be kind to yourself

the new york times told me to be kind myself today. i'm not sure i've done that or that i even know how. instead, i bucked up my chin, packed up my laptop and headed for the library and a decent internet connection and i worked. i pushed aside everything that yesterday brought up in me, including those things which i had suppressed and made myself forget. i've not articulated them to a soul since 1991, so it's a bit hard to know where to begin now. i need to find a space to whisper them out loud to myself. and that's a bigger step than we might imagine. the courage of ms. blasey ford yesterday was incomprehensible. i have no idea how she summoned it. and no idea how to feel if it was all for nought.

fear and other baggage

fear is an annoyance, rearing its head when you least desire it, popping up from the depths where you had tucked it away. sometimes you are surprised by what provokes it, other times, it returns like dust on your window ledge, there's a thin covering of it and you didn't even notice its arrival until it's there, keeping you awake at night, grinding your teeth. my fear doesn't have to do with dying, it's about feeling (or being shown) that i don't belong. but this piece about audrey lourde on the ever-brilliant brainpickings spoke to me, even tho' it was about the much more real fear of impending death. as the piece says, not giving in to fear is about "everyday living and making decisions." deciding not to give in to fear, to let it rob you of sleep, your fillings, your happiness and contentment and your genuine enjoyment of your job and life in general. but, in times of uncertainty, that can be hard.

i wrote the above last sunday night and left it unfinished here in my browser tab. in the meantime, i've had a whole week to ponder the question of fear. i also listened to a wonderful podcast on the topic, which, by chance (or not, if you have a fatalist presbyterian inside you), was the nytimes podcast club's pick this week - closer than they appear. it was so thoughtful, deep and self-reflective, that it made me think about fear differently. the host, carvell wallace, examines trump's america and how one can cope with living in it. in the first episode, he asked listeners to think about someone they'd like to talk to, who they haven't been able to for one reason or another - someone who they were estranged from or angry with - and about something you want to say to someone, which you haven't been able to say.

and i began to think about who that would be for me. two people came to mind, and then it became three and then four, none of which i really have the possibility to speak to, unless i really tried. but the need is still there, and i think it's actually really blocking me from truly living to my full potential. in all three four cases, it is the root of the fear i feel today in the face of some of my colleagues losing their jobs and fearing for my own.

the first one is that old norwegian misogynist dinosaur who was a sexist son-of-a-bitch to my face. in this era of #metoo, he has been on my mind a lot. i was so nonplussed at the time, that i just flushed and swallowed hard and couldn't think of a single thing to say against his ridiculous claim that a woman couldn't interview a shipping ceo. and i eventually left that job because of that incident, which i reported to hr and then was "bought out" and left.  i'd like to call him a misogynist dinosaur to his face.

the second one is uncle fester. he was utterly wrong about a situation and he never admitted that he was wrong. of course, he was someone who had no problem standing in front of large groups of people, lying to their faces, so there's that. i have heard that he has had a rather severe case of lyme disease, which makes me believe in karma. he is the least of the four, as i moved on to other jobs which took me in a better, more interesting direction. i would still like to tell him i think he's a weak coward for being unable to admit his mistake. and i probably could write to him, but i'm not sure it's worth it.

number three is an old friend who hasn't been a friend for some years. i'd love to tell him (these are all men, have you noticed?) how hurt i was by his actions, but i'm not sure what good it would do. on the other hand, i had an amazing bodywork session on friday that made me think that i hold this baggage in my body, so perhaps it would be worth getting in touch and trying to clear the air.

the last is that asshat from lego. he said i wasn't commercial. and he negated me as a person, more than any of the others (except, perhaps interestingly enough, that other norwegian twat). perhaps above all, i'd like to give him a piece of my mind. and since he's but 15 minutes away, the possibility lingers.

but then i think about whether it's really worth it. would any of them learn anything or recognize the damage they did? would i be prepared to accept it if they didn't? would my body be able to let go of the baggage i carry? at my age, there's starting to be so much, that i wonder sometimes how i can carry it all.

i'm not done pondering this and i think i'll even listen to the closer than they appear podcast again, to try and work through it (also, it's that good). and i'm definitely going back for more bodywork - that was amazing. and potentially transformative. it would be good to be able to let go of all this fear. undoubtedly a whole new wave of fears would take center stage, but then i could deal with those (i'm looking at you, alzheimer's). above all, it would be good to have something else rule my life/behavior...like awesome energy and good karma.

so much work to do.

the end of an era

today was a fateful day. mom failed the test to keep her driver's license. and she failed it with flying colors. it's the end of an era for her. she's been driving for a good 60 years. and what a change it will be. to be able to get into the car and go somewhere has been the hallmark of her life. once upon a time, she picked up and drove herself to a new job and a new life in the black hills, moving away from her mother, her home and her job in sioux falls for the first time. on another occasion, she drove herself to a new life together with my father when he bought a little weekly newspaper in his hometown. and from there, whenever she needed to get away, she got in her car. she drove us countless miles to horse shows and a couple of times to visit her sister in oregon. she was fearless at the wheel, if distracted, the dashboard covered in glasses cases, kleenex and donut crumbs. when my sister and i fought, she stuck my sister over to her left on the broad bench seat of the old brown pickup and separated us. seat belts be damned. those were the times. and it ended ok.

she must feel devastated. i can't even imagine. even she, from within her fog, must know that that is significant. for the first time in this experience, i feel genuine sorrow for her. this changes everything. she can no longer escape. and neither can we.

paranoia and pistols

i try to call mom and she doesn't answer the phone. i guess she's still mad at me for supposedly taking her glasses (which were found, there in her house). i also apparently took that big picture of dad that she puts in the chair with a stuffed cat and a blanket and talks to. but that too was found on her dining table. and does she express remorse for her accusations? apparently not, she experiences only the immediate joy of being reunited with her precious possessions.

was this paranoia and thinking the worst of others always there in my mother or is it the disease? and why me? because i was the last one there, visiting her? perhaps she associates me with the glasses because i was the one who found them for her, stuffed into a paper bag in their cases, just before i left, so i was imprinted on her mind along with them. or maybe, all of the furniture from her basement that has peopled my various apartments and which was freely and generously given by her, has imprinted me on her brain as the one who comes and takes things away. maybe this is why she can hurl wild accusations of her thieving daughter around. and i can't say that they don't hurt, even while i know they're not true. who is this person and who does she think i am?

it's this paranoia and thinking the worst of people that made me worry about all the guns in that house. her expired permit to carry a concealed weapon (incidentally not a photo id) was on the table in the living room, but that didn't stop her from loading two heavy bowling ball-sized bags full of guns and ammo into her car the other day (turns out she had a new permit there among her stacks of mail). i don't know what she was planning to do with them, but i had visions of her shooting her  beautiful granddaughter in a haze of paranoia one day. and it takes my breath away to even write that. that said, i have also laughed hysterically over my pistol-pakkin' mama. if you're not laughing, you're crying with this disease.

the guns are packed safely away now, so the horror scenario that flashed across my mind isn't going to happen. but undoubtedly many others will with this cruel disease. i have to grow a thicker skin.

i don't know what i expected

my, what a couple of weeks it has been. fevers, coughing, snowy nights in a hot tub out on a deck in the black hills, presents, cooking, food, games, skiing, snowboarding, a broken wrist, an infected jaw that's been building for some time (since a couple of weeks before the november 8 election debacle), two miserable flights in acute pain, lack of sleep, kindness, laughter, and sorrow. the whole gamut of emotions. and i am wrung out. it's somehow fitting that it all ended in a raging, painful infection in my jaw. i've always held my stress in my jaws, grinding my teeth at night. old habits die hard.

i don't know what i expected. i was apprehensive before we left, knowing that it was likely the last christmas where mom would remember us. but i had no idea how advanced it had become. the repetition of stories, i could handle and even enjoy to a degree, impressed at what she remembered (she remembers leaving us there by the side of the road near wasta and even remembered (which i didn't) that she needed water for an over-heated radiator). the constant asking where we were going and what we were doing next, just after we had explained it was slightly more exasperating. but, i could understand that this was how her mind now works.

and then there were the moments of spiteful anger that came seemingly from nowhere. so much venom over insignificant things - mostly in the form of harsh judgements in the retelling of events. either traditional views on the role of women and men rearing their head, or just plain judgemental nastiness. that was hard.

i keep wanting to write "but most distressing was..." and then thinking that the thing i'm going to write isn't the worst thing. but it was very distressing that when we gently tried to speak with her about how she probably shouldn't be driving anymore or that she doesn't need three vehicles, or that the big house might be too much for her (she has every surface covered in junk mail, so there is nowhere to sit or have a cup of tea and we couldn't stay there, tho' we did try one night), she steadfastly refused to admit or recognize that she even has a problem. this may be a symptom of the disease, but it also may be who she is.

but what might be the most distressing are the lies she tells. she forgot the christmas presents she had bought for all of us (matching slippers for 8), when we went to the cabin and every day the story changed as to where they were. sometimes it was our fault because we didn't take the vehicle she had loaded them into, expecting we'd take it. when we got home, they were right there on the couch, where they'd been, she'd never loaded them at all. she also took back her sewing machine, which had been lent to the child, taking it when no one was home. she venomously spat at me, when i asked her about it, that she had needed to use it herself. this despite the fact that she had left the cord behind and couldn't have plugged it in. i never did find it in her house, so i'm not sure where it is.

she was stopped by the police yesterday, 45 miles from home, driving 25 with the windows open (despite it being bitterly cold) and with the dome light on. wearing slippers. it's unclear whether they took her license or recommended that she be evaluated (i'm not clear on the procedure, but it's clear that we need to take those three cars away from her. pronto. apparently, this morning's lie is that she had to go to on a trip on such a cold day because i took all of her glasses with me when i left. the truth of that one is that we spent half an hour helping her find them on the day before we left and when i last saw her, she was sitting in my dad's chair, opening all of the glasses cases and burbling happily over her collection. it was a strange goodbye.

i'll allow that maybe they're not lies - they're the gossamer holding her thoughts together.  so perhaps they shouldn't upset me. but right now they do. it's a bit like this disease has amplified all of her worst traits - the solipsism, the selfishness, the lack of caring one iota about her grandchildren (which has always been a source of pain). they are all dialed up to full volume, replacing all of the things i loved about my mom - her willingness to drop everything and go off and have fun, to try new things, to buy a lot of tricked-out gear for a hobby and jump wholeheartedly into it. her enjoyment of good food. on christmas, when asked if she wanted to come and have some dinner, she said, "that depends on what it is," after i had worked all day, cooking the most beautiful beef wellington i've ever prepared. that day ended in a flood tears for me. it was all too much. and while i logically know that it's the disease and not my mother, it's very hard to separate and hard not to be hurt.

it is a crazy hurtful disease and it's only the beginning for us. i haven't even come close to getting a handle on how i feel about it.

note: i'm choosing to share the journey we've only just begun with alzheimer's here on my blog, as honestly as i can, because of one of the things i read was what we must speak it out loud. but also because this blog has always been where i work out what i think and feel and i've encountered no bigger topic where i have need for that. i by no means want to hang my mother out to dry and i realize i'm walking a fine line in that, but i know i'm not the first person to go through this and i hope that my journey can spark a positive conversation on a difficult topic. that said, i am no expert and have only just begun to read about the disease, trying to learn more. all opinions and thoughts on the disease are my own and from my own very limited experience. if you have any thoughts/readings/resources/experiences to share, please share them. this is all very raw and new for me and i want to grow in understanding and compassion.

they say we need to speak it out loud

i didn't realize it, but the signs were already there two years ago. my mother's obsession with the notion that someone would steal her purse was a sign. i remember how utterly bewildered i felt. here was my mother, who drove me and my horses on threadbare tires all over a 7-state region, by herself, walking a mile once in the dark beside a pitch black interstate to get help when something broke down, leaving her sleeping children in the back of the pickup and the horses stomping in the trailer, munching on hay as she set off into the starlit night, semi trailers lumbering past, shaking the whole vehicle. and she came back with help and we were on our merry way, none the wiser to the stop in the night. that fearless, fierce woman, suddenly afraid the aggressively perfect (and quite attractive) danish father, leaning on his volvo in his mads nørgaard clothes, waiting for his 12-year-old and her friends to leave the one direction concert, was going to reach in the window and steal her over-stuffed with snacks and kleenex bulging no-brand midwestern purse. um, what? i was confused. frustrated. and a little bit pissy.

the way she kept getting lost in our house. seriously. it's one story, it's the shape of an H and we're honestly only using the middle and the right half of it, it's not difficult. the way she wandered away in the middle of the party, missing all of the toasts and speeches. i thought she was just badly-indoctrinated into the social mores i had taken to me like water to a sponge. or perhaps that she had just been badly raised and i never noticed. (watching americans eat, all fork and no knife, can make you think that.)

i don't know why i didn't realize it then. her mother had alzheimer's as well. but it didn't really occur to me at the time. i chalked it up to the ridiculousness of the morning news in the us...click-bait headlines about the latest scams and calamities that make you tune in again after the commercial. that could make anyone fearful.

and i felt sad that the woman who i felt taught me my very fearlessness (which is one of my biggest sources of pride) had become some inexplicably fearful. how could this happen? and seriously, who thinks that someone will steal their purse on a plane? where would they go with it, honestly? but i know now that it was a sign. it was the big a, the scarlet letter, of a much more sinister sort. she will eventually be stripped of everything she once was...fearless, funny, active. she, who got her motorcycle driver's license at 60, and began pistol shooting lessons at 70, will lose everything of who she was.

and i don't know what to do or think or feel. the whole gamut of emotions courses through me...sadness, impatience, anger, and yes, fear...what if it happens to me? can i do anything to prevent it. i'm terrible at names, is that a sign? i occasionally struggle to find a word...is that a sign? i switch subjects and can be moody...are they signs? is it all downhill from here for me as well? will i recognize it, if it is? she doesn't, which is both a source of frustration and a blessing. but how can you not? when you are a navel gazer like me, don't you know? is she really hiding from herself at that level?

i fear that maybe she is. i don't know where i got it, but my notion that an unexamined life is not worth living clearly did not come from my mother. i fear i may have actually gotten it from madonna. which is surely the stuff of a separate blog post.

does she know deep down? does she feel the fog descending? does she understand? or is she really blissfully unaware? is that one of the symptoms? so many questions. and we are only just beginning to look for answers.

nothing to fear but a cheeto with a brillo pad on his head

i find myself thinking about fear. it’s surely the aftermath of last week’s republican national convention, which seemed to be all fear (and hatred) all the time. and then i just listened to the modern love podcast episode “live without me,” which was about how almost being in a plane crash changed the author’s fear of flying (counterintuitively taking it away). and it got me thinking about what i fear.

i can have the odd sleeplessness at 3 a.m., worrying about money or whether they’re painting the ship without us being there to film or reimagining what i should have said in a conversation, but i’m not generally much of a worrier. but i find myself genuinely worried these days about the prospect of that cheeto with a brillo pad on his head becoming president of the land of my birth. about the only thing i can do about that is vote for hillary and do my part, so it’s not actually worth losing sleep over.

in a little over a week, we are sending our child “over there,” into the belly of the gun-toting, school-shooting, cheeto-loving, jesus brigade. and i’ll admit i have my share of fears about that. was it a good idea to send her via an airport we’ve never transited? do we bring her home immediately if the cheeto wins? how soon will it descend into anarchy and chaos and be completely unsafe for an innocent, albeit fashion-conscious, über cool teen? was it wise to buy her a one-way ticket?

all of those giant, quite unfathomable fears aside, i don’t generally fear that much in my daily life. ever since i left russia by myself on a train to the finnish border in 1994, i've been pretty fearless. i used to walk alone at night in my neighbourhood on the south side of chicago, believing that if i walked with purpose, i’d be ok (turned out that was true). i’ve travelled alone on balkan trains, ridden in rickshaws late at night on the streets of mumbai, crowded into the back of a tuk tuk in phuket, driven the road from manila to subic, played in the waves in the south china sea during a typhoon and been beaten up by (supposed) bulgarian police. and yet, i remain a mostly unfearful person.

it’s something my mother taught me to be, by being fearless herself. she drove us to horse shows all over the upper midwest on threadbare tires throughout my childhood. she told me to get back up on the horse when it dumped me off. she made me get out there are work with that horse again when it was being difficult. and that time that skip’s galley lad picked me up by my shoulder blade with his teeth when i was 12, i didn’t tell anyone (until years later), nor did i become afraid of him, because i had a fierce love for him already in place. if anything the fear made me more determined.

but i’ll admit i don’t really know what to do with this fear about the fascist cheeto with the brillo pad on his head. it’s a low grade fear that won’t go away.

memories of angst

i listened to a radio program today where they were discussing an edvard munch exhibition. they had a long discussion of the difference between angst and fear. they proposed that angst is something more indefinable and uncontrollable and fear is more tangible. i think i agree with that. mostly i'm a fairly angst-free person, but will admit to being driven (and perhaps controlled) by all sorts of fears.

when i was a kid, the father of a weird girl a couple years younger than me dropped dead outside the local bar, after a evening of merriment. i think the first few people who came upon him, just stepped over him there, outside the back door, thinking ahh, there goes mr. p. again. so by the time someone realized it was more serious, he had died of his heart attack. he wasn't a healthy man to begin with. nor a very nice or popular one, so he wasn't really all that missed. except perhaps by his eccentric wife and daughter.

and i wasn't even friends with the daughter and hardly knew the man, so i'm not sure why i had moments of angst for months afterwards, fearing that my loved ones would suddenly drop dead and i wouldn't be there to help them. it was very disconcerting and those moments of angst came totally unbidden at the strangest moments. moments when i was otherwise happy and engaged in doing something i really loved (usually involving a horse).

i'm sure i never told anyone about them, because it sounded so silly. mr. p. was a real boar of a man and for his death to bring on strange episodes of angst in me felt wrong somehow. but eventually, they cleared. and i can't say that i can recall any other moments when i've been bothered by what could be called angst.

on the other hand, i can wake up in the night, reliving some conversation or situation where i should have said something clever and missed the opportunity. or where i find myself in a cold sweat over some (usually) work-related worry or other. i think i also have a bad habit of letting my fears hold me back. i think that's getting worse the older i get, which is a bit worrying. but not exactly angst-provoking.

and i suppose that's a good thing, because then i imagine something can be done about it.

somewhere, within the depths of my graduate school memory, i seem to recall that heidegger wrote something on this topic. so perhaps i'll go digging around in my book boxes and be back later with some more ponderings. or maybe i'll just go to the munch exhibition in århus, since that's what started the whole discussion on the radio in the first place. 

soar

some days are better than others. 

clouds don't help.

one can feel overwhelmed by responsibilities and expectations.

especially one's own.

but also those of loved ones.

and one can wonder if that light

at the end of the tunnel

is indeed an oncoming train.

independence is both elating and scary.

scary right now.

when it's grey.

there's only one thing to be done...

push though it.

in dreams,

when it feels like falling,

is often when you take off and fly.

week of strange fears

i'm not generally a fearful person and yet here i am, finding myself writing about fears for the second time this week! and it's because i just read this.

i've never been fond of elevators. in my dreams, i regularly find myself in a falling elevator (we won't go into the dream analysis, freudian aspects of that here). it's not so bad that in my waking life i avoid them, but i often step in with trepidation. it's actually more a fear of being squashed in the closing doors than of the elevator itself plummeting. but now that i read that new yorker piece, i suppose i'll fear escalators for the rest of the week (and beyond) as well.

i'm not so fond of heights either. i suppose next i'll have to go up that rotten ski jump in oslo. perhaps it's just fear week. at least in my head. maybe if i watch the second half of that medium show tomorrow night, i'll get it out of my system. let's hope so. i could really use some sleep.

too much CSI

so i came home from having lunch in the city with a friend and found that husband had dug THIS giant hole underneath the stairs in our kitchen. i couldn't help but have instant flashes like those in CSI--the graphic kind, with blood flowing and plastic-wrapped bodies. now, i'm not keen on having thoughts like that while standing in my own kitchen. i'm wondering how i'm going to sleep tonight, knowing that giant gaping hole is right there, lurking underneath my stairs, just below my bedroom.

it's weird how you can scare yourself silly with thoughts like that, even while you wish you weren't doing it. it happened to me last week as well. in an uncharacteristic moment, i switched on the t.v. in my hotel room and watched some bad american t.v. show late at night on norwegian television (medium, i think it was called). it was a two-parter and they showed the first half. it was enough to scare me totally silly and i couldn't turn off the lights and go to sleep. suddenly every noise of someone going by in the hotel hallway and all of the generally strange sounds that weren't the sounds of my own house were just about too much for me. i was, at my advanced age, too scared to go to sleep.

right about then, a text message came in from husband, wishing me goodnight. it almost scared the living daylights out of me. i jumped a mile when the phone beeped to signal the message. all because of a stupid t.v. show and an imagination run wild. the more i told myself not to be silly, the worse it became.

in the end, i had to read myself to sleep (which i generally do anyway)...simply reading until i was too tired to think the fearful thoughts anymore. i'm a little worried because i'll be in oslo again on wednesday night when part 2 is on...i'll have to restrain from watching it.

and in the meantime, there's that hole underneath my stairs. this might be a week of sleepless nights.