Many of you have asked after Papa John. "How is he doing?" is actually sort of difficult to answer. He has his good days and his bad days and sometimes the good days are really good and sometimes the bad days are really bad. There is a delicate hydration balance between too much and drowning in his own tissues and not enough and entering paralysis. Diuretics are used to control this, which then presents an entirely different set of problems. Mom doesn't tell me everything, which I get. Mentally, the man I think of as my father is gone. It's hard for him to talk, cognitively, and he tends to point or wave at something he wants. We sometimes revert to early "Leland speak" and ask him to "use your words." While the Parkinson's has severely impaired his mental abilities, sometimes I think he understands exactly what we're saying and talking about, and then see his recognition of his inability to process a response play across his face and it's all I can do not to break down.
But Mom is taking excellent care of him, and these days I am honestly worried more about her than him. She still basically works full time, manages the household, his care and treatments, their health care plans, the finances, and everything else. To call it "juggling" really doesn't do justice to the constant motion, divided attention, fragile nature, prohibition on pausing, and the underlying panic of the whole thing.
But that may be only my perception.
My mother is amazing. Astoundingly so. She takes care of us all, and is seemingly never ceasing in her work. She remains active and dedicated on several demanding boards, serves as Treasurer on some—overseeing grant selection, payroll, bookkeeping and the like—and still cares as active mother, wife, and doting grandmother. I have her Mac set to log into iChat automatically so I can see when she is online and we can visit if time permits. Too often she pops up on my screen well past midnight her time when she has turned on the computer to pay the bills online. She has a little hired help to assist with the daily three-hour process which is getting Dad up and showered and shaved and dressed and fed and the four-times daily pharmaceutical regimen that looks like a handful of confetti, which Dad takes and swallows by the mouthful.
But all in all, they are still my parents: Fran and John, ever caring and ever loving for each other. Sometimes I can catch moments where it seems that nothing has changed. Other times, I can't fathom the well from which she draws either her patience or her energy.
And there are times that I have never felt so far and away so far and away. Which is why I do what I can. I call a lot. I bought them an iPad 2 so we can video chat as often as we like, and Mom can pretty much reach me anywhere I have a wifi signal— via FaceTime she can ring my iPhone, laptop, work desktop, iPad, or even my TV if I have the MacMini running. And I try to get back to Nashville every other month. The last pair of tickets set me back more than a trip to Europe (someone explain that to me) and it gets a little cost prohibitive. I'm taking two weeks at Christmas and hope to get another long weekend in before then.
Originally, my purpose in these trips was to be as present as possible with Dad. Now I am going home more to spend time with Mom. She needs me so much more, if not just to have a grown up conversation with someone in the house, to be able to drop her shoulders and relax for a moment, regardless of my slightly secret routine of chores and repairs I attend to when I come home.
August was a particularly onerous time for Fran, Mother of Us All. She cares for everyone and has a hard time saying no or pulling back. My flight was delayed several times and four legs later I was to arrive BNA around midnight instead of early afternoon. It was an effort to convince her to let a sibling or a friend pick me up instead of her getting out of bed, or paying someone to collect me. In her mind, she's my mother and she should come get me from the airport. Things like that-ownership of certain responsibilities—she has a hard time letting go. Which I totally get. And have inherited. She's caring for me, caring for her grandchildren, babysitting, caring for the Children's Hospital, and the West End Home for Ladies, and the Hill Company, and all the little strays that wander into her sphere. During my trip home she was also assisting in providing care for two attempted suicides, the circumstances of which wandered far enough into the realm of the absurd I'm considering turning it into five minutes of standup. And neither were her direct responsibility but that's the sort of caretaker she is.
The woman is an unwritten Faulkner novel.
So, now, happy thoughts. All things considered, Mom and Dad are actually going okay. Mom has 18 glass balls in the air but seems adept in juggling them, including finances and health care plans and health care financial planning. There is only so much you can do to wrestle such beasts and she does so with her own earned expertise as well as some professional help from family members.
Mom wanted to celebrate my birthday a couple of days early while I was home and I was pushing for the "whatever was the least trouble for her" option. But either going out or ordering in became increasingly problematic and when pressed for what I really wanted, all I genuinely hoped for was just a southern summer supper with my family. She thought that might not be "special" enough because that's what they did for Mac's birthday last week. But honestly, nothing could be more special to me than a typically hilarious dinner with my brothers and a buffet of southern bounties. Since we were children, Jay (the oldest son) and I have always had a "special" birthday cake, while Mac never really settled on a particular birthday cake per se.
What I consider "my" birthday cake (shared with Jay) is an old, old recipe which is a variation on a yellow cake made with apricot nectar and a glaze of orange and lemon zests. Oh Dear God this cake. It's so special to us as mother and son, she baked one, froze it in sections, and reassembled it on their fist trip to see me in San Francisco for my birthday in 1997. When I taste it, I swear I can remember each birthday clearly. Where, who with, and the voices of departed loved ones. Despite the ridiculous schedule she had to keep, she got up an hour early, drove across town to the last store to carry the antique jars of apricot nectar, and baked me the cake. Same recipe, same bowls, same pans, and even the from-the-time-before-pastry-brushes bound bunch of feathers she uses to glaze the cake. Now that is some tasty, tasty love.
The ice pick in the shot above, by the way, is generations old from when ice used to be delivered for the ice box (before electric refrigeration). The ice company's name is still visible on the handle. Mom uses it to perforate the cake and maximize the citrus glaze penetration. Omigod so good.
Dividing and conquering the day's to-do's, Mom and I got to spend an afternoon together on other errands (like shopping for a new suit for me so I can be sure to have mother-approved funeral attire that fits), and stopping at various produce places for the night's menu of roasted pork loin (I took Mom to Nashville's new Trader Joe's for her first time!), tomato slices with basil from the garden and a little balsamic vinegar, fresh greens for salad, creamed corn, and sweet corn muffins. And fresh peaches for breakfast. It was all I could do not to add some green tomatoes to the sack for frying later, but we wouldn't have the time and it never dropped below 95 degrees the entire summer and hot fried food wasn't all that refreshing an idea.
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Family time was wonderfully wonderful, and while Mac's post-ulcer diet has some restrictions, he can have certain cocktails which he fashions himself, and travels with his own cocktail shaker which looks like a grown-up sippy cup.
While Bradley had just been dropped off at college, I spent some more quality uncle time with Ellen, who not only had an album named after her this summer, but thanks to a gift from her parents (bought for her at a fundraising silent auction), Ellen is going to get to record an album of her original piano compositions in the studio, with Ben Folds. I got my own personal preview, including a series of piano re-imaginings of modern "rock" tracks (note the laptop) from artists such as Deadmau5 (man I felt old, the originals just sounded like screaming and noise).
And yes, while I made a conscious effort to carve out time with each family member as I could, my active time with Dad was particularly special. Dad used to take us hiking all the time, and he is personally responsible for a great deal of the mapping, political protections, and financial stability of the Warner Parks in Nashville. For years, Dad and I led a group of hikers/walkers on a 90 minute walk through the park every Tuesday closest to the full moon, and never the same walk twice. Dad was the KOMC, making me SOKOMC (Son of the Keeper of the Moon Chart). I'd consult the astronomy programs on the computer, and he would, from memory, plan out a hike so that we would be on the right ridge to watch the sun set, then another to watch the moon rise, and be in the right position to view any particular stellar phenomena of note that night.
Walking across the room is now an effort, and his long hikes through the parks are maybe not even a memory anymore. But while we cannot walk together, the Warner Parks are designed with seemingly a hundred miles of "driving trails." So we rolled down the windows, and took a long, slow drive down the paved paths we used to know so well. Sometimes we talked about old walks, sometimes we just enjoyed the sunshine and the scenery. Occasionally he'd have a thought or an inkling to go one way over another, and there we went. It was a strange mixture of happiness and melancholy to take to these trails again with my father in this fashion.
But he loved it.
Afterward, we exited near the Nature Center he helped create. Around back, the wrap-around porch has been bounded by a hummingbird garden, rich with late summer blooms, hummingbird feeders, and so many hummingbirds hovering just feet away you'd think they were bees at a hive. On this porch are several rocking chairs, and one bench rough-hewn from a fallen tree in the park. This is Dad's bench. And there we sat.
I had my iPhone with me, naturally, and before a passerby offered to take our photo, I used the front-facing camera to show Dad that we could see ourselves in my phone and take a picture. There are many times I feel that using an iPhone is like living in the future, and at this particular moment I was deeply grateful for the technology. Always a gadget-dad and early adopter, Dad was delighted at the device. This is now one of my all time favorite pics:
And after the "walk" in the park, I took Dad for ice cream, his other favorite summer activity.
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My June visit saw a rare weekend when we were all in town, grandchildren included, so Emily arranged for us to have what we went out of our way not to call "one last family vacation" all together at her family's lake house. When I am home, I care for Dad as much as I can, which frees Mom up for a little breather, and I am grateful that because I was home to help care for Dad we were able to take the road trip and spend time away together. (Although I don't think it occurred to the others what a workload preparing for just one weekend away with Dad creates for Mom.) You do sort of have to watch all the time—I drove us down in the land yacht, and when Dad knows he has to go to the bathroom and articulates such, it is often either too late or a condition of some urgency. We were cruising down the Nachez Trace when he said he needed to pee. We are happy just pulling over to the side of the road and stepping out so that wasn't the problem. We were cruising at about 60 though on a winding road and I was looking for a straight stretch to pull over so we wouldn't be nailed on the roadside by someone coming around a curve. I had only slowed down to about 50 MPH when Dad opened the back door and started to step out. It's that level of paying attention that I am talking about.
But back to happy thoughts: the vacation was some wonderful quality time all around. Mom got to relax when one of us was with Dad or he was napping and she spent some good doting time with children and grandchildren. We all got to enjoy each other, which is a rarer and rarer opportunity. And regardless of the three iPads in attendance, we enjoyed some serious unplugged time with just each other. And I recognize how fortunate I am that we not only enjoy each other's company, but savor it.
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