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?

Meeting Dorcas

Three days ago—last Saturday morning—I finally met Son 1's new girlfriend. I'll call her Dorcas. I spent a little over an hour visiting, and she was very pleasant. Wife was also there, and was significantly less pleasant. I wish I had been surprised by that.

The context is that I was driving to Big City to visit Mother, Brother, and SIL. You remember that I didn't go there for Christmas Eve, because the weather was too fierce. But Saturday was calm and beautiful; so we rescheduled Christmas for Saturday. And Son 1 agreed that I could stop by around 10 o'clock in the morning.

I arrived just about on time, clutching a little cooking I had brought them as a gift. Son 1 let me in, and then resumed his place on the sofa with Dorcas. Wife was on the other side of the room, so I found a chair that let me see everyone. For a few minutes we discussed their new kitten. Then I asked Dorcas what she does for a living.

This is a stock photo, or maybe it is created by AI. It is certainly not really Dorcas.
But it's supposed to be a research engineer, which is good enough.

It turns out she works in technology. She is some kind of engineer. Well, she's an engineer half-time, and a doctoral student half-time. Her research is related to the corporate work she's doing. I suppose I shouldn't go into a lot of detail, because it's a new field and it might be possible to identify her through it. But she has published three articles (in collaboration, of course) and already holds a number of patents (ditto). This was actually pretty interesting, and for a few minutes I tried to draw her out.

It also turns out that there are some unexpected crossover points where her work might have implications for the stuff I used to do ... and therefore for the stuff I write about in the professional blog under my real name. So I asked her some more about these points, and ended up asking if she could send me any kind of non-classified document from which I could learn more (and maybe write about it). She sent me one URL. I have yet to explore it deeply. But I was pleased to get even the one.

Of course the conversation bounced around in a very non-linear fashion. Son 1 contributed to it. I tried to tell some funny stories from my own career. I didn't learn a lot about Dorcas's personality, except that she is fond of Son 1 and is willing to tolerate his family.

Then Wife entered the conversation by booming,* "I notice nobody has asked me any questions about Henry II!" Back when Wife was in graduate school, she was a medievalist, and was starting to study the tax policy of Henry II of England. This was before she failed her Qualifying Exams, which means it was before she was given her terminal Master's and booted out of graduate school for the second time. (I describe the first time she left graduate school in this post here.)

Gosh, dear, what can you tell us about Henry II?

So Wife spent several minutes haranguing** us about Henry II and his tax policy. It had nothing to do with the previous conversation, and plainly nobody else was interested. She even made several remarks acknowledging that nobody else was interested, in a tone that was (I think) supposed to be wry and self-deprecating, but came across as merely self-pitying. (And in any event none of these remarks stopped her from prolonging her lecture.) 

After maybe 75 or 80 minutes (total, not just of Wife's lecture), I said I had to be on my way. Before Wife could make (yet another!) remark about how I was getting out because I was bored with Henry II, Son 1 quickly joined in to say, "Yes, you've got other family members to visit!" And I replied, "Yes, and I want to get there in time for dinner!" So we all said goodbye. I got hugs from Wife and Son 1, and even from Dorcas (though when I arrived she had greeted me by shaking my hand, as I expected).

My impression is that it wasn't an unsuccessful first meeting ... well, except for Wife, but I claim no responsibility on that front. But of course I can't read minds: not Son 1's, and not Dorcas's. So I don't know when I'll see them next. I hope it's not long delayed. So far as I could make a judgement, I liked her.

_____

The rest of the weekend, I spent at Mother's. I got there  somewhere between 1:00 and 1:30. We ate dinner pretty much on schedule at 2:00. Since Brother and SIL put together the whole meal, I have to qualify or retract any earlier remarks suggesting that the two of them are always late or behind schedule (see also, for example here or here).

There was a lot of food. It was all elegant and tasty. Then there was a dessert. (This was the only part Mother made.) It, too, was elegant and tasty.

Finally we opened Christmas presents. I felt a lot of anxiety about this, because all I'd done was a little cooking for everyone. Fortunately Brother and SIL hadn't gotten me much: just a couple of books about food. (Seriously!) Mother got my a gift certificate at a gourmet food store, and insisted that she was always thrilled to get the kind of cooking that I delivered.

Late into the evening, Brother and SIL went home. I slept over. Mother and I spent most of Sunday talking aimlessly, though part of the time was about Father's death and how unprepared she was. I suggested that the best way to avoid a repetition is to talk about what has to be done, so that Brother and I are prepared.

Monday, I drove home after breakfast, but I wasn't good for much the rest of the day.

And here we are in Tuesday.  

__________

* I think that Wife's hearing is getting worse. Her voice is a lot duller, flatter and louder than it used to be.  

** As I was saying ....     

      

Boxes of books

As usual—at least if you don't count when I spend the holiday with Marie and her family—I spent the Fourth of July with Mother, Brother, and SIL. (See also, e.g., here and here.)

The Fourth was on a Friday. I drove down in the late morning, and encountered pleasantly little traffic. 

Brother and SIL did all the cooking, and we started to eat in the very late afternoon, as the heat started to lift.

Brother and SIL have also been working their way through boxes of papers in Mother's garage, mostly papers left behind by Father when he died. They have been looking for things that might be worth saving, and trashing the rest. There has been a lot to trash. I don't know how carefully they are filtering them, but I do know that he left behind a lot of junk. That said, I did scan through a box of papers that they had marked "Trash" and found a draft copy of Mother's doctoral dissertation, along with a letter to her from her old faculty advisor. I hope this was an exception.

Meanwhile, Brother has asked me to go through the boxes of books in the garage. There are a lot of these. But I wonder if we are all agreed on what to toss?

When I began to tackle this task on the Fifth, I found—in boxes that had been sitting in the garage—books that I had given as gifts: at the very least there was one that I gave Mother after Father died, and one that I gave Father while he was still alive. Why were they in boxes in the garage, when they used to be on shelves in the house? Clearly someone had decided that they didn't deserve shelf-space. I don't credit Mother with that much energy or initiative these days, and I know it wasn't me. That leaves Brother and SIL. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I judged that both books belonged in the "Keep" pile. So now I wonder if I'll have a fight with Brother and SIL when they find out. (At the moment, I think they don't realize it yet.)

My first pass through the boxes generated three categories of books. 

Solitude

This weekend I visited my mother. I drove down on Saturday. When I got there, she was at her storage unit with Brother and SIL; but it wasn't long before they came back, along with a friend of Brother's. We sat around and talked a while before they all went home. Then Mother and I stayed up until 2:00 in the morning, drinking brandy and talking some more. Sunday, Mother and I drove into the Big City to go to a concert. We met Brother and SIL there, and we chatted after the concert before going home. Today (Monday), Brother and SIL came out, and we all contributed to a nice meal outside in the early evening. So it sounds like I spent the weekend socializing with family.

You'd think.

But in reality, not so much. Saturday, sure, we sat around chatting for a bit, but in a superficial way. I got to talk to Mother more after everyone else left. But then we drank enough and stayed up late enough that Sunday was pretty miserable. I mostly tried to stay out of those conversations because I was still wiped out. And today? Mother was in the kitchen cooking; Brother and SIL were in the kitchen cooking. I tried my damnedest to stay away, somewhere else, for hours.

Why? I worried about saying something thoughtless that might offend someone. I guess I was thinking particularly that I might say something to offend SIL (see especially this post and this one, for example), but at the same time I was prepared for the possibility of equal-opportunity offensiveness. Not of purpose, of course! Just because I don't trust myself a lot in social situations any more. (If I ever did.)

Maybe I worry too much. Besides, if you are weak at a particular skill, you get better by exercising it more, not by avoiding it. 

Right, whatever. Anyway, after we had our meal (where I was careful to praise every dish!) I announced that I needed to get back home. I cleared the table of dishes (see, I helped out a little bit!) and then took off. Now I'm back at home, and I feel much more at ease. So far as I can tell, I didn't offend anyone this time. And thank heavens for that! 

      

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.

Mother is aging, 2

Over the weekend, I visited Mother. While there, I told her about my visit to Schmidt, and explained that Ma Schmidt has effectively no remaining short-term memory. Mother said she worries about that too. But she still works (part-time) at an intellectually demanding job. Also she's five years younger than Ma Schmidt. And five years ago (at the time of this visit, though I don't discuss the topic in that post), Ma Schmidt was already showing more signs of memory loss than Mother shows today. So I told Mother than I guess her work is keeping her mind active. She said if she starts getting forgetful about her work, she'll have to retire.

Then this morning I was making us some eggs for breakfast, She got out a loaf of panettone from Trader Joe's, cut a few slices, and put them under the broiler to toast. Then she wandered off to fiddle with the coffee maker and make us some coffee.

Within sixty seconds—maybe more like thirty—the panettone was burning and smoke was flowing through the kitchen. I jerked it out of the oven and turned off the broiler. Mother continued to fiddle with the coffee-maker, and suggested, "You can flip them over and toast the other side too." "No, I'm dealing with the eggs!" Five minutes later the eggs were done and the coffee was finally dripping. Only then did she wander back to the oven to toast the other sides, and I told her no, we were ready to eat.

Was it forgetfulness? Maybe, but maybe not. It all happened too fast for me to be comfortable blaming forgetfulness. It was certainly bad judgement. 

Was it a new phenomenon? I don't know. Cooking really isn't her thing. If I had put food less than two inches from a 550° broiler and then ambled away, it would be a clear sign that I was either drunk or senile. But I cook more than she does. So it's hard for me to diagnose.

I feel like I'm seeing the first cracks in her hitherto admirable intellect. Or not quite the first cracks—see also this post from just about two years ago—but some very early ones. I don't want to admit it or think about it, because she's my mother and I love her. Also, if her fine mind starts to become unreliable, it will mean someone has to move in with her (and I'm the one without a job) or else she has to move into managed care. Either way means a huge change in the way all of us lives, including me. So I want to postpone that day as long as possible.

But like it or not, Mother is aging.

      

Three weekends

I was going to write this post yesterday afternoon—or evening, or whatever—but I was too tired. Instead I ate and drank and went to bed. Today I didn't accomplish much besides going to the grocery store, and already it's late again. But maybe I can make a little headway on this post before I cave in.

The last three weekends, I've had something going on. Each time it was something that involved being around people, and something that involved hours of driving. I'm not sure which was more tiring. Normally I don't think of driving as a lot of work, but maybe there's a point where a quantitative difference becomes a qualitative one.

Christmas at home

Just a few words about Christmas.

We collected at Mother's house on the 24th—that's me, Brother, and SIL. Brother and SIL spent hours cooking for the next day. I got there later and brought a shitload of wine. I … actually don't remember what we had for dinner the night of the 24. I know we had to improvise something at the last minute. We all joked over having a house full of food and "nothing to eat"—nothing that wasn't already slated for the next day, that is. But we scraped together something. And we had wine to drink—I'd brought plenty, so there was some for that night too. After dinner, Brother and I put up the outside lights along the front edges of the roof.

"You have his Voice"

I spent last weekend visiting my mom. It was very pleasant. Saturday we spent with Brother and SIL, and also a friend of Brother's from school that I know tangentially as well. Then Sunday was just Mother and me. We shopped, we cooked, and we talked. It was low-key and enjoyable.

One of the things we talked about was my dad. I advanced a number of the ideas that I have sketched out here: for example, that he strove to entertain people because he felt unsafe around them, and making them laugh was a way to ensure his safety; and that much of this feeling stemmed from his experience as a little kid, being bullied at school and being dominated by his mother (who was a whirlwind of energy). (See the discussion here and especially here for more details.) Also that he became an actor because he discovered that he was already spending every waking minute acting anyway, so why not do it formally for applause and (maybe) money? (Again, I discuss this point here.) Also that it was really, really important to him that people like him.

My mother agreed with every single one of these insights! And we told stories for a few minutes about how really good he was at entertaining people.

Learning the lessons of freedom

A year ago—or gosh, it's been longer than that—I wrote a post about how numerology calculates your "birth number." According to John Michael Greer (magician, occultist, and former archdruid), this number "represents the fixed framework of your personality and your life, and it sums up the things about you that won’t change no matter what. It defines the lesson you have come into this incarnation to learn." 

At the time I explained that Brother has a birth number of 4 ("the challenge you face in this incarnation is to learn self-discipline and build solid foundations") and I have 22 (basically the same as 4 but with a rich inner life).

Wife and Marie are both 8's ("the challenge this incarnation sets before you is that of worldly accomplishment"). Son 1 and Son 2 are both 6's ("the challenge you face in this incarnation is learning how to accept responsibility for others").

But I wasn't quite sure what to make of Mother. Her birth number comes out to 5, an unstable number about which Greer says "you are impatient with routine …. you do unexpected things and are constantly heading for new places, and when you get into trouble – which happens fairly often! – you are good at finding a way out." But when I look at her today (in her 80's, admittedly) she is a respected professional in a field that demands a certain level of routine; her recent travel has all been to visit her siblings and their families; and when Father was acting so fecklessly as a businessman, she kept things grounded and running. Somehow none of this fits well with the almost-chaotic temperament I just described.

THIS is why I couldn't move to Sticksville!

This afternoon I got a call from Brother. He wanted to talk about Mother, but he didn't know where to start. So he just started.

Sunday he and SIL had gone out to see her impromptu. When they got there (midday) she was still in bed, more or less unconscious. She had been sick, vomited in the bed, and then fell back asleep in it. They pulled her out of bed, washed her, washed the bedding, and tried to talk to her. But she was pretty unresponsive, and had no interest in eating or drinking anything. They had a lot of trouble just getting her to eat some toast and drink some fruit juice. They stayed over Monday as well. (Brother had to take a day off work.) She wasn't much better, but at least a little. Today they left. But they are—understandably—really worried about her.

No shit. With a story like that, of course they are. So am I, now that they told me.

Changing a lightbulb

Over the weekend I visited my mother, and on Sunday we went out to a concert at the philharmonic in the big city nearby. I always enjoy visiting my mom, and the concert was delightful. But just at the moment I'm feeling very thoughtful.

Saturday evening I went to turn on some lights in the living room. One lamp wouldn't light up, and I saw right away it was unplugged.

"Why is this lamp unplugged?" 

I forget what she said. It was something about Son 2 visiting during the weekend before, which indeed he had. Whatever she said didn't make a lot of sense, so I was only half paying attention.

I tried plugging it in, but the light still wouldn't illuminate. The socket was controlled by a switch, but I checked the other light plugged into the same socket and it was on; therefore the switch was turned on. 

"I wonder if the bulb is burned out. Do you have any other bulbs?"

Mother is aging

When I started this blog, I talked about Wife. But we are separated now. Then I started talking about Father, but he's dead. And I've talked about my kids and my girlfriends. But maybe I should say a couple words about Mother.

[By the way, I realize that the parallelism in that first paragraph looks ominous, almost as if my writing about someone is a way to get him or her out of my life. But if you look closer that's not true: Marie and Debbie are very much part of my life still, and I write about them a lot. And I wish my mother a long and happy life yet.]

When I started this blog, Mother was just about the age Debbie is today, maybe a few months younger. Today she is in her eighties. She has been living on her own since Father died, which was seven years ago.

Can I sit at the cool kids' table now?

The last five days I've had a low fever, exhaustion, and intermittent diarrhea; today appears to be the first day without the fever or the diarrhea, but I still feel weak and easily worn out. I also have a cough, although that's hardly unusual for me. I have not done any testing yet, to identify what I came down with. And I have not had any trouble breathing (unless you count the cough), nor have I lost my sense of taste. Nonetheless I strongly suspect that it's a variant of COVID-19. So does that mean I can eat lunch with the cool kids now?

Here's the timeline, as well as I can reconstruct it.

The weekend before last, I drove out to visit my Mom. We talked a lot, sat up late, finished off a bottle of wine between us ... that sort of thing. She's been living alone for almost seven years now, and we talked about whether it would be better for her to have someone else living there with her. No immediate commitments, but we both agreed that this is something I could probably do for her, especially if she felt her only other alternative were to move into a care facility. She demurred at first, because caring for my Dad in his last years was so hard for her and she wouldn't want to impose; but I explained that I've already spent years looking after Wife through her various illnesses, so it wouldn't exactly be something new.

Sunday we drove into the Big City to go to a concert at the Philharmonic. And Monday I came home.

Wednesday morning I felt really tired, and my head didn't feel quite right. At first I assumed that maybe I'd had too much to drink the night before, and tried to perk myself up with coffee. Then I took a long nap. When I got up again my head still felt bad, so I took a couple of Tylenol; only after that did I realize that I also felt feverish. I went to bed early that night and slept 13 hours ... except that every time I rolled over I had to get up to pee, even though there was hardly anything coming out. 

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday ... I began slowly to feel a little better, but still felt feverish (even when my temperature read normal). Today is the first day I haven't really felt feverish, and I actually got myself organized to go out and do my laundry. (High time, too, I might add!) But even that little ambition left me huffing and puffing by the end.

Why do I think it's COVID-19?

On Wednesday, the first day that I felt any symptoms, I exchanged text messages with my mother. She was just then starting to feel rotten as well, in just about the same ways. She too went to bed early. The symptoms and timing matched mine so exactly that it is very likely we have the same thing and got it at the same time. That means in turn that it is unlikely one of us infected the other; probably we both got whatever-it-is at the Philharmonic. 

But the next day (Thursday) she had a regularly-scheduled doctor's appointment for a routine physical. While she was there, he tested her for COVID. And yesterday she texted me that her test came back positive.

So if we probably have the same thing, and if she now tests positive for COVID-19, probably that's what I've got too. It must be a fairly mild case, since I haven't had any of the distinctive COVID-symptoms (like loss of taste). But that would be consistent with my continuing to feel so weak.

Maybe I should go get tested, huh?

        

Marrying your parents? - revisited

A long time ago — gosh, it was more than eight years — I posted on the idea that we "marry our parents," or (more exactly) that we choose to fall in love with people who are like one or the other of our parents. At the time I used this model to understand what were till then my three most obvious romantic relationships. I wrote:

As I listened [to the talk that proposed this theory] I thought about myself and decided that this is a pretty easy case to make for me: Wife and D are both like my father (loud, opinionated, narcissistic, always the center of any gathering, outwardly domineering but with a surprising lack of self-confidence beneath the surface), while Debbie is a lot like my mother (quiet, comfortable in silence and solitude, deeply ethical in an unobtrusive and tolerant way … they even look alike physically).

But at the time I said nothing about Marie. Of course, back in 2013 Marie and I were not in communication. Back then she represented just a confusing and awkward part of my past. So it was easy for me to leave her out of the reckoning. But today that's no longer so easy. Today she's my girlfriend. So how does she fit into this theory? Or does she disprove it?

I've spent a while trying to think through an answer. In many ways she's not a good fit. On the one hand, she's shy, quiet, and chronically (almost neurotically) self-doubting; so she's a poor match for the loud, Falstaffian extroversion of my Father (or, mutatis mutandis, of Wife or D). On the other hand, she seems a lot more complicated and damaged than my Mother or Debbie — not that Mother or Debbie have had life unusually easy, but each of them seems able to respond to its trials with a calm and simple common-sense. And those are never words anyone would think of using to describe Marie.

So does she fit? Or not?

I was puzzled about this for some time, but recently I began to see a way forward towards an answer.

The last few times I've visited Mother, she and I have talked for hours. Days, even. And back in the past we never used to do that — meaning back when Father was alive. Back then he and I might talk for hours, but Mother always sat quietly in the background. And a couple of weeks ago, she explained how it was for her back then. She said, "Back when your dad was alive, I didn't feel like I needed to talk a lot because he took care of all that for me. It was easier to let him do all the talking and not compete. It was obvious that he liked to talk, so I just let him. Because anything that I needed to say, he was pretty sure to cover sooner or later. So it was easier to let him do it."

Then, last week, Marie told me that she lets her friends steamroller her in conversation because "it's easier" that way. And I could not help but to hear the echo.

So maybe that's it. Maybe Marie corresponds to Mother because they are both quiet, and they both find it easier to let someone else take over the conversation. It's still not a perfect match. Mother still has way more self-confidence than Marie. Mother ran the family business back when Father was fecklessly avoiding his responsibilities. Marie tells me that when she is responsible for something at work she can be a real "bitch" [her word] about getting it done right, but I don't see it. Maybe I'd see it if I worked at her store. Also it feels to me like Marie is still carrying more damage from her early life than Mother is. If nothing else, Mother married and had children, while Marie never did either.

But no theory like this is ever perfect. Always they are just ideas to give you insights that might help you understand your life. Maybe that's enough.       

         

Silly coincidences

A couple weeks ago I mentioned a blog post by John Michael Greer on numerology, which has to be the least plausible form of divination I've ever heard of. But Greer is an interesting fellow, so I continue to follow what he writes. And today he posted another one, here.

This one is specifically about how to calculate your "birth number" and what it is supposed to mean. How to calculate is easy: write out your birthdate in numbers and add them up. Suppose you were born on July 4, 1976: then your birth number = 7 + 4 + 1 + 9 + 7 + 6 = 34, and 3 + 4 = 7. So you would be a 7. And his post gives a long paragraph about what it means for your personality and destiny to have "7" as a bith number. (Normally when you get a two-digit answer you add the digits to get a one-digit result. But there is an exception for 11 and 22, each of which gets its own description.)

I'm not going to quote any of his descriptions: you can go read his post for that if you want to. But I was struck by a number of coincidences, by which I mean pairs of people I know who both have the same birth number.

Hosea: 22, which has its own description but shares a lot in common with 4.
Brother: 4

Wife: 8
Marie: 8

[The description of an 8 is very close to what Wife used to be like before she got so sick and basically became a whole different person.]

D: 9
Debbie: 9

Schmidt is also a 9, come to that, but I don't think of him in quite the same way that I think of D or Debbie. 

Son 1: 6
Son 2: 6

[I suppose this could explain why Son 1 has made a point of taking in Wife to make sure she has a roof over her head.]

The descriptions don't always work. My mother comes out as a 5, which doesn't describe her at all. But maybe that's what she used to be like before I was born …? No idea. (My dad was a 7, in case you wondered.)

[Update a year and a half later: I revisit my mother's birth number in this post from May 2023, in which I conclude that it makes a lot more sense than I thought at first.]

But my brother and I are both 4 (more or less); my sons are both 6; my first two girlfriends (Marie and Wife) were both 8; my two romances immediately after Wife (D and Debbie) were both 9. I mean, sure, the odds for finding a pair here or there probably aren't that bad. But it sure looked a little funny.

Maybe I should stop talking about this now.

      

I don't want to move, part 2

I visited my mother this weekend. She has had both her COVID-19 shots, so I took the risk and stayed overnight. And I talked to her about my situation.

On my side, I found that I could make a good argument for New Boss's point of view. The company's needs have, in fact, changed. There is, in fact, a whole department in another city that does the work I used to do. (For various reasons that wasn't exactly true before.) And the other tasks, the stuff he wants me to work on, really are urgently important to the business. From that perspective, I'm wrong for the job and the job is wrong for me. The only thing that either of us offers the other is immediate availability. But everyone will tell you that it's better to hire the right person than to settle for the person that just happens to be handy right now.

What if I can't find work again … ever? I flat out asked Mother how she would feel if I became a boomerang child at the age of 60, having to come back to live with her because I'm broke? To my surprise, she said that would be fine. She has lived all alone since my father died, and that was over five years ago. She's getting lonely. Also she's not as physically spry as she used to me, and she could probably use the help. She said she wouldn't want to hold me back if I really desperately wanted to move to Sticksville; but if I choose to stay in the area she'd be grateful. She even said it might be OK for me to move in with her even if I did find a job. This was all good to hear. It gives me a safety net.

So I made the table below, to try to collect my thoughts. It doesn't tell me anything I don't already know, but it organizes it all for me. Basically the move to Sticksville is good (green type) from the perspective of staying employed in the immediate future (with no guarantees about the long term) and bad (red type) in every other respect. Staying here -- rejecting the move -- is bad from the perspective of staying employed in the immediate future, and either good or unpredictable (black type) in every other respect. Rejecting the move has way more unknowns involved, but it also has more upside. Making the move is more predictable (at least in the short run) but I don't like what I see.

When people give advice about this sort of thing they always say, Take the risk! Don't settle for something you know you're going to hate just because it is a known quantity. And in fact even if I were to move to Sticksville, I can't guarantee that I'd still have a job 12 months from now. Or 24 months from now. (There are threats to the business that make it look pretty risky right now. Who knows what will happen?) And if I were unceremoniously dumped out of work, now I'd be on the other side of the country in a place I didn't like with no family nearby. Not an encouraging prospect.

I think I want to stay. Scratch that -- I know I want to stay. I think I'm going to choose to stay. I just wish I knew how to swing the income side of the equation.

Move to Sticksville	Don’t move to Sticksville
Income:
Employment guaranteed. No guarantee for how long.	Unemployed. Have to look for new work. No guarantee that I’ll find work, because of age.
Chance the whole business unit might fold in two years.	Not relevant.
Still able to pay Wife’s alimony and provide her medical insurance.	Unable to pay alimony unless/until new job. No guarantee I can afford COBRA for her.
Kind of work:
Work doesn’t match my strengths. Potentially set up to fail.	Who knows what I’ll find? Maybe something great, maybe something terrible, maybe nothing.
Don’t trust my boss.	If I don’t trust the person who offers me a job, I don’t have to take it. But I might not have much choice.
Location:
Don’t like the town.	Like my town. Like my mother’s town.
Don’t like the plant.	Who knows what I’ll find?
Far from family.	Near to family.
Mother is getting old.	Able to live with or near Mother if needed.

On being the boss

I had a thought the other day ... something that pulled together for me two isolated insights that I have had for years now.

Being the boss -- I mean at work, functioning as a manager -- is hard for me. And it was hard for my dad.

That's it, the insight: the conjunction of those two statements. I have long known each of them in isolation. But that they fit together so neatly is at once obvious, and totally natural, and really interesting.

For me the problem had a couple of sources. One was my natural shyness. Another was my overcompensating for what I knew to be my own brilliance. I didn't want to look arrogant, or like I had a "swelled head," or anything like that. So I spent a huge amount of effort beating down my own ego and undercutting my own self-assurance, trying to fade into the woodwork, so that I couldn't be accused of being a glory-hog. And it was an absolutely consistent strategy ... right up until I was 33, and my boss suddenly quit from the small start-up where I was working, and I was offered his position. And accepted it. It was a very disorienting experience. Suddenly I couldn't undercut my own status or position because I damned well needed that position to be able to do my job! 

I really didn't know how to do this, and for a long time I struggled at it. Fortunately the work my department did was controlled by a number of well-defined procedures; so when I didn't know how to manage the people, I compensated by managing the procedure. Instead of "Go do this today" I could say "We've just finished stage 3 so now we have to do stage 4 (where the employee I'm talking to is the only one who can do stage 4), and it has to be done by the end of the day." It wasn't perfect, but it was something I could hang onto until I got my feet under me. The first time I had to write annual reviews I had huge trouble because I had spent so many years forcing myself not to judge other people -- because I thought it would be unfair to hold someone else to the standards I set for myself, because they couldn't help not being brilliant, don't you see? (Yes, I recognize that beneath the showy humility that attitude is tremendously arrogant, patronizing, condescending ... call it what you will. It also didn't serve me very well, especially when I extended it from intellectual standards to moral ones. That didn't stop me from holding it.) I discussed the problem with a mentor at work who talked me out of it, but I sweated for hours over those reviews!

My dad was just as bad. 

As a father he sometimes said that he didn't want to "lay some big authority trip on you," which I think means that he hated and feared authority and couldn't bear to be seen as one. Or, in other words, that he wanted to undercut his own natural authority as my father -- and, like it or not, there is a certain natural authority which comes with that role if you are present in your children's lives, and even regardless whether you are biologically their father -- in the same way that I spent so many years trying to undercut my natural authority as a Smart Person.

As a business owner he was a catastrophe. Partly this is because he made bad decisions. A lot of bad decisions. Partly it's because he was playing the role of a business owner rather than understanding that it was Real Life. And in the very first years he wasn't even playing that role, but actively undercutting it!

He had inherited the business from his parents, when they retired. They had run it for twenty years as thrifty, conscientious business-people, conservative Republicans in the mold of the 1930's or the 1950's. (Think of Alf Landon -- whom his mother voted for in 1936 -- and definitively not Donald Trump.) During all that time, as he finished out his late teens and his twenties and into his mid-thirties, my dad defined himself oppositionally, in rebellion against them, as the liberal Democratic Ph.D. college professor, who stood in line for hours at the American consulate one night in 1972 so he could cast a ballot for George McGovern. (We lived abroad at the time.) And when he inherited the business, he didn't know how to switch it off. He was only a few years older than I was when faced with the same challenge -- 37 or 38, instead of 33 -- but he tried to run the business as President and Owner without being an authority. I never learned many of the stories, but one I remember him telling me (one night years later, when he was really drunk) was that when he discovered that a few of his employees smoked pot (which was of course illegal everywhere in the country at that point), he would get together with them after work and they'd all toke up together. So naturally his employees didn't take him seriously as a boss, and figured they could goof off on the job. Who cares, right? Besides, was he seriously going to risk firing any of them, when the disgruntled employee could turn him in for drug offenses?

As I say, as a business owner he was a catastrophe.

Of course in the end all these guys had to be fired anyway. And he had to stop lighting up with employees. And my mother had to come in and rescue him (so far as she could) from many of the messes he had made. He was angry at having to make the change, bitterly hurt that the Real World didn't turn out the way he had fantasized it, and resented the whole ball of wax: the business, and his own failures in it. What is more, I think this anger and resentment fueled his self-redefinition from Liberal Intellectual to Dittohead. I remember many, many arguments between him and my mom while I was a teenager, that always followed the exact same script. (Usually these came at the end of dinner, after they had both had something to drink -- in my dad's case usually more than just "something." Brother and I would clear our dishes silently and disappear back to our rooms to do our homework, but could still hear every word.)

Mother: You need to spend more time at the office -or- take the business more seriously -or- focus more on these problems we are having (-or- whatever it was that time).

Father: But I hate it! Why do I have to do this? You're always nagging me about this, but why do I have to?

Mother: Because if you don't we will go broke and could lose everything.

Father: But why does it have to be me? You're better at all this stuff than I am. You do it! [Note that my mom didn't start off being better at running a business. But unlike my dad, she worked hard at it and learned on the job.]

Mother: You are the Owner. You have to show up.

Father: I have to? What if I died? Then I couldn't show up! What would you do then? And whatever you'd do then, why can't you do it now without me?

Mother: Then at least I'd be in charge. But for a lot of these issues, only the Owner can solve them. Our creditors don't want to talk to me, they want to talk to you.

Father: You want to be in charge? Fine! I'll sell it to you for a dollar! Then you'll be in charge and can do whatever you want, and I'll be free of it.

Mother: I don't want to buy the goddamned business from you. I don't want it either. I just want you to own up to your goddamned responsibilities!

Father: I can't keep hearing this! If I keep hearing this I'll just ...! 

My father never had a good way to end the sentence. I don't believe he ever threatened to kill himself. But he dearly wished for the whole problem to go away by magic, so he didn't have to grow up and deal with it. (Oh dear, did I say that part out loud? Sorry. Please forgive the editorializing.)

It is true that this specific argument repeated itself, almost word for word, over many nights for years.

__________

Gosh, what was my point in all of this? Just that Father and I have a lot in common. We both struggled very hard with Being the Boss. We both spent many years of our lives acting in a way designed to undercut any authority we might ever have accrued. To the extent that I didn't end up the same way, it was by watching and learning from his example, ... and from trying hard to be more like my mother: to plug away at it, day in and day out, and try to learn.

It's an interesting thought.

What about Brother? Same thing, I think, although the details and flavor are different. He's the rock musician in the family, the one who actually got together with a group and produced a couple of CDs. They sank like a stone, of course. He makes his living as a temporary worker, proofreading for companies in the advertising business. And I suspect (though I'm not certain) that he gets handouts from my mom, from time to time. But an authority? A boss? Someone who can tell others what to do -- and that also means someone strong enough to stand as a barrier that shelters his employees when storms sweep through the organization? Not a chance. (He also has no kids, for whatever that is worth.)

__________

And all this makes me wonder, ... what about Son 1 and Son 2? There, actually, I am hopeful. In one way or another, I think they each have a strong sense of self and also an ability to lead. Maybe it's because they went away to boarding school in their high-school years. Maybe they are just naturally more gifted along those lines than I am. Or maybe they have learned from my failures and deficiencies the way I learned (something, at least) from Father's.

It would be nice to think I'd been useful to them in that way.

           

Another year, another Fourth

Last year I spent the Fourth of July in New Zealand, vacationing with Marie and parts of her family. The year before I spent it at my mother's house, where Brother and SIL were also visiting.

That's where I was this year, though the visit was a lot shorter. I spent about five hours there, plus about four hours total driving back and forth. (That's 2 1/2 hours going, but only about 1 1/2 hours coming back home. I got lucky with the traffic this evening.) It's funny because I left before we actually ate. But I think it was fine, and that I liked it better that way.

Apparently Brother and SIL have gotten together with my mother a few times since the outbreak of the pandemic. Of course they live a lot closer, and in normal times they certainly see her more often than I do. They say they have been scrupulous about social distancing. Certainly not long after I arrived, Brother gave all of us a stern little talk about how we should behave to reduce the risk of infection. He seemed particularly concerned by my cough, which I suppose is not surprising (even though I know it has nothing to do with COVID-19).

It was a hot day and we sat around outside and talked. Brother and SIL peeled homegrown apples to go into a pie. (My mother makes the best pies in the world, and I refuse to hear anyone say anything to the contrary.) They were also going to grill hot dogs for us all.

Nobody said anything about when we were supposed to eat, any more than I said anything about how long I was going to stay. I hadn't thought about it much. But I knew I wasn't going to stay the night, because how hard must it be to disinfect a whole house? Anyway, Brother and SIL spent a lot of time in their own little world, making cute faces back and forth and snapping pictures of each other on their phones. And some time after 5:00 they started fiddling with the grill. Around the same time I decided I'd leave about 6:00.

It was a propane grill that my dad had used for years before he died. I don't know if it has been used since. Everything they said was to the effect that once they turned it on, we'd eat within minutes. But they fiddled and fiddled some more and couldn't get it to start. Maybe it was out of fuel, or maybe it was something else. Anyway, by 6:00 they were starting to think about what else to use instead, and I figured it was a good time to hit the road. There was considerable surprise ("You're leaving? Before we eat?") but I was gracious and cheerful about it and then took off.

Do I wish we had eaten before I left? Maybe a little bit but not strongly. It really was hot. Eating hot grilled food on top of that would have made it feel even hotter. And I'd had a big breakfast, so I wasn't terribly hungry. Also my mother had put out little individual dishes of nuts, and I'd had some of those. And I'm pretty sure Brother will have felt more comfortable eating without listening to me cough: he had already expressed deep discomfort at my coughing (into my mask!) within a couple of feet of the table where the dishes of nuts sat.

Also ... how much do we have to talk about? Brother is a wannabe rock musician (even now, in his fifties) who does proofreading for ad agencies as a contractor. I work for a big company, in an office. (Or, well, I used to work in an office before the pandemic and lockdown, and I still do the kind of work that one associates with big companies and offices.) I suppose I could have talked about getting an article in print in the professional journal for people in my line of work -- the June issue, a mere 18 months after they accepted it! (Grin.) Or I could have talked about the time I've spent on the side during the pandemic, expanding that article (and some related topics) into a short book. (I have 92 pages now and I think it's basically done, but I have no idea what to do next.) But I hate self-promoting like that.

I don't know.

It's funny: I don't feel anything like this ambivalence about spending time with my uncle and aunt, or with my cousins (except for one first-cousin-one-removed, who looks to me like a demon of Pure Id -- Stan, of course, from this post). I enjoy time spent with them. But I don't seem to have anything to say to Brother or SIL.

I suppose that's too bad and I should regret it. But it's just how it is. I don't understand why it turned out that way. But it did. Shit happens, I guess.    

Dreaming of my mother

Last night I dreamt that my mother came to the door of my house, or of some house where I was living. (You remember that right now I live in an apartment.) It was great to see her. I gave her a big hug and brought her in. She looked young, like she did all the years when I was growing up, and she started describing some kind of car trouble she had just had on the way there. She sat down on the living room sofa and we talked.

Then Brother came to the door. He didn't seem to see her at all, or notice her in any way; and he started talking to me about how we had to clear out all of her things by the end of the month unless we wanted to pay for the next month too. I asked him why this was so urgent and kept looking over at her on the sofa, seemingly blocked out of the conversation. And somewhere in there I started to wake up.

As dreams go, this one was disturbingly easy to read. So I texted Mother this morning and she texted back. She's fine -- busily working (at home, not at the office) and wondering why her clients put off everything to the last minute and then want her to do it all by magic overnight. She also started to ask if maybe we could think about getting together in a socially-distanced way for the Fourth of July. In short, she's fine.

But I had to check.