Month: October 2023

Like Home There’s No Place

Ruminating on feelings of in between

Transition in Transit

Somewhere in Maryland. Photo by LO’H.

Yesterday, I took Amtrak from Virginia to New York City, after two full months living in my parents’ house. (Bernie and Lynne are coming along, for however long they can.) Even though theirs is the house I grew up in, nearly all the aspects of it that made it home are gone or changed so significantly that it really feels like a different house. The 1960s offered a white house with green shutters, exposed asbestos tile floors on the half-basement level of the split foyer. During my growing up, when harvest gold industrial carpet took over the floors and steps and upstairs living room, so did the 1970s palette expand to bring in orange and avocado green and brown. In truth, my mom did this palette really tastefully and artfully, refinishing now tossed furniture pieces that I really miss, replaced in the late 1980s country makeover—suddenly a windfall of cash with no kids in college and two incomes allowed my mom to indulge her passion for blue and natural wood. The result is that I’ve known the present incarnation of their house only as a self-supported adult, so whatever there was of my home (my bedroom stuff pared down to a single large box back when I went to college), it’s no longer a built environment (objects of deep memory and family history notwithstanding) that I feel particular warmth for.

The curious thing is that my connection to the yard runs as deep as ever. The majority of my accessible childhood memories are tied up in grass, dirt, shrubs, trees; often, too, a swing set, a shed, a playhouse, a fort, though gone, appear as ghosts. I am always barefoot. The maple in the front yard has been my constant greeter for 59 years; the crepe myrtle, too. The oaks of various species in the backyard were there for decades before I was born, and the hickories have grown up with me. The holly trees, shrouded by the taller deciduous trees, have never gotten really large, but they are my age, at least. (I can still feel the prickly fallen leaves lodge in my heels.) It is to the yard that I want to go when I get home, to feel that I’m home.

Backyard. Photo by LO’H.

You Can Be Anyone You Want to Here

My Aunt Mary from Iowa said the above when she was standing on Canal Street, her first visit to New York, in 2004. I would add, “If you can make it here.” My home for the past 20 years has been a co-op apartment in a 90-year-old building in New York City’s borough of Queens. Coming off the train into Penn Station yesterday, wearing an air cast on my left leg (over my black travel slacks, to prevent a rash from the plastic—menopause has a been a blast, you guys) and a gray combat boot over my slacks on my right leg (for not one but two sprained ankles!), carrying a large sling bag, full backpack, and computer tote bag, not a single person gave a flying fuck. And that is the price you pay for all that freedom to be you doing you: supreme indifference to my personal human plight. I’m always agonizingly aware of my own complicity in this survival game as I pass homeless people without giving alms, in my rush, I think, which is really avoidance of culpability. For that reason, I don’t begrudge anyone racing past me up or down the dozen flights of stairs I had to take to find a working subway going in my direction (midtown was pure gridlock so any cab or Uber was pointless, unless I wanted to spend three hours getting back to Queens). All I know is that as I trudged past construction on 7th Avenue and 33rd Street that has literally been in progress for SEVEN FUCKING YEARS, with no end in sight; past orange cones and trash and and scaffolding and pilings and strollers and tourists walking past all the chain store banality that is 7th Avenue four abreast, down steps (foot-foot, foot-foot) where I have to inch past guys blissed out on weed; into the bowels of Times Square only to find out the 7 Train is not running; up the four flights of stairs (foot-foot, foot-foot) to the N Train (because the escalator up starts down by the 7 Train, and those stairs are blocked off and are being policed); and by now in the global warming October heat with the schlepping and the sore ankles and endless walking, shoved or ignored, and feeling by this point a little weepy, I really had to ask myself, seriously, “Why the fuck do I live here?”

And later, in my own bed, unable to sleep from ankle pain and the chill and recalling the stack of mail and all the unpacking and plugging in of laptops and texting people I’m back—I realized I really do hate living here. I have, as of November 1, been living in this apartment for 20 years. Of those two decades, only the first one was good. In 2013, my play lab ended, my work role changed to working essentially for a partner start-up, I had a miserable month of grand jury duty, and I met a man who gave me the deepest love and caused me more grief over the next decade than I want to speak about. And, post Covid, I have accomplished exactly zero as a creative person. As I now work exclusively “from home” (great for flexibility if not sociability), I see almost no one—a dinner here and there once or twice a month. My old building needs too much work. Global warming is creating a flood plain out of the city. And I’m going to be 60.

I turned on the light then, because I had this flash of memory, of going with my college friend Richard as his plus-one to his cousin’s wedding in New Hope, Pennsylvania, back in 1985 or so. The downtown was lit up at night, even in summer, with white fairy lights strung here and there. Everything about the place was joyful and cozy, people out and about, shop windows so inviting. This was like Blacksburg, home of our college, Virginia Tech, without the carousing drunk frat boys. Ever since, I have dreamed of living in a town that felt like that—creative and joyful and pleasant, but with diversity, room for the middle class, and lots of live music and dancing in parks and plazas in the summers. A community theater, concerts, art for people who lived where they worked.

I realize now that those places don’t exist ready made for me to walk into—an enchanted village in a story book that become real, like Brigadoon. Community like that, place like that, has to be built, and not presented as a gift. I have always worked very hard to create a life for myself everywhere I’ve lived. What is different now? I guess, looking at 60 and returning from nursing my parents as best I could, faced with two square feet of junk mail to sort (with unending gratitude to my upstairs neighbor, Debbie, who built that pile of junk mail, watered the plants, and ran the taps AND cleaned up my basement after it (mildly, mercifully) flooded with the remnants of Ian—see Brooklyn for reference)—I guess I’m really wondering about where I belong, what I do next, and how I do it. I feel, weirdly, totally lost.

On my way down the sidewalk near my apartment (all my gear by now giving me its full weight) past the playground, my eye caught a shiny object in the leaves along the chain-link—a New York driver’s license. I picked it up, someone on 41st Street. I’ll try to find him tomorrow, I thought. (This morning I strapped on my “casts” and went out in the rain over to his apartment building, buzzed his number, no answer, so I left it on the ledge above the buzzers—and then I spent the next two hours beating myself up for not thinking of MAILING it back to him.) It’s a small but common event for me in this vast city, helping a stranger in an odd way. Sometimes I wonder, given the last decade of my life, if all I’m really here for is not to be an “artist,” but really to be a clean-up crew of one, one human accident at a time. Maybe that’s who I am, and these notions that I should accomplish more are foolish expressions of ego.

View from the 7 Train Platform, Queens. Photo by LO’H.

After all, unlike too many people, I have not one but two roofs to shelter under, at least for now. Trees to visit. Good neighbors. Friends, however much they are only available via text. It’s a crazy modern world, and there’s no good where to be unless we make it the way we like it. Where my next home will be or how I remake the one I’m in, I can’t know, but in my heart I know the search is on.

Hope you are feeling home in your own heart. I saw this quote on a meme recently, and it hit…home:

Home is not where you were born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease.

~ Naguib Mahfouz

Love to all.

Miss O’

Haven’t the Foggiest

On pleas, turnabouts, and new directions

Yesterday morning, Saturday, a week before I’m scheduled to return to New York (according to my latest in an ever-updating series of return Amtrak tickets), my mother, Lynne, still prone in bed in the playroom despite a light breakfast, sips of coffee, and blaring overheard lights, grumped to me and my dad from her near fetal position, “Would you leave me alone for a minute?” Sorry, Mom, I said, and out I went to get coffee; my dad remained, quiet, in a chair watching the very loud news. So it goes.

A few times during the last week, taking breaks from my own publishing job (where on Tuesday at the dining room table my computer died, had to order a new one via our help desk, get it FedExed to me, and return my old one, which I did, thanks to brother Jeff), I’d say, if I found her receptive, “You know, Mom, if you want to get dressed…,” and she’d say from under the covers, “Maybe tomorrow.” Friday evening, I’d told my dad and brother Jeff that I had a scheme: Since Dad O’ had bought bags of Halloween candy and baggies, and found the orange ribbon they always use, why don’t we set up in the dining room on Saturday morning and make the bags of treats they love to give out for Halloween, and make Mom O’ join us?

And, remarkably, we did that. (Generally, the jobs were as follows: Lynne (!) cut the lengths of ribbon, Bernie made the piles (one each of M & Ms, Snickers, KitKat, and Reece’s Cups), Jeff bagged, and Lisa tied them up. Sorry I couldn’t capture anything like fun, but we did have some nice little laughs, good memories. When sister Sherry called in the midst of this, Dad remembered Sherry and Craig (the children of my dad’s first marriage and who lived in Richmond) were in that house the first Halloween Bernie and Lynne and I lived there, in 1964, when county farmers (unbeknownst to my folks) would drop rural kids, piled into pick-up trucks, into all the new housing developments to trick-or-treat; as a result, the O’s quickly ran out of candy. Sherry (who was 7 or 8 then), who had a haul, said, “They can have some of mine,” and Dad wouldn’t let her. Sherry was born a doll. Dad said it’s the most kids they ever had for Halloween, even today.)

After we’d made 100 or so packets (my dad kept a tally sheet), my mom, Lynne, from this unaccustomed chair, said, “Now where do I go?” Her family had all gotten up to complete chores around the small house, my dad cooking up vegetables for ham and cabbage and peas porridge; Jeff to closet for the vacuum cleaner, I to the dust rag.

And in the midst of all this movement, Lynne made a decision. She decided to get dressed.

And, what is more significant, she wanted to get dressed in her room. Upstairs.

And she did that. For the first time in seven weeks, Lynne was in her room.

More astonishing, Lynne came back downstairs on her own, my dad bringing her walker as I watched her grab the railing with both hands, taking one step at a time, foot-foot, foot-foot.

She sat in her usual living room chair.

And it occurred to me later that that’s where her irritation had come from earlier in the morning—Lynne, whether she realized it or not, was making a Big Decision. And she chose life. At least, yesterday she did. We’ll see how it goes.

Anger Management

On Tuesday of this week, my brother Jeff texted me, “I’ll be home in a few minutes. Will explain when I get there.” As it turns out, he’d been fired, after 35 years, despite being the most skilled glass cutter in the shop, for mouthing off one too many times. Over a week of shock, sadness, back and forths with the HR guy, Jeff figuring out Cobra, etc., the shop boss (who’d overreacted and must have quickly realized the quality of worker he’d dismissed) told Jeff he maybe could come back, as a beginning apprentice (!), if he went to anger management. Of that suggestion, Jeff, who had expressed worry over what would happen to him at another job should he get one, was totally on board. “I’ve needed it for years,” he admitted. I told him how therapy saved my life 30 years ago, and Jeff has been looking into how to get started. (Sidebar: Bernie said to me yesterday, “Why does anyone need therapy? It’s common sense.” Says the man who screams at his family viciously at least once a week for no apparent reason. Jeff and Lisa come by their raging honestly, Pops—and I warned him not to therapy shame. “You’ve seen that commercial with the guy lifting weights who refuses help?” Yeah. “It’s like that.”) (Sidebar 2: I told Jeff I have an idea for a children’s book, Jeff Loses His Job, that could be one of a series to make our fortune, and we sat and thought of other possible titles to come. I’ll keep you posted.)

Meanwhile on the planet, the other day I read this headline:

Ukrainians Destroy Russian Tanks with Radio-controlled Toy Cars

And if this is how we can do war now, why not send toy cars and toy tanks into an arena, blow them up, and call it a war? Why are Israelis bombing real hospitals in Gaza? Why is Hamas carrying out real Jewish genocide in the name of the Palestinians? How in the actual fuck are the peoples of this earth STILL STILL STILL doing all this shit to one another, destroying Earth in the process? Do it with toys.

Given this week in life, I couldn’t help thinking that the humans of Earth could all use a course in Anger Management. I’m sending out this call for a global PSA.

Until everyone realizes life on Earth is about survival, cooperation, and governance (Republicans, is this on?), let’s let the monster trucks do all the destroying of one another, better still virtual trucks. What has been the point of any war on any scale in the past several thousand years but to assuage one man’s ego and make him feel a king? Because amid all that shit, we know that every single little human on this planet is fighting their own demons, their own personal battles, trying to survive as best they can.

Today, anyhow, let’s hear it for tiny victories, the small battles fought and won, without bloodshed and in the face of great uncertainty, one moment at a time.

She Knows Just Enough to Be Obnoxious

A Daughter’s Care

Information Dispensary

Years ago, I was visiting an elderly friend in Virginia, a former landlady whose dear husband had died a couple of years before. Her wonderful, caring daughter, a school nurse by profession, had just left to return to her own house next door, having checked on her mother’s food, water, and meds situation, dispensing advice to us about this or that, and after she’d departed, my friend turned to me and said, “Merry knows just enough to be obnoxious.” It wasn’t that Merry was incorrect about her information, but it was rather the authority with which Merry dispensed the information that made her mother cringe.

In the past weeks, I’ve seen that same reaction grow increasingly in my own mother, Lynne, who derisively calls me “Dr. O’Hara” when I hold up her water cup to take a sip. This morning she said, quite viciously, “Anything to shut you up.” That’s fine, I said. As best as I can gauge, my 80-pound mom drinks approximately one (measuring) cup of water a day, at most two. She sleeps nearly all the time, feels groggy and frustrated by her inability to wake up, so my pushing her to sip that dreaded water gives her the biggest rises of her day. The second great rise comes when I push her to drink (half, approx. 170 calories’ worth) of an Ensure. My mother is consuming approximately 500 calories a day, at best, as near as I can figure it. A bite of muffin here, a half a PBJ there, a bite of meat, a spoonful of potatoes, sometimes a few slices of pear, some Wheat Thins. My mom’s lack of appetite is a result of dehydration, and she’s dehydrated because, as for too many of us, dehydration does not register as thirst by the time the sleepiness or nausea sets in. And so it goes. It really doesn’t take a medical degree to know this, but the last thing medical professionals do is talk about food and water in the healing process, which is why idiot daughters like Lisa have to step in. It’s obnoxious.

Over the past couple of weeks, my mom—once her hip fracture more or less healed, the physical therapy began working, and her relative independence grew (she can now walk through the laundry room to the bathroom on her walker and use the toilet, all unassisted)—seems to have more or less decided (as of this writing) to accept stasis, which means, I guess, “give up.” She will be 90 in January, should she live that long (and I’m more than willing to be astonished by a sudden rally; just yesterday she asked her husband to trim her hair “with the scissors on the righthand side of your dresser, not the rusty ones on the left,” so who knows?).

I was talking to my half-sister Sherry yesterday, whose own mother is dying by inches, of Alzheimer’s, in a care facility (a housing decision she and our brother Craig had to make after their mom fell and broke her hip earlier this year), about my situation. Sherry worked in a retirement community for 20 years before herself retiring last year, so between caring for the residents and for her mother, she has seen a lot. In addition, Sherry worships my mom, so anything Sherry offers as advice, I know comes from experience and great love. Essentially, “if Lynne just wants to go to sleep,” Sherry advised in her soothing and practical-sounding North Carolina accent, “you have to let her. This is never getting any better.” On top of that, just before our talk yesterday, our dad had admitted to me that he had felt “messed up” in his head (how long? I asked; about a week, he said), which explained a lot about his more-erratic-than-usual behavior; and our brother Jeff was trying get him to go to the hospital though the old man was resisting. I told Sherry that I was concerned it was another ministroke, and I began choking up a bit, “We don’t know what to do, because he won’t do anything,” and Sherry said, practically and kindly, “Let him stroke out and end it. It’s all you can do when you’ve tried everything else.” (Coda: Jeff suggested, “Dad, do you think it’s vertigo?” My mom had said the same thing. As I was talking to Sherry, our dad knocked on my door and said, “I think it’s vertigo,” a chronic condition he’s had for about 15 years (one that caused my parents to have to stop traveling, after the third canceled trip due to the condition) but had not experienced for at least a year. We forget these things. So Dad took motion sickness medication, and within a half hour felt like himself. Crisis averted. And with that, Sherry and I began to talk about ourselves, our own trials, life in general, and find humor in getting on with it. I still can’t seem to get that humor into my writing, but my dear friends send me funny things.)

Death by Inches

On the Wednesday before my dad’s 90th birthday, during my fifth week here, my mom moving around a little better, the med situation stabilized (a fool’s belief, as it turned out, but life is moment to moment, you know), I made plans to go out for the first time, to lunch at 12:30 with my friend and former English department chair, Tom, meeting in a halfway-point town. Typically for schoolteachers, former and otherwise, Tom was an hour and a half early. He texted me at 11:00 AM that he had parked, it was “only four-hour parking” (teachers follow rules), and could I please “get here as soon as you can.” So I quickly changed clothes, grabbed my bag and my dad’s keys, said bye to the folks, and headed out to the family pick-up truck. Upon starting, I saw that the brake light was on, meaning the fluid was low. I went back inside, told my dad, who said it was fine. Incredulous, I headed back out; he followed me, said to pull the truck up into the driveway from the street, and as I stepped off the curb to do that, I somehow pitched forward, landing wrong on my right ankle, and then my left, banging a knee in the process, lying on the street behind the truck. A young Hispanic couple in a passing pick-up truck quickly stopped, had seen me fall, and the man got out and came over and asked if they could help, so kind. My dad came out just then with the brake fluid, saw me there, and whatever I may have tried to deny, I knew I had to go to the ER. I phoned Tom to beg off our lunch date, got into the car (thank goodness Bernie can still drive) (knock wood), and had my aged dad drop me off in front, where I inched into the ER on foot. (“Would you like a wheelchair?” Yes.) Five hours later, X-rayed (two sprains and a fractured foot), an air cast on one leg, a “combat boot” on the other, I called my brother Jeff to bring me home.

Now here is comedy: barely able to walk—and walk I must—I am unable to do basic caregiving; but more than that, I can’t return to New York until I’m fully healed, and sprains take weeks. New York is totally, utterly a walking city. Uber is expensive, cabs are expensive, and traffic is a nightmare (and one doesn’t Uber for two blocks up and back to the grocery store). I travel with a heavy backpack (containing my personal laptop and charger as well as toiletries and a few clothes), along with a small satchel containing my work computer, books for my job, my rain jacket, umbrella, and one extra pair of shoes (sneakers for walks, dressier slip-ons in case—just last year I had a funeral to go to). Probably 50 lbs. total. I was supposed to return to NYC October 8.

And just when you think maybe you can go back to your life, even for a few days, unexpected injury aside, you can’t: I found my father was wandering upstairs the other day carrying my mother’s pill case (the one I set up for them), confused about a missing pill—yelling at me, angry because “I never had any problem before,” that is before I, his daughter, set up this system. (I know just enough to be obnoxious.) If you’ll recall from a previous post—because this story is fucking fascinating, isn’t it?—for nearly a week after Lynne returned home, Bernie hadn’t given either of them their morning or evening meds; when I asked him what he gave them, and when, he couldn’t remember; and having had three ministrokes, Bernie is supposed to take one low dose aspirin every day (in addition to his blood pressure and cancer meds). He’d forgotten all about it until I reminded him. In addition, he’s been having panic attacks about food—after a lifetime in food service, including being a short order cook in the Air Force, a produce manager, and a meatcutter; he cooked half our meals during our growing up, and his panic performance each day over what to make for dinner could be a cabaret act. No amount of my brother and I saying, “we don’t care, we are grown people, just take care of you and mom” will make him understand that he doesn’t have to pack Jeff’s lunch every morning or cook his breakfast (he doesn’t cook for me, for the record, because I’ve always been independent; Bernie used to boast to all his friends that I raised myself). He screamed at me earlier in the week, when I told him not to worry about what to have for dinner, “I have people to feed!” When I told him he just had himself and mom to feed, that Jeff and I will be fine, he got even angrier. I came upstairs to write this, and told poor, long-suffering Jeff that I don’t know what to do, because this isn’t about food but his confusion. (And, as it turned out, vertigo.)

Our parents are our providers. It’s all they know. So, what I’ve finally come to understand, is that if he’s not providing, my dad doesn’t know how to co-exist with his grown children in the same house. But that’s just a small part of his anxiety. The main thing, of course, is this: life as Bernie’s known it over 60 years of marriage is ending. The great love of his life and his reason for living is slowing dying, dying by inches. He himself is physically strong but his brain could explode at any moment. It’s all coming to a close, all of the years getting out of poverty, the struggles and laughs, working toward a middle-class existence, raising your kids, building a solid life. It’s ending. And all his obnoxious daughter can do, really, is bear witness.

And all that I, that daughter, want right now, and no kidding, is to be able to take a walk around the block in the autumn wind. That’s it.

TV Dystopia, by Meters

This week, all over the media, we see how Hamas attacked Israel, another pogrom to wipe out Jews. Israel retaliated, another pogrom to wipe out Palestinians. We live in a dystopian world. To use weaponry instead of intellect and heart to settle differences is to show oneself to be the basest form of life. Moment to moment, day to day, Hamas (a terrorist group not to be confused with actual Palestinians) and Israel inch toward an unstoppable end; I am nearly 60 years old, and these horrors make up some of my earliest childhood memories, watching the 6-Day War on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

And you realize that all those casualties of war now and over decades and centuries, all these displaced victims, are simply people who are trying to work, get married, give birth, take care of their kids, and care for their dying parents, and somehow plan for the future. Moment to moment, day to day.

And the people who perpetrate all this violence (see also: Russia against Ukraine, the U.S. against Iraq, pick a war) have no real ideas about governance, fair distribution of resources, or the creation of a loving and useful society. Raw power only spends itself and burns out until the next arms race, and the world’s sadists glory in the destruction while the loving ones rebuild, over and over and over and over again. (I have no solutions; I know just enough to be obnoxious.)

Last weekend, Jeff printed out my parents’ monthly bank statements so our mom can review them between naps. On Tuesday, Bernie got his partials replaced at the dentist, creating the illusion of a full mouth of teeth that can chew. Two days ago, with cold weather coming, Bernie got out the vacuum cleaner with the hose attachment and vacuumed all around the furnace; he replaced the battery in the downstairs thermostat. The next morning, I found him cleaning his electric shaver. Later today, he will make a batch of Lipton Noodle Soup for his wife. And have some himself.

And so the days go by. My ankles throb with pain. The evacuation orders go out overseas. I don’t know how to explain why, given that terrorist bombs aren’t (currently) dropping on our solid little suburban American house, I am yet so fragile, so weepy; why this relative ease feels so hard. I feel I am ridiculous. My parents’ hard-working life has come down to little more than consumption of media and packaged food and medications; yelling at their obnoxious daughter even as they are grateful for her help; and waiting for the end of it all, they hope, together. I think that is what troubles me—that there seems to be nothing but waiting right now. That this is what too much of life is—filling in the time between activities needed for life to continue as we wait to die; my shock that Beckett so clearly knew what he was about when he wrote Waiting for Godot. An old theater joke, “My life is a Pinter pause,” comes to mind. And the last line of that Sartre play: Nous continuons.

Until next time, with love to my two readers,

Miss O’