Wife will be moving soon!

I got a call this afternoon from Son2. Right away he asked if I had a few minutes, because he wanted to discuss a number of things with me.

It was 2:00 or 2:30 in the afternoon, and I was just finishing up breakfast. (I spent too much time this morning pissing around on the Internet.) So of course I told him Sure, I've got time. What's up?

Well.

You all remember Dorcas? Son1's girlfriend? It turns out that not only is she a Ph.D. candidate, but she owns a condominium. Free and clear. No remaining payments. Son1 has decided that he would rather live with her than with Wife (his mother). Maybe that's not a surprise. So he's going to move out of the apartment that he currently shares with Wife. Wife can't afford the apartment on her own, so she has to find somewhere else to live.

Apparently Son1 and Son2 have been discussing this topic at considerable length for some time. At this point, the plan is to move Wife to an independent apartment within walking distance of the house that Son2 and Beryl currently rent. Son2 says that they will stop in a couple of times each week, to make sure that she has meals prepared ahead, and to make sure that she is still surviving OK. He plans to make up a list of non-negotiable demands: that she regularly take her medications, that she not drink, and a bunch of others. If she violates those, then they'll put her in an assisted-living facility where she has no freedom whatsoever. Son2 admitted that the main reason for not putting her in one right now is that they cost too much. I pointed out that Wife would hate an assisted-living facility because she values her freedom so highly; but I added that in general, the less freedom she has, the better her quality of life will be. This is because she reliably makes terrible decisions. Son2 agreed.

Why is she moving to be near Son2 and Beryl, who are far away in a different state? 

Because Son1 is really, really sick of her. Apparently in the very first conversation, Son1 assumed she would have to be near him. But as soon as Son2 remarked that—logically—she could be near either of them, from that moment Son1 took it as settled that she would live near Son2 and not near him.

There was probably more. I don't remember right now. Son2 called me in the first place to ask some details about Social Security and Disability. I told him what I remember, but suggested that he should double-check the details. He said he will.

I also told him to keep me in the loop on the topic of paying Wife's bills. I explained that I'm on a strict budget this year—in fact I'm taking home (in retirement income) only 77% of what Son2 is (and that doesn't count Beryl's earnings)—but I also figured that somehow I still have some responsibility here, at least as long as my sons think they do! I'm the one who married her, after all. I'm the one who saddled them with her as a mother. It's true that I spent thirty years paying her bills more or less single-handedly. But I can't just let it be their problem.

To put it another way: when they can wash their hands of her, so can I.

This evening I got a long email from Wife where she talked about this development, and spent considerable time complaining about it. Maybe I'll put all that in another post. 

           

Forgetting

I was talking with Debbie the other day. In and around everything else, I told her about my last visit to see Mother ... and about my concerns that Mother is getting so forgetful. (I didn't go into details. On the other hand, she dealt with her own mother's decline, so she understands the idea.)

Anyway, in and around talking about how much of a change this is in Mother, since she used to be sharp as a tack, I suddenly remarked on something else.

I have a regular weekly call with Marie. And over the last few months there have been a number of times—two? three? four? something like that—when she has mentioned casually some discussion we had a few months earlier and I haven't remembered it.

So what? Right? How big a deal can it be?

This is where I start to sound unspeakably arrogant. But you have to understand that, for me, what I am about to say is not arrogance but simple reality.

It's a big deal. What I am used to—for decades now, really for my whole life if it comes to that—is that if someone references a conversation we had some time in the past, I remember it! Verbatim. I am used to remembering conversations from a decade ago well enough to be able to say, "Wait, is that what you thought I was saying? Oh no! It's true I used those words, but then I followed up by saying this other thing in the very next breath. And in context I was talking about something totally different." Even if the conversation was ten years ago or more, it would make no difference. I must have made that exact declaration to Wife dozens of times over the course of our marriage, because she was always pulling out some lunatic opinion ... insisting it was mine ... and then justifying herself with, "But you said ...!!" 

And now when Marie tells me that I recommended she buy a bell on this or that website—advice which she took—I have no recollection of the discussion. Sure, it sounds logical. I might have said it. I don't dispute that I said it. But I have no memory of saying it.

My memory used to be flawless. Unimpeachable. The final authority in any dispute. Now? As far as I can tell, now my memory is still pretty good, but no longer perfect. Now it's pretty good, but more or less normal.

How the mighty have fallen.

I know, I know ... it's arrogant to go on like this. And self-centered. Rude. Antisocial. "Not to mention other adjectives," as Tom Lehrer once put it.

It's also depressing. I'm getting old.

In other news, I'm starting to feel it in my knees every time I go up or down stairs. Even a year ago, I think that wasn't true.

Maybe if I lost weight, that might help my knees. Would it help my memory?

           

Son 2 is engaged!

Friday morning, I got a call from Son 2. Wow, two calls in less than a week? What's the occasion?

Turns out he wanted to let me know that Amazon had just made a delivery ... to deliver an expensive package he had ordered not long ago ... containing the engagement ring he had ordered for Beryl.

This is not a picture of Beryl's ring, but just some
random ring I found on the Internet. But that's OK.
I haven't seen Beryl's yet, but this will do.

Aha. Wait ... engagement ring?

Yes, exactly.

And then he told me the story behind it. He burbled. He was clearly—and rightly—very excited. Thrilled. Dancing on air.

And I'm glad for him. As disappointing as my own marriage was in some ways, there is nothing quite like the thrill when you are just about to embark on it. I'm glad he has been able to experience the "dancing on air" feeling.

The back story? Well apparently they've been talking for a while about getting married. Son 2 said that Beryl told him a while ago, If you don't get around to proposing to me this year, I'm going to propose to you next year. And he added that "getting around to things" is often an observable problem for us Tanatus; it's very easy for us to decide that things are good-enough, and just stay in a rut for the longest time before taking any action to change it. So clearly Son 2 chose to break out of this mold, and take decisive action.

He sounds a lot like me, back forty-something years ago when I decided to propose to Wife.

On the other hand, Beryl was out in the field for work right now, and he had not gotten her agreement before buying the ring. Did I mention it was expensive? Now the odds were naturally in favor of her accepting. And they had discussed in general terms what kind of ring she would like, if he were to get her one. He used that discussion to inform his ordering.

So at the time he called me, he was in possession of a Very Expensive Ring, with only a strong hunch that she would say Yes.

Spoiler alert: Of course she said Yes. That was the sum of this morning's text message. So I passed the word to Mother, to Brother and SIL, to Debbie, to Marie and Schmidt. We all agree it's a very exciting time. And, as I say, I'm glad for him.

Do I expect the marriage to go well? I have no idea. They've been together for more than four years now, but I still don't know Beryl very well. When I was courting (living with) Wife before we were married, we lived in an apartment that was just a mile from my parents' house and we came over often for dinner. We were together for a year before the wedding, and by that time my parents had gotten to know her very well ... for good or ill. Son 2 has taken deliberate steps to make sure that didn't happen to him and Beryl. So most of what I know about her is that Son 2 is thrilled to be with her. And I am aware that after a while the romantic thrill passes.

So a little later Friday morning, I pulled out my Tarot deck and asked the question, If Son 2 marries Beryl, will it be a good thing in his life? It's a yes/no question, so I laid out the kind of 5-card reading that I describe (for example) here or here. This reading gives three answers: if they are all Yes or all No, that answers the question; if they are mixed, then the picture is more complicated.

To repeat the question: If Son 2 marries Beryl, will it be a good thing in his life?

Answer: 2 Swords reversed, 5 Wands, Page Pentacles reversed, Queen Cups reversed, Chariot.

• That works out to No, No, and No. 
• I read the individual cards as follows:
• 2 Swords reversed: Son 2 has picked a definite direction, instead of letting himself be paralyzed by sloth or indecision. Doesn't make it a good direction, but it's definite.
• 5 Wands: Family fights. Between the two of them? With her family? With his family? I have no idea.
• Page Pentacles reversed: The book I use glosses this as "Surrounded by people with ideas in opposition to his own," which might explain the family fights (if, for example, his in-laws prove hostile). But this is also the reverse of the card that showed him going to graduate school, so I suppose it might also mean No professional advancement, or Loss of money. Tarot is multivalent that way.
• Queen Cups reversed: My book glosses this as, "Her imagination runs away with her." Is that Beryl? Or does it refer (despite the sex) to Son 2? Does either or both of them have unrealistic expectations for the marriage? (I mean, probably. I think most couples do.)
• Chariot: He may succeed through very hard work, and the marriage may be a steadying factor in his life. He may exercise a lot of control to keep it out of a ditch. But he'll have to.      

Now of course there are a lot of disclaimers that belong here. I've been reading Tarot for a few years, but I wouldn't say I'm brilliant at it. Many of my own readings are a little mystifying to me still, or else they make sense just because my own life is so small and closed, so simple and repetitive. Also, it is supposed to be hard to read Tarot accurately when you are emotionally involved in the outcome. Well, I was. When I shuffled the cards to lay them out, I was still giddy with a kind of contact-high or contagious excitement from our phone call. And in the other direction, my own marriage obviously didn't go that well ^{[citation needed]}, so maybe I'm at risk for worrying too much about him. All of these things are possible.

But mostly I just felt like this reading described my marriage. I blundered into it by making a willful decision to go ahead, I had to learn to exert enormous control, and indeed it did stabilize me. At the same time it exposed me to plenty of fights, plenty of opposition, and plenty of runaway imagination.

Oh, wait. Maybe that's where the disclaimer belongs. Maybe when I laid out the cards, they showed my my marriage and not Son 2's. That would explain why the message looked so familiar.

In any event, I won't tell them what I read. That could turn the prophecy self-fulfilling, when in fact it might just be wrong. I guess we'll see, ... over the next thirty years or so.

I hope it's wrong. And I wish them both well. 

           

"A very Hosea-like way to react"

Son 2 called this afternoon! It was great to hear from him, and it's not like I was getting anything else accomplished anyway. He said according to his call logs we hadn't talked since January. I though we had a call a month or so ago, but I'm not going to argue. As I say, it was great to hear from him.

He started by asking me what's new ("Nothing much. What's with you?"*) and then we started to talk about a problem he's been having at work. Right now today he thinks it's getting better, but he's got a new boss and he's been having a bumpy road getting to where they can communicate successfully. So we talked about it for a while.

We have done this before, and in fact in this conversation he remarked on that. I told him there was nothing strange about it ... it's just that "dealing with the workplace" happens to be an experience he and I have in common, so it makes sense we'd discuss it. I said, "If you told me you had a great idea for a new Tabletop RPG you wanted to lead, I'd be happy to listen but I wouldn't have a lot to contribute to the conversation."

But then we talked more about his new boss. He said that she drives herself too hard, trying to accomplish things that she doesn't need to do because (so far as he can tell) they're not part of her job. Certainly his old boss didn't do any of those things. And she's chronically stressed. But he has also figured out (through trial-and-error) that he needs to be very cautious about offering to help. If the offer lands just a little bit wrong, she's likely to get offended.

Then I had an idea. 

"You know, a long time ago I had a job that they should really never have hired me for. I didn't know how to do it and they had no provision for training me, but the boss decided 'The vibes are right.' [That's a quote!] Also they all thought it would be easy, because the last person to hold the job (who had left to go on maternity leave) made it look easy. But she had grown up with the company since they were four people in a garage, so of course she knew everything already. Anyway, I was tossed into this job and started drowning.

"But the reason I bring it up is that even though I didn't know how to do any of the core tasks, I did learn pretty quickly how to do some of the peripheral stuff. So when I started to panic, I'd go do a lot of those peripheral things. I'd know they weren't the most important thing, but at least I knew how to do them. So I'd focus on the stuff I knew how to do, because when I got stressed I had to do something rather than sit and do nothing. And I wonder if your new boss is in the same boat?"

We talked about her some more, and I'm not sure that's really the best diagnosis for what's going on with her. But I was struck by something Son 2 said, when I described that ancient job of mine.

Right when I said, "I had to do something rather than sit and do nothing," he interjected, "Because that's a very Hosea-Tanatu way to react to that kind of situation."

"I'm sorry. What?"

"That's what you do. You dive in to do what you know. Some people would just figure, 'Hell, they haven't taught me what to do yet, so I'm just gonna sit here till they do.'"

It has been 35 years since I held that job, and that had never occurred to me before.

I don't know how to generalize the observation. In other words, I don't know what to do with it, or how to connect it to anything else that I know about myself. But I figure if I record it here tonight, maybe I'll have some insights about it later. 

__________

* OK, that was a cheap shot. I apologize. I do keep busy—well, kind of—and I'm not at the point yet where I identify with that song. 

           

Mother is aging, 3

Last weekend I drove down to Big City to visit Mother. (I'm writing this on May 2. I visited her April 25-27.) It's starting to worry me, how much she is aging. (See by comparison this post, or this one, or this one.)

The ostensible purpose of the visit was to go through some of Father's old clothes, to see if I wanted any of his old shirts so that she could clear them out of the closet to make room. Father died almost eleven years ago, but it always took my parents a long time to get around to things. Well, we found something like two dozen shirts which both fit me and more or less matched my taste. (Brother and SIL had been there the day before, and had pulled out only two or three.) So I was able to clear a lot of space out of her closets, and it saved me the trouble of having to buy more shirts. That's not where the problem was.

First story

The first morning I was there, I woke up before she did and wanted to check my email. But my computer couldn't find her network. I looked around and saw that she had a new router. But unlike the old one, it did not have the network's name and password on a sticker. So I waited for her to get up. The after breakfast, I asked her about it.

"It looks like you got a new router."

"Oh yes, I did."

"What's the network ID and password? I want to check my email, and I can't connect."

"Isn't it on the router?"

"No, I checked." (But she went to check anyway, which was fine of course.)

"They never gave it to me."

"That's not possible. They have to have given it to you."

"Well they didn't! You know, Brother and SIL were here when they installed the router. Maybe the man gave it to them."

"What?"

"Oh yes. They handled it completely. They did all the interaction with him. So they must have gotten the password from him."

"But then they would have given it to you."

"Well they didn't! I don't have it, and I never got it."

"That's crazy. You have devices that connect to it. All those devices must have been reprogrammed with the new password."

"You'll have to talk to Brother and SIL."

"OK, but they're not here. I can text them, I guess, but they might be busy."

"Well that's what you have to do."

So I texted Brother. I also poked around on Mother's desktop computer to see if I could find any place the new wifi password had been stored. Mother went to get her handwritten password book, and looked up the name of the service provider. There was no entry, and she showed me that to prove that she had never been given the password. I never heard back from Brother. Finally I paged through the rest of her password booklet. At the very end, under "Wi-Fi," was the new password for her new network. I tried it, and it worked.

So I texted Brother, "Never mind. She found it." But wow. How is it possible that she could have concocted this story that they never gave her the new password? Was it a confabulation? For that matter, is it true that Brother and SIL were the ones interacting with the guy from her Internet service? Or did she make up that part when she needed a way to explain why she "never got" the password?

Outtakes from a Day of Mindfulness

The UU Sangha that I belong to held a Day of Mindfulness today. Days of Mindfulness are a practice in the Plum Village tradition, which is the tradition founded by Thich Nhat Hanh. Basically we got together for about six hours to practice sitting meditation and walking meditation. We also ate lunch together in silence, and we spent some time talking about what we would like to see from our Sangha in the future. Most of the attendees were regular Sangha members, but the event was open to guests as well, and we had two or four.

My point here is not to tell about the Day of Mindfulness per se, nor yet to talk about the aspirations that people expressed for the future. What I want to capture are a couple of the "outtakes"—moments that had nothing to do with anything else, but that I want to remember. And I guess the best way to remember something is to write it down.

The guest who stopped me was a woman
and not a man; but how can I pass up
the chance to use an engraving by
Gustave Doré?

One moment was sweetly serious. I think. A number of us arrived early to help set up. (In fact, because of technical difficulties with the Zoom link, we started late anyway.) Someone asked me to help set out tables in the other room. And as I was on my way, a woman put her hand on my arm to stop me. I don't know if I'll need to give her a name in the future, but maybe I can call her Laura. 

Laura was a guest, not a regular Sangha member, and a friend of Debbie. I didn't recognize her. But she said she recognized me! (Cue "the curse of the Tanatus.") Where had she seen me? She said she thought there was some kind of UU service I had attended many years ago. That's highly unlikely, but I might have been there for a special occasion. I attended Janet's Celebration of Life last year, for example. I volunteered to do dishes one time long ago when the Sangha was responsible for hosting some UU Congregation event. It might have been one of those occasions.

Why did Laura remember me? Or what was it about me that she recognized? That was the sweet part. She said I had a kind face—in fact, a very kind face. (Or "remarkably kind," or something equally extreme.) She said, in fact, that if we were both sitting on a park bench as strangers, my face is kind enough that she would end up spilling all her deep, dark secrets to me. Oh my heavens, really? Part of my mind wondered how many deep, dark secrets an elderly Unitarian lady could really have? But then I remembered that D regularly dressed in a style that was conservative, prim, and matronly. So maybe appearances aren't everything.

Hmm. If appearances aren't everything, then maybe Laura was misled in attributing all that kindness to me on the basis of my face. Oh well. The thought was nice while it lasted. 

The other story is shorter and funnier. During a break, Laura was talking to one of our regular Sangha members, an elderly woman whom I'll call Lynn. (I'm not sure how old Lynn is, but she must be at least a decade older than I am, and I'm in my mid-sixties.) They started talking about cats (because Laura was wearing cute cat socks) and Laura explained that her cat had recently died. She made a joke out of saying that she was still trying to get all the sympathy she could. Lynn started offering sympathy, when Laura went on to clarify that her cat had reached the age of seventeen years old before dying, a very respectable age among cats and one at which death is no surprise.

Right away Lynn shot back, "Seventeen years? I've never had a partner last that long!"

Umm, gosh. Is it just me, or does that count as TMI for other people too?

Oh well. We were all among friends, right?  

      

Dream with Wife

Last night I had a detailed, layered dream, and it took me a while to realize it had been a dream.

It all started at work. I was working at Some Company, as the manager of Some Department, and a young woman came in for a job interview. Wife also worked for the same company, and may have been there to sit in on the interview as well. Anyway, we started normally enough, but after a couple of questions we were interrupted by something else that wasn't a disaster but nonetheless distracted us from the job at hand—very much in the normal way of dreams. But the interruption still involved all the same people. So in the process of the disturbance, I got to see the young woman in action: what kind of a person she was, how she reacted to others, and so on. After this had gone on for a few minutes, I pulled Wife aside and told her that I wanted to hire the young woman. Wife agreed.

Not long thereafter, I woke up from that dream to find myself lying in bed next to Wife. Of course she had been in the dream that just ended, so I began discussing it with her as if that were the most natural thing to do. First, I confirmed that it had been a dream, and that she had been there with me. "Yes." "And we both worked at the same place?" "Yes." Then I asked her, "At that job, did you work for me or did I work for you?" She thought about it for a while as if really trying to remember, before finally saying that she thought I worked for her. (And while I hadn't been able to remember myself, that sounded right to me once she said it.) We talked some more, and agreed that the girl in the dream would have made a fine employee. So I said that if I went back into that dream again, I'd hire her.

Then, reflecting on it all, I said that it seemed like it had been not "just a dream" but some kind of alternate reality or parallel possibility—nothing we could ever reach from here, but somewhere we might have been able to get to if we backed up thirty or forty years, if we had made different decisions and if chance events had gone other than they did. I specifically pointed to two things that would have had to be different: one was her health, which precluded any corporate management role for her; and the other was our respective career arcs, since even when Wife was working (before her health got too bad) there was no way we would ever have ended up at the same company. As I was saying these things, I thought to myself that there was a third factor which would have had to be different, but which I wasn't going to mention aloud: viz., her mental illness, which I took in a broad enough sense that I included with it all the dysfunctional and alienating parts of her personality. Again, I didn't mention that one aloud. But Wife agreed with the two factors that I had spoken of.

A little while after that discussion, I slowly awoke into reality, or perhaps I had better call it this reality here and now. I realized that there was no one else in bed with me, talking. I was lying in my single bed, in my bachelor apartment, all alone. And yet in a way I had the same sense I had had before, in the second (or "outer") dream, with respect to the first (or "inner") dream. In other words, it did feel like there was something true about the possibility. It could never transpire in this reality, not here and not now. It would have required significantly different branching many years ago. But it felt—and still feels, I guess—like the scene where I could lie quietly, rationally discussing with Wife some dream we had both shared and then woken from could have been a possibility along some alternate timeline; and indeed that the scene where Wife and I worked at the same company and I was hiring the young woman in the first dream could have been another. When I woke into this timeline, I did feel awfully alone.

Just as a memo, here's what I did when I woke. It was still dark. I don't know what time it was. First I went into the bathroom to pee. Then I got some paper and a pen—and my glasses, which I now need for anything close up. I avoided looking at a clock, or turning on any artificial light; but I lit a candle, and wrote down as much of the dream as I could remember by candlelight. After that, I blew out the candle and lay back down. In time, I fell back asleep.