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Posts from May 2023

Conversations with Friends About Our Parents and the Stages of Deterioration, Our Bodies, and Our Children’s Lives

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Tropical and desert plants living side-by-side in Lake Worth Beach

Conversations with friends lately have invariably steered, at some point, to our parents.  For most of us, it’s our mothers and mothers-in-law, though for some it’s concern for both parents, and for a younger friend it’s about a grandmother. Mothers are in the process of deteriorating, some are bedridden. The body seems to falter first, but, to differing degrees, the mind also shows signs of aging, where the range is from “not quite herself at times” to “who is that woman?” Maybe not all the time, but it does seem that once the walk becomes focused on maintaining balance, a shuffle ensues, and then the mind, too, exhibits a kind of shuffle.

Fathers, if they’re around (for most of us they’re not), remain stubborn, thinking that nothing has changed since they were young men, responsible for supporting an entire family even if they are now in their 90s and their children are grandparents. These guys need to finally release their grip and realize that the world will not collapse if they are no longer their own version of Master of the Universe. A bright spot is the father who’s finding independence in a wheelchair.

Our parents are in their 80s and 90s. Hurrah for long-life! Our hope for each of them is that they continue to enjoy life, and not simply hold on to the drudgery of life becoming an extremely long, super ultra-marathon.

Depending on a parent’s situation, we are involved in varying degrees of caregiving. One friend and her husband lived with her mother-in-law for years, most of their time devoted to her care. And others, like me, listen with dread to those stories, grateful that there is experience and wisdom being shared, though often coming from a place of frustration and despair, and heard with fear and trepidation.

Listening to those stories of active caregiving and actively arranging for caregiving help is heartbreaking. But to see how taxing it is to constantly make arrangements and deal—battle—with the bureaucracy turning a normally sane, organized woman into a harridan, is disheartening. We have been or still are professionals, most of us teachers, most with children of our own. We have spent our lives concerned for others and acting on that concern, and now when our children are starting to find their way, we are still stuck at home.

Here we are: middle-aged women who are starting to see our own slide into senior living, who want to be out and about, vacationing and lunching with the ladies, but we’re still tied down, to some degree, by the compassion that has always guided us.  

But here we are, too, talking about ourselves and how we are also starting to see our own things falling apart. Skin cancer. Breast cancer. Vertigo. Rheumatoid arthritis. Macular degeneration. Glaucoma. We take care of ourselves. But there’s so much that healthy living and exercise can do.

We are determined to live our lives to the fullest, doing what we can to take care of everyone and ourselves. But what does that mean? Do you postpone trips or, as a friend does, pay for travel insurance just in case a trip needs to be cancelled. We can’t wait around for the generation before us to go. But we can’t ignore their needs and existence. When I told older daughter that I was thinking of going on a trip to Spain and Portugal, her first thought was if it would be ok to leave Grandma on her own. My daughter asked me if I was going to be an irresponsible daughter. It’s not necessarily the travel that I needed, as the time to enjoy myself with no responsibilities.

At the end of an essay, there is a culminating thought that feels like a proper conclusion. Today, I don’t have one. Everything feels so open, unknown—lifelike. Perhaps there is only gratitude, flexibility, and love that guides us—but this also needs to be self-directed. And as I continue to sit here with these thoughts, I realize that this unknown and uncertain time reminds me of early adulthood, when there were so many decisions to be made. Then, I was mainly guided by my own intuition, desires, and fears. Now, there is guidance. There is this point in my history, which means there is what to look back upon. There are friends’ lives, showing how things work out in different scenarios. There is the understanding that looking ahead and looking back don’t give answers or even a roadmap.

But I do know that I’m grateful to my friends for being a forum for sharing thoughts as we each deal with what we deal, helping me understand my situation and myself.


Not Having a Room of My Own

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Hoping to dogsit here one day

I’m back dogsitting for Jerry, my best customer. I watch him for about a week every couple of months. His house now feels almost as uncomfortable as my mother’s apartment: neither place is mine, so in neither am I completely at ease, but I’m there enough to feel almost home, though always as a visitor. Nowadays, I exist in spaces that other people have created for themselves. The more I stay at my mother’s house and dogsit for different dogs, I find that I’m becoming detached from the space around me and becoming centered on self. Am I all the space I need?

The eight years that I was an empty nester, from when younger daughter went to college in 2013 to when I moved to Florida to be with my mother in 2021, were the only years when I lived by myself. Is that a long time or a short time? Or is it both? Time enough to see that it could be lonely without other people. Time to, also, enjoy not having to adjust myself for anyone or think about how my habits may be perceived by someone else. Enough time to know that the arrangement suited me.

I’ve finally taken a break (most of the time) from checking real estate websites for homes to rent or buy near younger daughter. It’s not that the move won’t happen, it’s that I don’t want to focus on the future—and my future space—when I have the present to live. Looking at homes that will be rented or sold by the time I’m ready doesn’t make me feel satisfied with myself at the end of the day. Enough time has been spent imagining what will be. So many minutes in a day in a life spent daydreaming—no, not daydreaming, suspended—just out of reach of the reality or the doldrums of the day. Perhaps at times I protected myself by looking for the future as an answer, but not now, not at 62.

I need to use each moment that I have in service of my life—of this moment—not on thoughts that are vague, wispy things. For so many years I lulled myself into thinking that my life—I—would be different at some future time. Alas, the same person who couldn’t accomplish goals that were beyond her personality and comfort level, is ready to see what has been done while thinking that nothing has been done. That suspended time may have passed unnoticed, but it is where I have spent my life.

Being in spaces that aren’t mine, I’m forced to think about what is mine—what is me. I cannot appease myself by thinking that the things around me make up my life, make a statement on myself and my accomplishments. Not having my own bed and pictures on a nightstand force me to think about the meaning of a life, of my life: the children raised, the connections established, the creations made, the morality adhered to. Perhaps this is to assuage myself to accepting what I have or don’t have, but that’s okay, because I’m generally at ease with myself. I am here, fully, in whatever space I inhabit.

 


Talking My Way Through a Food Tour

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Art Deco building

 

Last week I went on a food and Art Deco tour in South Beach, Miami Beach, which was part of acting on my decision to “travel” where I live. The tour met my travel needs of learning new things, trying new foods, and meeting new people. But after the three-hour tour, rather than having to continue looking for places to eat and things to do, or return to the discomfort of a hotel room, I drove home. Even the traffic didn’t bother me (too much), because, until I reached the congested highway (the always-congested I95), I got to see more of Miami.

As I write this, I’m in a bakery (Aioli, WPB) that I recently read about in the paper. It’s about 20-minutes from my house and would count as a great find on a trip, but is an especially great find since I can return whenever I want. Even the fact that it doesn’t have wifi ended up being a benefit because rather than wasting time reading emails and news items, I got right to writing (which was one of the purposes of coming here in the first place).

On the food tour, we went to four restaurants. First a Colombian restaurant (Bolivar) where we tried the national drink, Aguardiente, which is a combination of beer and the Colombian version of cream soda. An acquired taste to be sure, but liking isn’t necessarily the point when trying new things. With that I had a cheese empanada (I asked for vegetarian and non-alcoholic drinks, but I was on “vacation,” so I let myself mix things up. I mean, how can you turn down trying a beer and cream soda cocktail?). There was also a tomato spread on a kind of cracker. The meat-eaters had a meat empanada and ceviche with passion fruit instead of lime.

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Colombian meal

Next, a Miami culinary requirement: Cuban food. After learning that the much-faded paint on the sidewalks had been red to make us tourists feel that we were celebs on the red carpet, we went to a Cuban restaurant on Ocean Drive (Havana 1957). After hearing that I would get a veggie alternative to ropa vieja, a traditional Cuban meat stew which, according to our guide, was based on a stew that Sephardic Jews made for Shabbat, I decided that I preferred to try that. I’m glad I did. The tostones that came with it were excellent, too: just the right blend of crispy and chewy.

Ropa vieja
The next stop was a Mexican restaurant (Naked Taco) for what were original tacos. I went back to being a non-drinking vegetarian and had a roasted pepper taco and a shot of pineapple juice sans tequila. The last stop, in the guide’s homage to Miami Beach’s mafia influence, was a bakery where I had a mini-cannoli. It was my first cannoli in years. Tasty, but too rich for what I have gotten used to.

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Red and green pepper taco

But I left out the best part of the day: meeting Roz. She became my tour partner from the moment I sat down opposite her in the first restaurant. The two single ladies bonded. So, instead of feeling left out around the couples and families, I spent the day with a friend-for-the-day. We had lots of similarities: age, daughters’ ages, divorced since 2007, and teaching. It was non-stop talking, except when the guide was talking (usually). Turns out that life in Australia and here in the states can be pretty darn similar (which perhaps answers my question of what my life may have been like if I moved to Australia when I wanted to at 21).

She was at the end of her annual trip; this year she went to Mexico and Cuba, and was in Miami for a few days before heading home and working to save for next year’s trip.

As we walked down Ocean Drive, she saw an iguana and ran to take a picture of it. She was so excited by her sighting of this exotic creature. I told her that it’s an invasive animal here and that I see them all the time. Different perspectives. She made me realize that to really be a tourist at-home I need to leave aside assumptions and prejudices. It’s not just about being open to trying new things, it’s about seeing the things you’ve become accustomed to with new eyes.