The virtue of procrastination

Someone on Twitter wrote:

"What is the evolutionary advantage of putting off a task? This is the sort of thing that makes me believe in original sin."

Without thinking, I immediately shot back:

"Every action has risks, including death. So the best strategy is to save all your energy for when you really need it by doing nothing UNLESS you need it. This means real needs, like escaping the tiger; not socially-constructed 'needs' like impressing your neighbors." 

Probably I'm wrong. But I felt I had to put in a good word for procrastination.

"What the hell is happiness anyhow?"

Marie is being confounded by philosophy.

You remember that last month she agreed to receive formal transmission of the Five Mindfulness Trainings. Since then she has been thinking about them regularly, which is good. (Surely that must be one of the points of receiving them formally, no?) At the same time she's had a routine share of bad luck, including a trip-and-fall accident at her work that banged up her knee. And of course she joined me at the Schmidts' farm a couple weeks ago, to help with Ma Schmidt's decline.

Yesterday she wrote me an email that ran, in part:

I am in a little pain today from my knee (I didn't elevate it last night, and apparently I still should have!), and yesterday it really hit me how sad I am that Ma Schmidt is dying. Oh, and the sweet potatoes I put in the soup I made for lunch today aren't very sweet, so the balance of flavors is off a bit.  Whine, whine, there's always something!

So, I am thinking of the Second Mindfulness Training, the part that goes "I am aware that happiness depends on my mental attitude and not on external conditions, and that I can live happily in the present moment simply by remembering that I already have more than enough conditions to be happy."

I'm going, ok, so I can be happy while being sad at losing Ma Schmidt, and while experiencing pain, and.... um, what the hell is happiness anyhow?

Yes, exactly.*

I replied:

You talk about whether you can be happy while losing Ma Schmidt, and I remember while we were there she would regularly say (trying for sarcasm), "Gosh, this must be a great vacation for you, looking after your buddy's old sick mother!" When she said that I'd always try to say something reassuring, but I never told her what I was really thinking. What I really thought, as a reply, was, "Yes, actually it is. Not in the sense that it is FUN, exactly. But I can't think of anywhere else I would rather be, under the circumstances." (And of course I never said that out loud because it just didn't sound like the kind of thing you can say out loud.)

Does that mean I was "happy"? Or does it mean that the vocabulary of happiness is too small, and is missing a few dimensions? I vote for the latter choice, and maybe that option works for you too.

And actually she agreed:

Yes on the "nowhere I'd rather be."  If someone I love is dying, I want to be there; and if someone else I love is overwhelmed because their mother is dying, I want to help.  But you're right, that's hard to say.

Yes happiness may need some redefining.  I am thinking of water again, the surface and the depths.

__________

* There's actually a long philosophical discussion of exactly this question. Epicurus maintained that the wise man could be happy, even on the rack. Aristotle, for his part, said this is nonsense. (Nic. Eth., book VII, chapter 13, Bekker page 1153b.)       

1500th post

Oh my gosh. Another milestone. (My last milestone posts were my 500th post and my 1000th post.)

Fifteen hundred is a very large number. And it has taken me over seventeen years to get there. That's approximately 86.5 posts per year on average. Of course there has been fluctuation. 

My scantest full year was 2016, when I first got back in touch with Marie. I wrote her many long emails, but I posted only 28 articles here.

My busiest full year was 2014, when (for a couple of months) I was trying to post every day. In the end I published 175 articles here.

My busiest full year on the blog since 2016 was 2023. That year I hiked the West Highland Way with Debbie, and I spent two weeks in Paris with Marie. For each trip, I posted one article per day, plus follow-on articles meditating on other topics that surfaced during each trip. So that year had a lot of content. (In the end, there were 123 posts in all for the entire year.)

As a side note, I had better confess that these milestones are a little moveable. From time to time—rarely, but when I think I have a good reason—I will write a post in one year but publish it with the date of an earlier year. Usually this is if I am finally getting around to writing a post that happened long ago but that I have been too lazy to write before now. The result is that all my enumerations change. Therefore the post that I called my "500th post" was in fact the 500th post in sequence at the time that I wrote it. But if you start at the beginning and count them all now, it might no longer be the 500th, because some other (later) posts might have snuck into the line before it. But I can't help that. It's still close enough. And I will continue to refer to the 500th-post and 1000th-post milestones as if those numbers were accurate. 

Here are some concrete numbers:

• Between my first post and my 500th post there were 1705 days, or 4.7 years (4 years and 8 months).
• Between my 500th post and my 1000th were an additional 2408 days, or 6.6 years (6 years and 7 months).
• Between my 1000th post and this one were a further 2177 days, or 5.96 years (5 years plus 11½ months).
• Therefore the total duration of the blog has been 6290 days, or 17.2 years (just shy of 17 years and 3 months).  

In my one thousandth post, I wrote: "At my 500th post, I was able to say that -- once I picked up the blog again after a three-month hiatus at the beginning of 2008 -- I had never gone an entire month without posting. That's no longer true: April 2016, January 2018, and October 2018 all went by with no updates. That's six months out of 135." I am delighted to report today that this sum is still true. Since that time, there have been no more months with zero posts.

My average number of posts per month has been as follows, for the three meanings of the word "average":

• Mean: 7.2 (down from 7.29 at my 1000th post)
• Median: 6 (same as at my 1000th post)
• Mode: 2 (down from 3 at my 1000th post)

And here, like the last two times, is a chart of my total number of posts per month since I started. (I have included posts from the Patio in a different color, though I have not included them in any of the foregoing statistics.) And yes, that is indeed a colossally geeky thing to do!

I also spent a little time trying to summarize the kinds of topics I covered in my first 500 posts, then my next 500, and then this last 500. On the whole that didn't prove to be a very natural way of dividing the history, but a few broad patterns did emerge.

Posts 1-500: My main topic, eclipsing all others, was trying to understand my marriage to Wife. Also I talked about the boys through the end of middle school (and Son 1 was two years into high school by then). And this period covered my affair with D.

Posts 501-1000: This span covered my separation from Wife, and brought the boys nearly through the end of their college educations. (As of my 1000th post, Son 2 still had one year to go in college.) This period covered my affair with Debbie, and my meeting Marie. Also included were the death of Father, and my progressive dissatisfaction with my work. 

Posts 1001-1500: This span had comparatively little to say about Wife, but showed the boys moving out on their own and launching their respective careers. It addressed the stabilization of my relationship with Debbie as loving-but-platonic, so that there's no conflict with Marie (but I still have two girlfriends!). Also during this time I lost my job and started blogging professionally. I became particularly aware that Mother is aging. I started reading John Michael Greer, and laying out Tarot cards for myself. Also I heard that four college classmates died during this time, including Fillette and Flora; I heard from Cassius that he was planning to transition to a woman; most recently I visited Schmidt while his mother was on the edge of dying. And of course any posts related to COVID-19 came in this block. 

Who says nothing ever changes in my life? There might be more, too, if I bothered to study it. But this is a quick off-the-cuff summary. 

   

Hide your crazy

The drive from here to the Schmidts' farm is a long one. It takes pretty much a solid day. And it can get boring. So to beguile the time (and keep from falling asleep) I turn on the radio.

I don't have a list of favorite stations, because I normally don't listen to the radio unless I'm driving long distances. On the other hand, through trial and error I've found that the most reliable style of music for keeping me awake is Country.

Normally I wouldn't think of myself as a Country music fan, but for this specific purpose it's very useful. The beat is usually strong, and the tunes are usually catchy; so it engages my nervous system and keeps me awake. That's what I'm looking for on long drives.

Also the sentiments are pretty straightforward. Nothing is layered. Everything is on the surface. So I don't have to work too hard or think too deeply to follow it. Since a good bit of my attention is focused on the road and the other cars, that's a good thing.

The day I drove to the Schmidts—that would have been Wednesday, March 5, for those keeping track at home—I heard a song that piqued way too much of my interest. I couldn't make out all the lyrics, but I could tell that the spirit behind the song … the (presumably fictional) character who was singing it … was exactly the kind of irrational and over-dramatic high-maintenance woman that I have found so attractive over the years. Oh, I know women like these are bad for me. I know they are dangerous and crazy. So is alcohol, but that doesn't stop me drinking it. The good part is that I'm old and past it, so I'm no longer in the market for a new romantic partner. But my taste was always a little self-destructive.

The song was "Mama’s Broken Heart," by Miranda Lambert. When I finally googled the lyrics (after getting home again) I found that the song is mostly about the girl fighting with her mother, because her mother wants her to be restrained and lady-like. And while I may find the ideal of "ladyhood" a little artificial, I've got good things to say (from the perspective of practicality and prudence) about self-restraint.

But I also understand the desire to bundle up all that self-restraint into a big bag, and set it alight. Make a bonfire of it all to light up the sky. Good thing I'm not looking for a new girlfriend.

Here's the song:

P.S.: Actually the video is tamer than I expected. She never breaks anything, and she never sets fire to anything. I half-expected her to flip the dining table, or at least to throw her plate of food through the window or across the room. But she never does anything like that. Her Mama's training has sunk deep enough that she's too much of a "lady" to wreck her surroundings with savage abandon.

Maybe my expectations were set by someone with a lot more "crazy" to hide. Or a lot more passion. Or maybe just plain destructive rage. I'm thinking of this post, of course. But any of the posts tagged "Wife loses it" will do just as well.  

  

Winding down the visit

I've been writing several of these posts at once, to back-fill from the time that I was visiting the Schmidts. But I'm getting tired and want dinner; also I'm not sure how much more I have to say that adds anything meaningful to what's come before. So I'll make these notes telegraphic.

Thursday, March 13

Schmidt had a visit from Hospice, to get Ma Schmidt set up in their system, right about the same time Marie had to go to the airport. So I drove her to the airport, an hour each way. By the time I got back, Hospice had left. In the afternoon, they delivered a hospital bed and a bunch of other equipment. Ma Schmidt soiled herself twice, so I went out to get a package of Depends … and some more wine, while I was at it. By the time I got back she had soiled herself a third time, so the Depends were useful.

Friday, March 14

Badly inclement weather, so I wasn't going to go anywhere. First thing in the morning, Ma Schmidt woke up calling for "Help!" I ran to her still in my pajamas. When she saw I was there she settled down, and then said she didn't really need anything. She was just afraid that she had been abandoned. It's not going to be easy for Schmidt when I do leave.

Saturday, March 15

The weather was clear, so I left right after breakfast and drove home. Ma Schmidt was sweet and called me an angel. Schmidt said I helped him "stabilize" himself, which I guess is a good thing. I have to spend the week paying my monthly bills and submitting my taxes. After that, we agreed that we would touch base with each other to see if it made sense for me to come back again. It's still going to be a lot of work for Schmidt. 

 

Veterinarian manqué

Marie flew home today. But one evening while she was here, we sat up talking for a while about Schmidt. And I had one of those moments where I said something and only then realized that I had never known it before—that I had literally figured it out in the process of explaining it to someone else.

We were talking about television. Whenever she is awake, Ma Schmidt has the television on as a distraction. She started this habit back when she could still hear, but suffered from severe tinnitus; the noise from the television blotted out her perception of the ringing in her ears. Now it's just a habit; but because she's too deaf (and too forgetful) to engage in normal conversation, it's not a crazy habit.

But what to watch? Schmidt says he doesn't want the channel turned to national news, because he finds the national news too depressing. (Like most of my friends, Schmidt suffers from some degree of Trump derangement syndrome, and evaluates all developments in national or world news accordingly.) In practice, Schmidt normally switches to the National Geographic Wild network, to watch reruns of The Incredible Dr. Pol, a reality-show about the veterinarian Dr. Jan Pol. Sometimes he changes it up by turning to some other animal documentary instead.

The thing is, I think Ma Schmidt is profoundly bored by all these animal shows!

The Schmidts live on a farm, though they no longer have any animals. (They let a neighbor graze his cattle on their fields.) They have certainly spent a lot of time around animals over the years. But that was never Ma Schmidt's passion. Pa Schmidt was the one who wanted to live on a farm. Ma went along with him because she loved him, and they were married, and, well … you know … "for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health."

This is not a picture of Schmidt.
But in an alternate timeline, it could have been.

How about Schmidt himself? Back when he was a boy, he wanted to be a veterinarian when he grew up. Then he went to college and studied physics. (God only knows why!) When that didn't work out, he came home and carried on his father's artistic craft, though he readily acknowledged that he lacked his father's creative brilliance. But he could make the products that people ordered, and that brought in the small amount of money the Schmidts needed to get by. (They have owned the property outright since they bought it, so there's no need to service a mortgage. And once upon a time they had food wandering around in their fields, though that's no longer true.) 

That's when it hit me. Schmidt has half a dozen cats, or more. He is always adopting and taming feral cats when he finds them on the property, or raising kittens if he didn't get one of his own cats spayed in time. He insisted that Ma take on two cats in her house because it was easier than setting mousetraps; but she never had cats until he told her to. He is still the focus of all animal care on the farm, even though they "no longer have animals."

In other words, Schmidt has found a way to make himself into a (quasi-) veterinarian after all! That's what he wanted to do as a boy, and by heaven that's just what he has done. No wonder he always changes the channel to veterinary shows or animal documentaries. They're not boring to him, because he's genuinely interested in what he can learn from them. He said plainly a couple of days ago that one of the episodes of Dr. Pol taught him about a syndrome affecting cats that he now regularly checks for in his own.

So often people abandon their dreams as they grow up. It's remarkable to realize that Schmidt merely adapted his.

But now that makes me wonder. What did Marie want to be, when she was a girl? And has she achieved it? (See, for example, this post here.)

And how would I answer the same question about myself? 

   

They shoot horses, don't they?

No, I've never seen the movie by that name. But all this time that Schmidt and I—and now Marie—have been supporting Ma Schmidt during her decline, there's been an irony afoot.

When I googled pictures of cats and guns, this is
what I got. It's not the right picture for this post.

The Schmidts' dog is old too, very old by dog standards. He used to be a black dog, but at this point his muzzle is completely grey and he has grey in his coat. He has arthritis, and staggers rather than walking. Most of the time he sits on his cushion on the floor of the family room; but he still gets up several times a day to be let outside to "do his business." He may be old, but he still won't soil the floor indoors.

And the Schmidts have a number of cats. Most of these live over at the other house on the same property—the one Schmidt himself lives in, the one I've never seen the inside of. Two of them live with Ma Schmidt, because her son says it's easier to have cats than to set mousetraps. 

But one of the cats that lives with Schmidt is geriatric as well. And sick. A day or two into my visit, he told me he was going to have to make an appointment with the vet to have this cat put down, because she was too sick to recover, and in pain. This evening he remarked that he had canceled the vet appointment, because his cat was suffering enough that he had to do the job himself.

When we all gathered for dinner in the evening (well, Schmidt and Marie and me … Ma Schmidt stayed in bed), Schmidt was calm and businesslike about it all. But I know he loves his cats. What we could see from him was the iron self-discipline that has become such a habit.

And of course nobody commented on the irony that Ma Schmidt and the cat are in very similar situations. So is the dog. But we have to treat them differently. The law says so, and common sentiment says so. "Simple humanity" says so—whatever that is. But what exactly is the logic that tells us to treat human animals so differently from feline animals, even when their situations are so strikingly similar?

They shoot horses, don't they?   

 

Movie meme 10, the Schmidts

It looks like I introduced Schmidt as a character back in 2015 in this post here, but I never expected him to show up often. He and I were friends back in college, of course, but even at the time that was something like 35 years in the past. Now it's 45. And my contact with Schmidt over the years had been so sporadic that I never expected to have to cast him as a movie character.

Plans change. By the time this series is done, half of my posts tagged "Schmidt" will be dated in this month. So maybe it's time to give the man and his mother each a face.  

Not that it matters, I suppose, but I really didn’t have to think hard about it. At some level, I think I’ve always had more or less the same actor in mind, to cast as Schmidt. Ma Schmidt wasn’t a lot harder—though in her case I can think of the actress but I can’t quite remember which part I’ve seen her in that reminds me so forcibly of the woman I’m staying with right now.

With that said, here are Schmidt and his mother.

Schmidt: James Dean

I don’t know if Schmidt was ever a heartthrob for anyone. He’s so withdrawn and such an introvert that it would be perfectly possible for girls—or boys, I guess—to crush out on him without his ever knowing the difference. But he’s always objectively had a kind of rugged good looks, he has always been muscular, and long ago he adopted a Western ranch style of dress. In other words, he looks like James Dean playing Jett Rink in “Giant.”

In personality, Schmidt and Jett could not be further apart. Schmidt is educated and soft-spoken. He is, as I have said, introverted and unobtrusive. I'm trying to remember if any of us could see Jett's kind of suppressed, volcanic energy in Schmidt back when he was a young man. I think so. Most of the time he was silent and sullen. Then he'd get drunk—not often, but he could drink more at a sitting than anyone else in the dorm—and he'd become friendly and voluble. It was the only time anyone saw him smile.

As life went on, though, Schmidt sublimated all that power and energy into his work and his responsibilities. Part of Jett's smoldering energy came from his lifelong, unacknowledged lust for Leslie Benedict. I don't know if Schmidt ever longed for someone unobtainable in the same way—he is very tight-lipped about his private life. But I can't rule it out. 

(All I can say is that if something like that ever happened, it would be ironic. I still remember a paper he wrote back in college arguing that the protagonist of The Sorrows of Young Werther should have just fallen in love with someone more accessible, instead of ruining his own life and blighting the lives of his friends. But then, Schmidt never took his own life; and if he ever suffered romantic pangs, he never troubled his friends with them.)

Ma Schmidt: Laura Dern

Partly there's a physical resemblance, except that Ma Schmidt is more than 30 years older than Laura Dern. 

And partly, I'm sure I've seen a movie in which Laura Dern played a character a lot like Ma Schmidt. I just can't remember which one.

Ma Schmidt is the sweetest person. She's friendly and affable and gracious. Schmidt used to claim that she had to be a saint, because she put up with his father (Pa Schmidt) who could be a cantankerous SOB. (Actually Schmidt has more than once compared his father to Benvenuto Cellini—he specifically referenced the drinking, the quarreling, the fighting, the whoring, the hard living, the braggadocio, … and oh yes, … by the way … the artistic brilliance and dedicated craft.)

But Ma Schmidt has always been kind of ditzy too, given to saying things that just seemed odd and off the wall. Schmidt and his father would roll their eyes at these remarks, and never took them too seriously. Now, of course, her conversation has gotten a lot worse because her memory is gone. But Schmidt assures me that even in her prime, some of her remarks were pretty goofy.

She also sketched. I believe she painted. Her husband did the bulk of the paying art, but she did some art of her own—even if it was for her own enjoyment, or just to hang in the house.  

Maybe I'll think of more to say later.   

Planning visits at the Schmidts

Just a brief note. Marie is arriving today, to visit until Thursday. It will be nice to see her, and she has been a friend of Schmidt’s since college (just like me). Over the years she has been better at visiting than I have been. She agrees with me that Ma Schmidt is delightful.

My current plans are to go home Friday or Saturday, unless something changes dramatically before then. After I spend a week and a half (or so) dealing with things at home—paying the month’s bills, submitting my taxes—we’ll see if it makes sense for me to come back.     

Boredom, 2

I’m not the only one who suffers from boredom. Ma Schmidt is frequently bored as well.

The details of each day are different, but the broad outlines are the same. She wakes up in mid-morning. In the last few days, she has generally been able to get herself to the toilet by leaning on her walker. Then she comes out to the family room—still leaning on the walker—and settles on the sofa. She turns on the television, and there she sits for the day.

Schmidt and I bring her food to nibble, water to sip, coffee with half-and-half, Ensure. She samples it all, not eating or drinking a lot of any single thing. But we leave them where she can reach them throughout the day.

Meanwhile, she watches television. But her heart isn’t really in it. Several times a day she’ll ask me, “Do you want to watch something else? It’s fine if you do. We don’t have to watch this if you want to see something else.” I tell her that I don’t know what there is available to watch, because I don’t have a television at home. So whatever we’ve got on right now (at the moment it’s a wild animal documentary) is fine with me. Then she sighs and smiles and settles back down.

Would she be less bored watching something else? Maybe, but I’m not convinced. Her hearing is very poor, so she would certainly need closed-captions to understand what was going on. Her short-term memory is very poor, so I’m not convinced that she could follow anything more demanding anyway. The Schmidts live out in the middle of nowhere, so she doesn’t have friends dropping in to visit; she’s got one friend who calls regularly, but at this point Ma Schmidt can’t hear well enough to talk on the phone. (Her son takes those calls, to give the friend an update on Ma’s condition.)

All this means that there are no obvious quick-fixes. But the consequence is that—not only is she weak, easily confused, and taking in minimal food and liquids—but Ma Schmidt is chronically bored. She’ll turn to me and say, “This must be a great vacation for you, acting as a nursemaid for your friend’s mom. But don’t worry; I’ll die soon.” I always reply that I’m doing just fine, and she shouldn’t be silly. 

I wonder though: when she remarks that she’ll die soon, is she trying to reassure me? Or is she trying to reassure herself?

The documentary is saying something about meerkats. Ma Schmidt is dozing gently. We’ll see how it goes.

 

Boredom

I spent this morning hanging around the house while Schmidt did something else. (I forget what.) Ma Schmidt spent much of the morning in bed: still hanging in there, but not doing much besides watching television. She got herself to the toilet, however.

When I have nothing to do, I get sleepy.

I can drink coffee for a while, but it doesn’t change how tired I feel.

Or I eat.

I might read for a while, but then the desire for sleep becomes overpowering.

Usually I don’t drink during the day, which is the only reason I don’t list drink in this itemization.

Twitter could keep me occupied, because it gives me novelty (by refreshing the feed) without any meaningful effort on my part. But the only Internet connection here is in the barn, where the Schmidt studio and office are. While I’m idling in the house, keeping an eye (or at least an ear) on Ma Schmidt, the Internet isn’t really available.

It turns out I can rescue myself from brain-stasis by doing a little bit of writing, though it took me a while today before I tried that and found it would help. Then Schmidt came by the house, so I left for the shop and checked my email.

There are probably lessons here for when I get back home. Or at any rate there probably would be, if I could be troubled to learn them.

 

The air of decay

Not a lot of news on Ma Schmidt’s progress. In the morning she had enough energy to take herself to the toilet, and then to come out into the family room and settle in front of the television. She spent the rest of the day there, sipping coffee and nibbling snacks. Often she dozed. By 5:30 pm, she wanted to go back to bed. But Schmidt coaxed her into eating some ice cream, which she enjoyed.

Schmidt spent most of the afternoon running errands.

I hung around the house, keeping Ma Schmidt company, sometimes chit-chatting with her aimlessly. Other times I just sat with her watching television. Occasionally I felt myself dozing off as well, just from boredom. Once in a while I went outside to walk around the property and think.

This is a stock photo, NOT a picture of the Schmidts'!

It seems like the housekeeping lately has been handled by Miss Havisham, from Great Expectations. Of course I can understand that. There are only two of them on the farm these days, and Ma Schmidt has been sick. Schmidt himself lives in a second house on the same property. I have never been inside his house, so I don’t know how he keeps the interior; but his porch has caved in, and he hasn’t repaired it. Do I expect him to repair it single-handed, now that his father is dead and they have no hired hands? I don’t know what I expect. I couldn’t do it, if it were me. But Schmidt knows how to do all kinds of practical things I don’t know. Still, rebuilding a porch must be a lot of work.

I guess when I talk about the housekeeping, I am talking narrowly about the housekeeping in Ma Schmidt’s house. She’s the one who is dying of old age. So maybe the poor housekeeping is no surprise.

But the whole ranch has a general air of decay around it. There are outbuildings with farm equipment that hasn’t been touched since Pa Schmidt died back in 2008. (Or for all I know, maybe the farm equipment was abandoned back when he was diagnosed with cancer, years before that.) The barn contains their artistic studio (The Schmidts are professional artists.) and that equipment looks OK still, so far as I can tell. But the rest of the building seems to be slowly decaying. There are vehicles on the property that might run, or might not. Some (not all) still have license plates. Some (not all) still have inflated tires. I don’t know enough to understand what I am really seeing, but it feels depressing.

Ma Schmidt doesn’t have a will. Schmidt assumes the worst he will have to deal with in order to inherit the property is some onerous paperwork, because he has no siblings and there are no other plausible heirs. But he’s not really sure what that paperwork will look like.

More worrying, Schmidt himself has no will and no plans to write one. He says after he dies, it’s not his problem. So why bother? Privately, I worry that if the property is not handed off legally, it will be occupied illegally. I wonder what will happen to all the (decaying) farm equipment, and—probably a lot more valuable to the right buyer—all the artistic equipment. And all the art? The property is full of art. Will it go to someone who appreciates it, or will it get dumped in landfill?

None of this is my problem to solve. That doesn’t stop me from feeling uncomfortable. Maybe I should mind my own business.

   

Ma Schmidt may be dying

Last fall I wrote about visiting the Schmidts. I wrote about how little it seemed that I was engaging with Schmidt himself, and wondered if this was a sign of a slow, long-term rift silently widening between us.

Well maybe, but it’s nothing special. I’m back there now—at his request—because Ma Schmidt (his mother) appears to be dying.

Last fall she was ditzier than I remember her having been before (though she was always a little spacy), and her short-term memory was almost completely gone. That is, she could put food on the stove and remember it was there to finish cooking it. But she would ask me questions about where I live or whether I have any siblings, seemingly unaware that she had already asked me the exact same questions two minutes before. Back then she talked about being “older than dirt,” but she was still in good health and walking around.

Towards the beginning of this week, Schmidt emailed Marie and me that he was concerned about his mother. She had come down with a bug a while ago, and at this point she was mostly bed-bound. He also said that looking after her was really taking all his time and attention. I asked if he wanted an extra set of hands, since I don’t hold a job and have no-one depending on me. He demurred for a few hours or a day—I later learned that he was discussing it with Marie privately—and then accepted. With gratitude. 

It’s about a one-day drive from my apartment to their farm (somewhere between 500-600 miles), and yesterday I drove it. I arrived before sundown. Schmidt thanked me again, although I hadn’t actually done anything except show up. But I think the moral support may have counted for something.

She started today poorly. She couldn’t get herself from her bed to the bathroom, and so wet her pants. She wouldn’t accept my help but Schmidt then helped her to the toilet, helped her wipe herself, got her clean pants, and helped her back to bed. In the afternoon we drove her to the hospital, partly so they could evaluate her and Schmidt could get a doctor’s order for hospice or home health care. It took both of us several minutes to maneuver her into the car, and then to maneuver her out again at the far end. But after we were there for—what was it, maybe six hours?—the hospital said she was more or less fine, just underfed and dehydrated. They gave her a couple of IV’s of fluid and electrolytes, and sent her on her way. On the way back she was much perkier than usual, though she still couldn’t carry on a conversation more than a few minutes without repeating questions like, “Why do we have to go to the store on the way home?” (Answer: because Schmidt and I are both hungry, and don’t want to have to be bothered fixing dinner when we get back.)

So we got home and put her to bed. Schmidt took care of his many cats (and one geriatric dog). Then finally we sat down to our still-vaguely-warm rotisserie chicken from the store, plus a salad I’d made while he was doing all that other stuff. We chatted companionably enough and went off to our respective beds.

    

Marie receives the Five Mindfulness Trainings

A day I never thought I'd see.

I've mentioned that sometimes—fitfully and irregularly—Marie will visit by Zoom the UU Sangha that I attend regularly here in town. She tells me she enjoys it, but she'll skip if she thinks she hasn't been living up to Buddhist principles lately. (Wait, isn't that like saying you won't go to church as long as you are still sinning? But I'm sure most churches would tell you that's exactly the time you should show up!)

The last few weeks we've had a guest joining us while he's temporarily in town, who is a Certified Dharma Teacher in the Plum Village tradition of Thích Nhất Hạnh. This means that—among other things—he has the authority to transmit the Five Mindfulness Trainings to aspirants who want to receive them formally. (This ritual isn't quite the one he used, but close enough.) "Receiving the Five Mindfulness Trainings" sounds simple enough. But it commits you to recite or repeat them once a month, and to live by them as far as you can. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago he announced that he would be willing to transmit the Trainings while he was in town, if anyone was interested. Last week we watched a video about living with them, and tonight was scheduled for the ceremony of transmission.

I didn't really expect Marie to take up the offer, but she was interested. So we talked about it a little: what's the difference between formally receiving the Trainings and just knowing about them? I pointed out that when you receive the Trainings formally, you accept an obligation to repeat them once a month—preferably in company with a sangha—and to try to live by them, although it is understood that your compliance may not be 100%. How much difference does the commitment make? I reminded her of the conversation between Elrond and Gimli, during the Council of Elrond, as they assemble the group of Nine Walkers who will accompany the Ring south. Elrond says that everyone is going freely, and no one has any oath laid upon him except only Frodo (not to give up the Ring to the Enemy). Right away, Gimli objects:

‘Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens,’ said Gimli.

‘Maybe,’ said Elrond, ‘but let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall.’

‘Yet sworn word may strengthen quaking heart,’ said Gimli.

‘Or break it,’ said Elrond. 'Look not too far ahead.'

My cough is getting better, 2

I almost hate to say anything, lest I jinx the progress I've made. So take it as read that I'm knocking wood as I write.

I attended Sangha in person this evening, and noticed that my cough was much attenuated even from last week. Last week was better than the week before. And really it's only been in the last month that I have felt I could attend Sangha in person (rather than by Zoom) because my coughing has not been as rat-a-tat insistent as it was in (let's say) November.

That doesn't mean my allergies are all gone, and of course it might get worse tomorrow. But I want to record this as a marker, so I can try to estimate how long these bouts last. This one started in mid-October, and it is now four months later. Another bout that I bothered to track here started in January 2020, and I noticed it getting better in April. What's that, then? About four months, each time, from beginning to "wow, I think it's starting to improve"? (But not all the way gone yet, in either case.)

Fair enough. At least it's a number. Maybe next bout, I can use it to set my expectations.

  

Hosea's island

"There is a bittersweet loneliness in the life of an exile that exerts a romantic appeal to many people. They see themselves as a mysterious figure on a Mediterranean island, seen by all, known to few, living a life of intense privacy in full view. The problem with such a life is that it cannot sustain trust; the very essence of exile is the belief that one can only really count on oneself."*

Was Roger Ebert writing about me? He might have been. I'm not sure how "romantic" my life is (and of course I don't live on a Mediterranean island) but the rest of it fits: intense privacy, known to few. And a lack of trust, for sure.

But "exile"? Maybe, in a sense. When I was very little, my parents were graduate students and they rented houses from professors on sabbatical. That meant we moved every year. Then my dad got a teaching job clear across the country (so we moved) … which he hated (so he looked for another job right away and we moved again). When I was a few months shy of my sixth birthday, we moved abroad, to another country. There I met a girlfriend (but then we moved) … and then finally we landed in a house where we stayed for five years. A neighborhood where I could ride my bicycle for hours and learn all the streets. A place where I could begin to put down roots. Not that I was ever fully rooted there—already I kept to myself the knowledge that we were Americans, because Americans weren't always popular in this new country. Also my parents sometimes smoked pot, which in those days was illegal both in that country and back home. So I had to be careful how much I told my friends about my family. I had to draw lines, and compartmentalize my world. But on the whole I felt like I belonged there.

Nothing ever lasts. When I was a few months shy of my twelfth birthday we moved back to the United States. At the time I believed the move was only temporary: I no longer remember if my parents said that explicitly, or if I just chose to believe it. But this time they bought a house, instead of just renting it. It's the same house Mother still lives in today. So no, the move wasn't temporary.

So it was another exile. Another layer. And then my eccentric interests and bookishness added more layers on top of that. You've heard all this before. (I realized after starting this post that I've said it all before here and here. Maybe elsewhere too, but those will do for a start.)   

But I did want to capture that quote from Roger Ebert.

__________

* From Roger Ebert's review of "Pascali's Island," August 12, 1988, reprinted on RegerEbert.com. 

Enemies everywhere

I talked with Son 2 today, for something like an hour and a half. You remember that he just got his Master's degree. And now he's got a job, working for a Big Employer. So we started talking about practical stuff, like which health plan should he sign up for? Then I asked him about his work, and he told me a lot about what he does. Finally I asked him about a concern that I've been brooding on for a couple of months now, more or less ever since I visited in December. Turns out he's been worried about it too.

A little background will help. Back after Son 2 got his bachelor's degree—he graduated in May 2020, right smack into the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic—he couldn't find a regular job because everything had shut down. But he finally got an internship in his field of specialty, working for a woman I'll call the Professora. They got along really well; and while they never did anything flagrantly unprofessional (by which I mean they didn't fuck, or at least not as far as I know), nonetheless they soon became friends. The Professora invited Son 2 to have dinner at her house, where he met her two sons. (She's a single mom, as well as a professional.) Occasionally they sat up drinking whiskey together. It went on like that.

But not for long, because soon the Professora left that job. She landed at a big university, instead. Fast-forward two years, and she had a graduate student leave her in the lurch even though she had a fully-funded research project. So she called Son 2, and asked him if he wanted to go to graduate school. You've heard this story before.

Son 2 enrolled in graduate school, and the Professora was his advisor. Which was fine for a few months until she got fired from the University. I should emphasize that her firing had nothing to do with her competence. Everyone agreed that she knows her subject deeply, and that she is passionately committed to it. Her ability and her commitment were never in question. And yet, she was fired—probably because of some squalid departmental intrigue. 

In the kerfluffle that followed, Son 2 kept his grants and fellowships and program because nobody thought it was his fault. He was reassigned to another professor who was friendly but really didn't understand his research. He continued to meet once a week with the Professora, who continued to guide his research. Meanwhile she got a job with Big Employer. (Maybe you can tell where this story is going.)

Wrapping up last year

I keep thinking I should write something about the last … gosh, I guess three months of last year. I keep not wanting to do it. Not that there's anything bad about it. I just can't summon the energy.

This is an omnibus post. The only common theme is that I'm too lazy to break it out into multiple different posts. Or maybe I should say that empirically I have already observed a strong tendency not to write it. So tonight I figured, "Better to get it all written than to worry about the details." I count 14 different tags or labels on this post right now. Maybe I'll add more later. That should be a sign that it really does tell multiple stories.

October

Actually I guess I've already talked about a lot of it. In October I traveled to visit Debbie for a week, and we went on a silent meditation retreat. (The retreat lasted just a weekend, so we also spent time visiting her family.) Then I flew on to another town where Marie was attending a conference. I appeared with her at the big dinner, as arm candy, and otherwise wandered around town while she attended multiple sessions. I think I talked about this trip in this post here. (See also this one, for a slice of life around Debbie's family.)

November

In November, Mother and I joined Brother and SIL in driving all day to visit family in another state over, for Thanksgiving. I talk about some parts of that trip in this post here. There were other parts of the visit as well, but I don't remember anything so important that I need to remember it or write about it. Stan was better behaved than he was five years ago, and easily distracted with Monty Python routines. This time it was his little sister who was the terror, but not as destructively.

Your children are not you

I was talking with Debbie a couple of weeks ago, and she was telling me with sorrow about how things are going in their house. (You remember that she lives with her daughter Mattie, with Mattie's husband R., and with their two little boys—Debbie's grandsons.) There have been other conflicts before, but many of the longest-lasting frictions seems to be related to the ways that Mattie and R. raise their children. Of course Debbie says that she understands it's none of her business and she has to back away. But it all makes her very sad.

Mattie and R. appear to be very demanding parents. But I'm sure they would never believe themselves to be cruel. They are good liberals in many of the most stereotypical ways, so I'm sure they think that parental cruelty is Something Bad that Other People do. I'm sure they just think that they just have high standards.

Fine, but are they cruel, in reality? I haven't observed enough to be sure. But you can ask other questions that help delineate that space. For example: ….

Are they dogmatic? Absolutely. 

Inflexible? No question. 

Tyrannical? We only use that word for people who are inflexible about Bad Things; as long as they are Our Sort of people, we prefer to call them "reliable" or "committed." Or to put it another way, I'm sure Debbie would go to great lengths to deny that Mattie and R. are actually tyrannical. It would be easy for me to say it, because they're not my family. What's odd is that I don't get the idea that this tyranny is intentional for them. It feels to me more like they just honestly can't imagine that there is any other way to do things than the way they are doing them.

And this brings me to my title. I think parents are often guided (in their parenting) by introspection. How would I feel if my parent did that to/for me? But this is a poor metric to use, because your children are not you!