Magic Words

Recently I was listening to This American Life, the episode entitled "Magic Words." Its three narratives (“acts”) depicted moments when people read, heard, or happened upon words that changed their lives.

Act two caught my attention. The story revolved around a daughter, Karen, and her family who had recently taken in her Alzheimer's-ridden mother, Virginia. Karen struggled to care for her and engage in meaningful conversation. She yearned for guidelines, an Alzheimer's rule book. Conventional wisdom guided her to "keep your loved one with you, remind them who they are, show them pictures of family, ask them what day it is."

I had an immediate visceral reaction, “No, that’s wrong!”  Why put her poor mother through it? The suddenness of my emotion scared me. Why was I reacting so strongly? A lump rose in my throat and my lips quivered.

The story continued and Karen happened upon the magic words, "step into their world." In that moment Karen was freed from the failed attempts to keep her mother present. She could listen to her mother's memories, her nonsensical notions, and she could laugh and live with her in a world gone by.

Now I understood my emotion. I too had arrived at these words, but it had taken decades of anguish and heartbreak, and I didn't have a playbook.

My mother was clinically diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder when I was seventeen. There had been years of abnormal behavior and Mom would call with some crazy stories, but what of it? My sisters and I had left home and were so busy with our lives. Then the day arrived when she fell off the cliff. She showed up several hours late to a family dinner and told a fantastical tale of voices in her radio commanding her to drive a hundred miles away and back again. We could not brush this one under the rug.

My sister and I arranged for friends to take her to lunch and through strong coercion whisk her to a mental ward for self-admission, an intervention of sorts. It was all so neat and clean - private health insurance, a top psychiatrist, fine hospital and good meds; she may as well have been in for bronchitis. I was so naive. Within months she relapsed, then relapsed again, and again.

It fell largely to me with help from my sister to manage Mom's care. I would spend hours on the phone pleading for her to take her meds then weekends and weekdays away from school with her when she didn't.

Late one night I rushed to her Alexandria apartment to find the walls bare, sheets covering the windows, cut wires hanging from ceiling fixtures, smoke detectors smashed. In the kitchen she stood trembling, pointing a long kitchen knife at me screaming, "Get away! Get away from me!" This is what paranoid schizophrenia looks like. Hours later I carried her limp, catatonic form through the night into an emergency room and simply said, "take her."

Months, then a few years passed and her journey, my journey, only grew darker - a farcical commitment hearing, multiple passages through the nightmare of state mental hospitals, her insurance long gone. Between commitments she would vanish - a week long disappearance ended with a phone call from London - she had been detained in customs. A months-long disappearance ended with police calling to say she had been arrested in California.

For me?... frustration, anger, exhaustion, disillusionment. I was nineteen. I had been thrust into the role of my mother's keeper decades too early. I could not know then my longer term emotional toll, a sort of PTSD.

I heard “my first magic words” when I visited a school psychologist. They did not fit into a pithy phrase, but they had a lasting effect on me...

 
Much of our anger is caused when someone does not conform to our mental image of them, to our expectations, and in the case of a loved one, to our wants and needs. He counseled that my mother, as I wanted to know her, departed when I was seventeen. If I could now envision her as a close friend, someone in need, I could give her care and compassion without all the trappings of a pedestal.
 

This was a contrivance of course, and to maintain that detachment was onerous though it served me nonetheless. There were many times my facade fell away and the anger returned, moments when beneath my veneer my heart broke because those around me saw only a petulant son scolding his mother. One can never know what others carry inside them.

My attention returned to the magic words on the radio. Immersed in Alzheimer’s, Virginia engaged Karen's husband in a conversation about monkeys outside her window. He picked up the discussion without blinking, and they debated the merits of housebreaking monkeys through laughs and giggles.

My own smile returned. Their banter transported me to a time near the end of my mother's life. She was succumbing to the final stages of lung cancer and brain lesions had shown up in her MRI's. During her last weeks my sisters and I would spend long hours helping her through delusions. Many frightened her, though in others she relived joyful moments I recognized from my childhood before the darkness of mental illness had overwhelmed her.

We conversed about summer camps, horse shows, and visits to Broadway, all as if they were happening in the moment. She was too weak to laugh but she smiled, and I smiled. I could see she was lucid and happy if only for fleeting moments. I had finally learned those magic words, “step into her world.” The mother of my childhood, that special person full of humor, love, and encouragement was briefly returned to me before she closed her eyes in eternal peace.

Wine Bar(d)s

My wife and I recently attended a restaurant wine dinner. Five courses paired with five wines, a luscious spread. The menu provided the most entertainment, specifically the wine descriptions. Here are just a few…

Almost black with reddish hues. The nose is both complex and intense, of black plum, china ink, blood orange and hints of pencil lead. A very fresh and vibrant wine…   Hmmm, “pencil lead”?

Bursting with aromas of passion fruit, melon, and wild nettle...  Yum, wild nettle! Actually, wild nettle has some fans -  http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/04/would-you-eat-stinging-nettle.html  - “...a bright green note that makes you sit up and pay attention, with a peppery zing.” Who knew?

Our favorite of the night was “garrigue.” Our sommelier was at a loss, but ever trusty Google provided this…

Garrigue refers to the low-growing vegetation on the limestone hills of the Mediterranean coast, not the limestone itself. There are a bunch of bushy, fragrant plants that grow wild there, such as juniper, thyme, rosemary and lavender, and garrigue refers to the sum of them. Think herbes de Provence, or a mix of fresh minty-herbal notes with more pungent, floral fragrances.

I have to admit, if I had to describe that bottle of Sauvignon I could not have done better.

From the Hive to the Table

Decapping and extracting honey with my brother-in-law. After a short demonstration he offered to let me spin the extractor - the old Tom Sawyer trick and I fell for it! Loved every minute. 

Wonders of the Internet

My computer semi-literate stepmother recently discovered YouTube and wryly commented, "Now I can go foxhunting in Ireland every morning!"

On that note there was an abundance of live music this weekend, and I could only attend one. Fortunately I can enjoy the other two through my stepmother's same Internet magic.

Tedeschi Trucks Band at the Lockn' Festival, Arrington, Virginia...

And further north, Grace Potter...

 

Neighbors. Can't live with them, and...

I guess Chris is on my neighbor's shit list.

 

Logan Brill

This couldn’t be right. As I looked at the theatre chart only eleven seats were sold. Perhaps I misread the color coding. Nope. A 560 seat capacity and only eleven tickets. I had never seen Logan Brill nor heard of her before spotting her show on the events calendar, so I checked it out. Hmmm… three appearances at the Grand Ole Opry, accolades from Billboard and CMT, and the iTunes previews sounded really good. Jeanne was away and my other three friends turned me down, so I pressed purchase for a solo ticket.
 
Ten minutes before show time I appeared at Will Call and gave them my name. I spelled it out, “M-A-Y-O.” The attendant laughed. Sitting on the counter I saw the one and only ticket envelope, and she passed it through.
 
“Am I the only one here tonight?” I asked.
 
“Nope. The others already arrived,” she replied. And by “others” she meant the other eleven people. This would be interesting.
 
Right on time Logan and her band walked on stage. With a laugh and a smile she said, “I see everyone gets a front row seat tonight!”
 
And then they played as if the theatre were full. A beautiful collection of original songs mixed with a few fun and melodic covers.
 
At the start of the second set, she set a more personal tone, “Since we have a ‘listening room’ audience, Brian and I are going to do a collection of acoustic duets. We don’t get to do this much, so we’ll just play what we feel.” It was brilliant. Later the band returned and resumed their electric energy. They closed with a rocking cover of Folsom Prison Blues. Enough said. Add me to her fan list.
 
Keep her on your radar. You won’t be disappointed. http://loganbrill.com

Stormy Saturday

Around the corner a boy named Marty and an old, white-haired man stare anxiously at the sky awaiting a bolt of lighting...

Culpeper, Virginia