Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Will the Last Thought to Leave, Please Turn Off the Light?
I am doomed. If I thought I was going to do figure eights around Alzheimer’s Disease, taking first the inner edge then the outer of a perfect pair of white figure skates, laughing knowingly at my age peers stringing little beads together around a table where adolescent recreational therapists tried to keep them happy and oriented to date and time, I was completely, totally, absolutely fucking wrong. Because today, my friends, the ubiquitous hearing aid ad in the paper proclaimed: People with untreated hearing loss have 2 to 3 X the risk of having Alzheimer’s Disease.
I saw the ad, dropped the newspaper on the bed, covered my ears, and yelped. How is it possible that my hearing loss which is, itself, driving me utterly crazy and draping me with hearing aids and electronic streamers and unanswered phone calls and personal space violations galore, how is it that, in addition to becoming an official member of the halt and the lame, that I now have to lose my mind to Alzheimer’s. I call it piling on. That’s what it is. True, my hearing loss is hardly untreated. I’ve spent thousands to mitigate my hearing loss. But there are times when the comfort of my own head unadorned with mechanical assists, noiseless except for the constant sound of gently running water which is my tinnitus, is so peaceful that I would gladly forget time and place to float away somewhere. And string beads, maybe. Pretty beads.
I look at the ad again and add my hearing loss to the growing list of things that increase my chances of having Alzheimer’s Disease, my mother top of the list. Next up is having used deodorant with aluminum, having periods of depression, probably drinking too much, doing crossword puzzles that are too easy, not eating enough broccoli, watching too much Kukla, Fran and Ollie, using Ipana toothpaste, and huffing Emeraude (not on purpose, just as a consequence of attending a 9th grade dance in 1962). I figure now my chances of having Alzheimer’s at 500% – that I will have it in this life and the next four.
I wonder how it will manifest. I wonder how it will go. What will be the last thought out my mind’s eye? Will it be the beautiful day my mother noticed when she said to a man on our walk around the neighborhood that “You are such a nice outside today.” Or will I find happiness putting Christmas bows on little daintily arranged stacks of canned goods in the pantry like my mother did? Or will I put a single pea in a spoon and threaten to fling it at my husband like my mother did, giving a coy look like she did at the dinner table decades before when she’d fire one off at one of us kids. She didn’t hear me when I told her to put the spoon down.
Now I get it.
Parenting Throwdown
Today was a parenting throwdown that started at 5:39 a.m. with a text, ran in and out the doors of many gyms, scored a few goals, committed no fouls, and made sure no one was thrown out of the game.
And I am exhausted.
It was easier on me when I was younger and when my kids were actually kids and not adults. Then, I let fly with whatever I was thinking. When one of my kids got in trouble, I had an immediate reaction. Delay, introspection, consideration — all stuff for the uncertain, people who didn’t know the right thing to do. Me, on the other hand, I always knew the right thing to do.
Today, I must have said ten times, “I don’t know the right thing to do.” So not knowing, I spent long periods silent, chose my words as if they’d be on a headstone for centuries, let my judgements sit on the back porch by themselves.
I was wise today. I wish I had been this wise when I was raising my kids. But nonetheless, I am wise enough to recognize wisdom when I see it. And cherish the thought that age has taught me to replace confidence with contemplation and certitude with doubt.
I played the long, good game. I’m glad.
Time to Go Home
She came to America holding a Barbie doll and wearing head phones. She wore the new clothes I’d brought and the bracelet the orphanage workers had given her as a goodbye gift. She’d lived in a children’s center in Managua, Nicaragua, for over a year while officials quarreled about what was best for her. Finally it was decided that letting her be adopted by an American family (us) was the best thing for her. So I flew from Milwaukee to Managua to fetch our little immigrant.
In a story told many times, she leaped to her feet and ran out the door of her hut into my arms the minute she saw me approaching. “Mama!” she yelled as if I’d just come back from a long trip. She sat down on the bench next to me, looked at my now straight hair and asked pointedly where the curls (my old perm) had gone. Baffled, I right away remembered we’d sent her a little photo album of our family as a way to get acquainted. My friend interpreted. “No habla Espanol?” Oh God, I thought, nobody told her that her new mother doesn’t speak Spanish.
She was undeterred. She drew pictures and we labeled them – gato (cat), perro (dog), and the favorite, because my bag was loaded, galleta (cookie). Every day for a week, we would sit in one of the steamy little cabins, children flopping around on mats while donated toys, including the Curious George doll I’d sent her months earlier, sat high up on shelves. The children, accustomed to toys as decorations, expressed no desire to play with anything but the few things left for them on the floor. We watched and kept drawing, every day getting hotter and harder. I just wanted to go home.
The last day at the orphanage, we went to the clinic to say goodbye to the nurses. She was given her last dose of medicine for her heart condition. She told them she was going on a plane to her new family.
And in the most remarkable display of exuberance and joy I have ever witnessed, she gave me this extraordinary, life-changing, show-stopping hug.
That night, our first night together after a week of visits at the orphanage, she tried on all the clothes I’d brought for her and found the Barbie doll. We went to bed, each of us in a narrow, single bed with a sheet for a cover. The fan blew the smallest little breeze across us, enough for the sweat to evaporate from my arms. In the darkest part of the night, I heard her stir and stretch her arm out to me and we lay there, holding hands waiting for what was next.
That’s my immigration story. One of them. I have three.
This post was written in response to an Open Salon Open Call for Immigration Stories.
Call It What It Is
Today I was on a panel of 12 community ‘experts’ talking about homelessness to a group of 100 doctoral students who had spent weeks dissecting the issue and they were waiting to hear from us, “What are the root causes of homelessness?” The panelists were told to write their answers on a sheet of paper and hold it up to the group. So because I am a researcher and an evaluator and because I believe what people tell me, I wrote on the paper, “Homeless people say unemployment and low wages are the cause of homelessness.” I know this because I’ve conducted surveys and focus groups with homeless people and, yep, that’s what they tell me. So it’s gotta be true, right? The twenty-something emcee looked at me and said with a smile, “Is that a data-driven answer?” So coy.
Yes, but it’s complete and total bullshit.
Does anybody really know the cause of homelessness? There’s a whole industry of agencies and services who think they know but the fact of the matter is that every homeless person got to their place under the bridge in their own unique way. Some lost jobs. Others got addicted. Some are mentally ill. A few can’t do anything right. More just got out of jail. Many hate helpers. Most hate rules.
The woman that I met living in a little cozy encampment in the shadow of the USS Midway in San Diego where tourists would have to step over and around her friends to get to the attractions and cute shops told me that going into a shelter would mean she’d have to stop drinking and she was a ‘diehard’ alcoholic, an alcoholic squared if you will. She looked at me, she could’ve been forty or sixty, her nose red and pocked, and she said, “Hey, I’m going to keep drinking. Shelter people say I have to stop. I can’t do that. Plus I have to take care of my friends out here.” She pointed to a very pregnant girl, maybe 19, lying on a blanket, and two men sleeping in the sun. “She’s my street daughter. I’m all she has.”
In that moment, standing there, talking to her, it made sense to me. It’s the curse of relating to people. Everything makes sense to me at the time. So I’m thinking, wow, that’s so good that she’s taking care of this girl.
And then I get back in my car and I think, but, hey, what about prenatal care and food and not sleeping all night on the damn ground being six or seven months pregnant? And what about the baby and what happens next and is anyone thinking that the baby can come home to the park next to the USS Midway and sleep with mom on the damn ground?
And I want to lean out the side of the car and puke.
Part of me loves meetings like today. I like the special name tag and my own bottle of water. I like my name on the big screen and people passing me the mike. The nodders and notetakers. As I was leaving, several students came up to shake my hand, like I’d said something amazing and life-changing. I didn’t.
I should have said, “No one knows the root causes of homelessness. It’s a complete mystery.”
The only person who knows is the woman camped next to the USS Midway. Ask her. She’ll explain.
Do I Want to Be Cheryl Strayed or Her Mother?
It’s not that Cheryl Strayed hiked 1,100 miles, a trip chronicled in her book, Wild: Lost and Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s that she did it alone. She chose to be alone. No cell phone. No hiking partner. No thin string connecting her to rescue. What I admire is not the hike because I think many of us could do the hike. I admire that she wasn’t afraid to be afraid.
In a scene that will stick with me for a long time, she stops to take her boots off and rest her really messed up, blistered, damaged feet. One of her boots falls off the side of the mountain into a forest of trees below. Her decision to then throw the other boot off the side and make her way in duct-taped flip-flops pretty much tells her whole story. That’s her deal – to just keep going. My deal would be to look for a guy.
Decades of feminism that started with the unpleasantness of unshaven armpits and legs in the 70’s and now manifests in history lessons for younger colleagues haven’t gotten me to the point where I could be alone on the trail in the mountains with no boots and just keep going. I want to be that person. I want to not be afraid of being afraid. Instead, I’ve got my little internal crone of a reflex to look around for a male face every time the motor stops running, the tire goes flat, or I am emotionally out of gas and witless. It’s not clear to me how to change a reflex that sprouted when I was wearing anklets and saddle shoes and dresses with sashes that tied in a bow in the back. If the picture on the TV went fuzzy, it wasn’t my mother who climbed up on the roof to adjust the antenna. Is there a reprogramming camp where I could go for a week and emerge with Cheryl Strayed’s balls?
If I can’t be Cheryl Strayed, maybe I could be her mother. Well, not her mother, but beloved and revered like her mother. And forgiven. Her mother wasn’t perfect and their relationship wasn’t perfect. But it was unconditional. Strayed doesn’t seem to carry around a long cash register receipt of complaints and missteps, miscommunication and bungled opportunities. She chose to consider those things just context for the unconditional love she had for her mother and her mother for her. Their connection superseded all the wrongs that might have happened between them like progress on the hike superseded the loss of the boots. It’s another version of not being afraid to be afraid, if you think about it. It’s another form of magic for mothers and daughters to get to that place in their relationship. A reprogramming camp for that would have lines winding around the globe.
Ah, so much to think about, so little time. Maybe I should take a long hike.
I Wish I Could Do A Flip Turn
I am not to be pitied. In a swimming pool or anywhere else. Because when I strap on one swim fin, I can probably beat your young ass in a 25. Well, that’s probably only partly true. It is true that I can beat a few people and keep up with many and that I’m not the one that everyone has to ho-hum and heavy sigh at for going slow. And I can swim a long time without getting very tired although I can get bored and sometimes wonder if it’s possible to go to sleep while swimming. What does Diana Nyad do?
Swimming makes me feel 19. Graceful, buoyant, strong. So it irked me no end when last week at my Master’s Swim workout, I got the ‘you can’t seriously mean I have to share a lane with someone your age’ look from some twenty-something training for a triathlon who was oh, so worried she wouldn’t be able to see the timing clock so she could leave at the exact second to start her set like we were training for the fucking Olympics. She looked over and around me, encouraging me to puff like a blowfish just to fuck her up.
Roll your eyes at me, girlie. I have had the eye rolling treatment from champions (my daughters). I am numb to your eye rolling and your little mutter that you don’t think I can hear (I couldn’t actually but I could read her lips). Your little perfect pores exude aggravation that you will have to tolerate my aged, wrinkled self and my enormous swim fin. You should be so lucky to be 64 and swim so fine, little triathlon Susie.
I felt better after thinking all this. I felt like I needed to show Susie and the others in the lane that I could keep the pace. So I did for a few laps but then I convinced myself that my beautiful elegant stroke shouldn’t be disturbed by swimming in a pool of such disrespect. I decided to swim laps in the diving well, an enormous, deep and still pond at the end of the lap pool where a single teenage lifeguard sat on the diving board and watched me swim for a while and, I thought to myself, I bet he appreciates a beautiful stroke.
And then he got up and left me there alone to swim back and forth and think about being bored and maybe sleeping and loving being 19, if only in my head.
If The Phone Rings Again, Don’t Answer It
So much depends on whether you answer the phone. When my then boyfriend (now husband) wandered off for a while to give his prior girlfriend another chance and then decided to return to our little germ of a relationship, he started calling me. I sat at the kitchen table and listened to the phone ring for the better part of an hour. He told me later he just kept pressing speed dial while he was busy putting together the volunteer roster at the neighborhood agency where he worked. I tried to make it seem a lot more meaningful in the desperate somewhat maniacal way I was used to men in my life acting. With no answering machine to give me warning, I imagined that the calls, one right after the other, were about how definitely he wanted to come back to me. But I didn’t know for sure so I didn’t answer the phone. It worked out though because he’s now downstairs as I write this calling the dogs in from the backyard of the house we’ve owned for 28 years.
My dislike of phones is legendary. Given the choice, I would prefer to get in my car and drive an hour to talk to someone rather than talking on the phone. This was before I lost a good share of my hearing. Now the phone is a maddening, risky, mind-fucking experience akin to having one’s head wrapped in a pillow inside an aluminum pail while people throw nuts and bolts and small hammers and run a rasp around the edges. I hate the fucking phone.
So that’s my starting point.
A few months ago, in what may have been one of the wiser decisions of my life, I sought more expert help for my hearing problem from the Center for Communication, Hearing and Deafness. This was an important step in not simply accepting the increasing isolation that hearing loss can impose and the results have been fabulous. My in-person hearing capability is tremendously improved because of a set of technological improvements made by the Center, not the least of which is this.
This is me and my streamer.
The streamer is this amazing piece of technology that autoadjusts sound to accommodate different environments, decibel levels, voices. I can also control the volume myself — turning one guy up, another one down. The streamer also streams PHONE CALLS which means when my cell phone rings, it rings in my ears, I press a button and I’m on the phone. Except I hate the phone, I’ve always hated the phone and then I became afraid of the phone and then I became psychologically incapable of answering the phone for fear that I wouldn’t be able to understand the caller and would have to say, “Who the fuck are you?”
So in a neverending story of my hearing situation that becomes interesting in an aggravating way, I am now starting aural rehabilitation which is what people who have cochlear implants do to learn how to discern spoken language. The challenge for me is to relearn how to discern what people are saying without seeing them speak. Today I had a meeting with a guy who started talking with his hands in front of his mouth. I wanted to slap him. Not really, but you get the idea. I have to see it to hear it.
Yesterday someone motioned to my streamer and shrugged “What’s that?”
“It’s a little video camera,” I said. “Watch what you’re saying.”
It’s all so curious. All of it.
Ask Me No Questions, I’ll Tell You No Lies
One of the freaky things about having a blog on WordPress.com is that I can see the search terms that people use that brought them to my site. Sometimes, it’s pretty distressing, like when I posted about it being so hot when I adopted one of my kids in Nicaragua that the Russian girls in the rooming house where we stayed were running around in their underwear. Oh dear, you do not want to have Russian, girls, and underwear in the same blog post. You get a lot of grimy, slimy hits on your blog and will end up wanting to disinfect your keyboard every 20 minutes.
So today, I was doing one of my regular checks on how many people have read Red’s Wrap and saw that someone had gotten to the site by googling: How old is Jan Wilberg?
So I looked at my husband across the room and said, “Hey, somebody got to Red’s Wrap by googling How old is Jan Wilberg?” “Who would do that?” he asked.
Seriously, WHO would do that? I thought about a potential new business partner. I supposed he/she might do that although looking at LinkedIn would lead you pretty quick to a reasonable estimate. (Because I frogged around in college, it does shave a few years off my perceived age.)
So then I sat thinking, “How old is Jan Wilberg?”
Well. She’s old enough to know better (one of my father’s favorite sayings so had to lead off with that, whatever it means). She’s old enough to have watched the Nixon impeachment hearings with a baby on her hip. Ok, she’s old enough to remember watching the Army McCarthy hearings on a black and white TV while her mother was doing the Tuesday ironing. She’s old enough to have her father tell her he was sending her to college to find a good husband.
She’s old enough to have campaigned for Barry Goldwater, fall for a black guy, and become a Democrat almost overnight. She’s old enough to get on a bus in her college town, ride to a downtown Detroit motel and have an illegal abortion because she made the mistake of getting pregnant BEFORE Roe v. Wade.
She’s old enough to be sitting in high school English class and listen to the principal tell her the President had been shot and old enough to see his assassin shot by Jack Ruby on TV. She’s old enough to watch men walking on the moon on a 12-inch TV in married student housing at Michigan State University and go outside to look at the moon that same night and wonder how it could be.
She’s old enough to own the best music of any generation, old enough to think Mick Jagger still has his shit, old enough to not give a flying fuck about how old people think she is. And old enough to think freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
She’s old enough to wonder why somebody’s wondering how old she is, old enough to worry that her age might make people draw wrong conclusions about intelligence or her competence. Old enough to worry that people might make assumptions about her based on her age.
Old enough to wonder what the hell comes next.
But she’s also old enough to know about luck, good fortune, and acceptance. Old enough to understand gratitude and small moments. Old enough to be smarter than she has ever been before and know it.
Old enough to look forward to what’s next.
That’s how old she is.
So there, little mystery googler. That’s how old she is. All you have to do is ask.
Thank you, John Edwards
He did so many things wrong and today he finally did something right. He owned up. He said he had sinned and that no one was responsible but him. Maybe it was a ploy. I am a sucker for apologies and am hooked on the notion of redemption and starting over so I’d be fair game for a good con especially by a handsome guy.
But he looked different to me today. Not so handsome. Worn. His tie showing at the bottom of his buttoned jacket reminded me of the guys who get dressed up for a wedding having forgotten how to tie a tie to the right length. A little bit of his inner ‘hick’ seemed to be showing through.
I mentioned all this to my husband who, naturally, asked me the unexpected question which was “If you were his wife, would you be so impressed with his apology?” Of course, I don’t know what his wife would have done. I do know that most people will forgive almost anything if the transgressor owns his sin.
Tomorrow, Bill Clinton is coming to town to campaign for Tom Barrett for Governor. This is the same guy who stowed his White House intern conveniently under his desk just in case any special needs came up. But hey, he finally, finally, finally admitted to what he had done and presto/chango, he’s a statesman, a diplomat, a hero of the people, and the cutest good ol’ boy ever.
Man, you don’t need to be perfect in my book. You just need to be straight. If you fuck up, say it. That’s what John Edwards did today. He said it. He sinned. He sure did.
And then he said, “God isn’t done with me yet.”
That’s so true. Now’s the time for redemption.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501363_162-57444968/edwards-acquitted-on-1-count-mistrial-on-others/
Say Thank You
In the adoption world, it’s not cool for a parent to think that her kids should be grateful. When strangers come up and coo about how lucky your kids are to have you as their mom, you’re supposed to say, “Oh no, I’M the lucky one.” This is a conversation that takes place when adopted kids are really little, typically sitting in the grocery cart in the check-out line, looking so obviously adopted and cute beyond words. It’s then that the lady in the next line who’s been eyeing you up and down the cereal aisle lets loose with what she’s thinking. First, it’s “where are they from?’ and then it’s “they’re so lucky to have you.”
At that point, when the kids still fit in the grocery cart, an adoptive mom is grateful beyond all possible words. In that moment, it’s true that the gratitude flows from her to them. The adopted children made her a mother or made her more of a mother or fulfilled something, stilled a yearning, made her worthwhile.
When they are little, there’s no question that expecting them to feel gratitude for being adopted is crazy. They didn’t asked to be orphaned nor did they choose to be adopted. For my kids, being adopted also meant leaving their country and their culture. They lost a lot that could never be recovered.
But the equation figures differently now that they’re grown. And never did I feel that more than on Mother’s Day. On that day and in conversations at other times, I’ve felt a deep shift in our relationship. Where sometimes I’ve felt their blame, their anger, and their deep unanswerable longing for their original parents – a ‘hunger of memory’ that an adoptive parent cannot satisfy no matter what she does – on Mother’s Day, I felt their gratitude. And I should. I earned it. They should be grateful. Raising them was really hard.
It makes me happy that we have gotten to the point where we can be grateful to each other.
It changes everything and changes nothing.
Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
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