grumpiness from my mom; she usually is happy to see me and sweetens up and calms down when I walk in.

So yesterday morning after I arrived at the hospital, the nurse wanted to check on a dark spot she had glimpsed on my mom's backside. She asked me to help get my mom to allow that.

And there it all began. When I asked my mom to let the nurse take a look, her face twisted up and she immediately went into a full-blown tantrum. I was shocked. "I will not." "Leave me alone." "Get out of here."  Her body was rigid and there was no way, nohow, that my mom was going to comply. Not with anyone.

I tried logic with an explanation of why the nurse needed to see the spot, voicing what might happen to her health if it got worse. I tried getting stern as she used to do with me when I was a kid. I tried the word "Please." Each of those was a mistake. They made her even madder. I should have known from the reading I've done. Leave well enough alone and come back later. It's not that urgent. But I didn't.

The nurse and I briefly conferred and decided it didn't have to happen right now. Mama was in a pout, and hearing us talk about it made her even madder. She pinned me with a hateful glare--something I have never, ever in all my life caught from her. My beautiful, always-professional Mama had turned into a horrible person, and I didn't really understand how that had happened, nor why I couldn't change it.

And then I confess, I deepened my error of trying to use logic and words. Once the nurse was gone, I leaned close to my mom quietly and asked, with some emotion, "Mama, why are you being so ugly? I have never seen you do this before. When you were a doctor and you asked a patient to do something, you expected them to comply. Now you are the patient, but you won't let the medical people do what they need to do. I don't understand that."

Oh, that just made her spitfire angry. And maybe sad, too, now that I think of what I saw. She glared at me. If looks could kill, I would've been dead on the floor. She was wordless again for a moment, but oh-so-angry.

That's when I felt the tears start to flow. I moved away and sat down on a chair in the corner, sniffling. It was all just so awful. The nurse returned, and we discussed the situation, with me crying and telling her this wasn't like my mom, and that she had always been such a professional woman. Better to talk in front of someone than behind their back, right? Oh, my; I was so dumb! Not smart to do this in front of an Alzheimer's patient in full rebellion.

"Stop talking about me." My mom hollered. "You get out of here. Both of you. Just get out. Go talk somewhere else. Leave me alone." Her ability to articulate her thoughts, which has been diminishing over the past year, was suddenly back in full force. And at high volume.

The nurse and I looked at each other and agreed silently that we'd move out into the hallway.

And now I am left licking my wounds. I've always been able to work my mom around to acquiescence and cheering up better than anyone, even through this whole disease. No more. Alzheimer's disease takes your loved one away, and that's sad. But I think what is even sadder in this moment, is that I'm understanding that it not only takes them away, but it can turn them into someone else, someone quite monstrous. And frankly, I want to flee far away when she gets like that, to pretend that it's not happening and my mom can't become monstrous. It's easier to bear up with a mom who has always been kind and helpful and professional and is now quietly fading, than it is to bear up with a mom who is now wailing and roaring and shouting aggressively for me to get out.

I don't have any other thoughts right now. Just dealing with the heartbreak.

Tending Mama

It's going on 18 hours that Mama has been in the emergency department of this teaching hospital. I had a feeling something was impending, as I had just been reading a post I'd written a year ago about her 3-day stay in Emergency after a trip and fall and bruising to her hip.  At that time I was fit to be tied. Frantic. I didn't understand what was going on with insurance rules, doctor slowness, and the inability to either admit her to the hospital or get her into skilled nursing until she could walk again with her walker. Seriously? A person could spend three days in Emergency Room?  THREE days?

Now I know. Insurance rules were not made for people. So I'm sitting in the recliner that the nurse so kindly swiped and brought to me last night, with my laptop, and waiting. Waiting for time to pass, for her swelling to go down from another fall, waiting for them to somehow get her up and moving so that she can return to the memory care.

I'm glad there's nothing broken. I'm glad that our winter school term has not yet begun at the university level. I'm glad to just sit here while she sleeps, away from it all, yet connected. These are other-worldly times, and they seem a universe away when I'm in the normal swing of my life.

Here are my reflections from last year, when I was so deeply frustrated.

Things I have learned and re-learned in the past 24 hours, listed with some degree of bitterness: 

(1) When an 89-year old woman falls, and no bones are broken, the bruised tissues on her hip can still be just as painful and debilitating as a broken bone.
(2) Forget planning on 12 hours in Emergency Room. You can be there for 2 days or more. I kid you not.
(3) Nurses are worth every penny they earn, and then some.
(4) The hospital does not deliver food or chronic meds to the ER automatically. The patient is not considered admitted when in the ER, so there has to be an order for anything they get, including food. Those things can be forgotten or not even thought of to begin with. And when an 89-year old woman misses her meal, she can get confused and combative. And the hospital staff have no idea why. Spaghetti, people. Spaghetti fixes it.
(5) Medicare requires a 3 night hospital stay first, in order to financially cover care in a skilled nursing facility. A retired person who has worked for our church has Medicare coverage first, church health insurance second. That means that even if you don't need to be admitted to a hospital, but you need nursing care for a few days while you recover, you have to try to get admitted. For three days. Using up a valuable bed that someone who is actually sick can't get. And the days spent in ER don't count toward the 3 nights in hospital. And did I mention that you can spend 2 nights or more in ER, waiting for a hospital bed to come free?
(6) Yes, you can wait 8 hours... or more... for a doctor to show up.
(7) I knew this, but I see it all over again: If you don't have a family member in ER to look out for you and keep pressing people about things, you're sunk. You could disappear into a black hole.
(8) Wi-fi in an ER is a life-saver for family members.
(9) There should be a box of Kleenex in each room so family members can have a good cry.

Back in Step

For educators--which both Husband and I are--coming out of Christmas vacation always feels like trying to regain your balance. The richness, the heaviness and the nonstop action of the Christmas season is over now. Both of us had our faculties over to our home for meals, so our house got decorated up to the nines. Despite the fact that we have tried to tone Christmas down to a quieter and less commercial level, the mad dash always catches us sooner or later. If it's not a rush to buy, buy, buy, it's the rush to give time to people we work with and family and friends we care about, to let them know they are loved and appreciated and enjoyed.

But now it's done. Christmas is has been put away and our home looks bare, even spartan. The time spent and travels completed put our work on hold for a couple of weeks--a massive hiccup in the weekly rhythm of the school year. Suddenly we have to re-enter that rhythm, pick up the threads, figure out where we were and make progress again. The school year is still underway and must be completed, like birthing a child. There are big projects and deadlines looming, meetings to attend and lead, and documents to be written. The spirit shrinks back from it, and yet here it all is, bearing down on us like a merciless steamroller. It will happen. It's the stuff of our lives and of our employees' and students' lives, and somehow we manage to get back into it year after year, with varying degrees of the blues providing the emotional soundtrack of spirit.

I really haven't anything philosophical to say about all this. My new year's resolutions have been on the order of "continue." Continue to do what is in front of me. Continue to live with gratitude. Continue to meet the divine appointments that God seems to bring my way nearly every day, those moments of significance and insight that happen between me and others.

Continue.

"Let the love of the brethren continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it." Heb. 13: 1, 2.

Continue.