Wherein the diarist admits that she is a coward.
10:47 a.m.
For the next three days, or close to three days, I spent practically every waking moment with my mother. I arrived just after noon on Sunday and left early in the morning on Wednesday. I managed to get a wee nap every afternoon in self defence, and there was one hour on Monday when I walked out to the nearest hardware store in search of the gritty hand cleaner I mentioned in a previous post (when I called they had one on the shelf, which was set aside for me). Otherwise, we were joined at the hip, more or less.
This is very difficult for me to type up without making myself sound like a terrible daughter or my mother like a senile old crone, as we are neither. But I need to convey how I am torn in my love for her and my admiration of the woman she is now and used to be, and by my frustration and annoyance with the person she has become.
I have a theory (I have lots of theories, all you have to do is mention a topic and out one will spill) that people don’t really change, their character traits just become more intensified. This is certainly true of my mother over the years, especially since my father died. She has always been an independent, strong-willed woman, and now that she is becoming weaker physically, shrinking in size with bone loss, is almost blind from macular degeneration and has to wear a hearing aid (which she doesn’t consistently), she is, if anything, more determined than ever to show that she is not cowed by the ravages of age. This is all commendable, and I am very proud of her for refusing to move into a home or to have help where she feels she can manage fine by herself. My problems are with her, not who she is and, as a result, they are my problems, not hers.
So, first of all, she has a boarder, whom we shall call Frank (that’s what she calls him, anyway), a divorced father of two, mid-fifties, originally from England but living in Canada for 20-plus years. I’m really not too clear on how he started living with her, but he pays no rent, occupying the upstairs (which was conceived of as an apartment when my parents built the house and where my brothers lived when they were at home), coming and going late and early respectively, and unable to save money because he has no concept of how not to spend it when it lands in his pocket.
I liked Frank. He’s a sweet guy, naive in a way, transparent. I believe he is honest. He does jobs for my mother, buys groceries, cooks some, was the one who called the ambulance when she had some severe nosebleeds a couple of months ago (she’s on blood thinners and hence bleeds copiously), and has developed a relationship with her which isn’t quite filial, but is certainly more than tenant/landlady.
My son, who visited her the weekend before when he was interviewing for the film programme at Y0rk, remarked on the fact that he thought Frank was rather disrespectful to his grandmother. This was à propos an overheard conversation in which my mother had said she would like to see something, a movie or a show or an art exhibit or something along those lines, and Frank had said outright that there was no point since she couldn’t see. Buddy Boy didn’t approve of Frank’s directness. I have my own theory as to what prompted his feelings of protectiveness for his grandmother.
When I first witnessed the closeness of my mother’s and Frank’s relationship, I felt a twinge of jealousy. How dare someone who is not in the family have this kind of intimacy with my mother?! However, I realized immediately what I was feeling, and I quickly squelched those emotions. After all, Frank is a guest in my mother’s house, she sees him much more frequently than she sees me, from what I have witnessed he is not out to defraud her or rob her or take advantage of her financially (except in that he is free loading, but that’s another story) and he genuinely likes her. But I can see where my son, and more importantly my older brother when he comes for a visit in May, is going to find this offensive. Well, that’s their problem.
All right, so I got over my aversion to Frank. It turns out that we got along very well, he was extremely impressed by how well read I am (he would just throw out the names of not terribly famous authors, like Mervyn Peake and Lawrence Durrell, and I had read their major works), and was genuinely sorry to see me go. I think my mother may have felt left out when he and I got talking because she could not take part in the conversation.
And that brings me back to my problem with her. On the Monday we embarked on a trip downtown to the former Eat0n Centre (maybe it’s still called that, I really don’t know) in search of a mincer. The mincer she had inherited from her mother (who died in 1968) finally gave up the ghost and she wanted to replace it. We went to the major department store which has taken over the now-defunct Eat0n’s and found the kitchen appliances. They have mincing attachments for food processors and mixers, but no stand-alone items. The helpful saleslady directed us to a store in the mall itself where we found the item desired, but it was larger and more expensive than what Mummy had in mind. So we bought it not. Instead, after a brief rest (she tires easily), we continued on our merry way and she took me for lunch to her favourite deli (the smell of the meat almost turned my stomach when we first walked in) which is quite close to the bus station where I eventually caught the means of my escape two days later.
Now, I was still living at home when that prodigious shopping consortium was erected. It stretches a whole city block and is completely glassed in. As we sat in an area with tables and chairs for the patronizers of the food court, I looked up and saw the geese flying overhead. I had totally forgotten about the geese.
And while I’m at it, here’s my mom:
On our way to the deli, we passed some of T0r0nt0’s more notable edifices, like the court house, what we natives call “old city hall”:
You turn the corner, and there’s “new” city hall:
I waited outside the bank she went into at the corner of Avenue Road and Dundas and took this:
That night I cooked supper (she complained that I was spoiling her), salmon tails pan fried with garlic, salt and a touch of maple syrup, brown rice and stir-fried snow peas. We were supposed to have a mini-seder for Frank’s benefit (my mother has been teaching him about Judaism as he was raised with absolutely no knowledge of that religion/culture), but he didn’t arrive home until after we had finished eating, so I just heated up his dinner, made a pot of tea, and we chatted until bedtime.
The next day was a busy one in terms of people coming to the house (cleaning lady, public health nurse, neighbour from across the street), so my mother and I walked to the store to pick up some soya sauce (I wanted to make fried tofu sandwiches for lunch) and that constituted our outing. In the evening I played cards with her (we each won a game of gin rummy), I retired early, and made my escape the next morning.
Now, told like that, it all sounds rather nice: dutiful daughter spends a pleasant three days with her aging mother. I’m sure it was pleasant for my aging mother. It took all my self control not to bolt. First off: my mom does not shut up. She kept up a running monologue from the moment she greeted me with “good morning” upon rising until I kissed her good night and closed my bedroom door. Her soliloquies are completely self-centred. They consist of the retelling in minute detail of her activities. She talks about her neighbours and their problems. She talks about her cousin developing Alzheimer’s (this is sad as I really do like this cousin very much) and forgetting things. She, on the other hand, is quick to tell you that she doesn’t have Alzheimer’s because she knows when she has forgotten something, and eventually it comes back. This may be true, but she will tell you this twice or three times in an hour.
Many times a day she complained that she has lost interest in both eating and cooking, that she is a terrible cook. This is not true. Even Frank has told her she is a good cook. I think, though, that she has lost much of her taste, either through natural aging or because of the plethora of medications she is on, and this may account for her not getting pleasure out of food. Mind you, she enjoyed my cooking and ate heartily. She is constantly complaining about not being able to see. Constantly. Because she cannot see, she does not know what things are or what they are for. For example, an envelope came in the mail with a form inside for her to have filled out by someone of authority (doctor, nurse, social worker) so that she is eligible to get “talking books” from the library. She couldn’t remember what was in the envelope. I finally wrote on it in black magic marker what it was. The same thing happened with the huge envelope the public health nurse left behind containing all the records of her medications and blood pressure readings. After picking it up and waving it around for the fifth time saying, “What is this?” I wrote on it in black magic marker. That’s about all she can read.
We stopped at the bank on our way back from the deli so she could get a quantity of cash to have on hand in the house. She had the teller put it in an envelope for her. When we got home, she put it in a drawer and then promptly forgot what she had done with it. I had to go searching it out for her. I had to find her purse for her...and her carfare. I really don’t know how she manages on her own, yet somehow she does. She has a very complex system worked out with the dozen or so bottles of pills she takes so she can refill those little day-of-the-week boxes. The public health nurse was horrified and told her to get the pharmacist to fill blister packs for her the next time she gets her prescriptions refilled. The kitchen floor was covered with pills that my mother had dropped while refilling her little boxes.
It’s not as though I didn’t get a word in edgewise during all this time. But I’m sure she has forgotten everything I told her. I know that I would remind her of something and she would say, “You never told me that before,” or something along those lines when I know that I had, several times. The morning that I left, she asked me if she could accompany me to the subway station. I said no, she couldn’t and told her why. First, it takes her ten minutes to get ready to leave the house. Second, she walks excruciatingly slowly. I had timed my departure carefully and if I waited for her I would miss my bus. As it happens, I opened the front door to leave and rain was pouring down, which kind of helped. It meant she didn’t have to get wet either.
So, you see, while I love my mother very much, I really do, I also couldn’t wait to get out of there. I missed my own family, my own house, but mostly I couldn’t stand the relentlessness of her constant talking. And then I look at her--shrunken, frail, nearly blind, hard of hearing, short of breath--and I see the future. It frightens me. I admit it.
<~~~ * ~~~>
