Back To It

I’m not much good at writing about things that make me happy but I am going to try to talk about a few good things in this entry.

Here is what my brain would rather do:  Comb over problems, figure out what what I have to do next, make sure things are more or less “in order” — bills are paid, car is maintained, house is all right, my body doesn’t hurt, I am fed, Jennie is fed, work is OK, I am on top of projects and my manager is happy with my output and so on forever.

Here is what my brain has more trouble doing:  Relaxing, setting my own unhappiness aside, stopping the relentlessly critical internal dialogue.

Over the weekend I tried to relax from the last few months of what has, at times, felt like non-stop errands, chores, care-taking, and obligations.  Jennie and I managed to get away from the house in Natick and go to Newport, RI to unwind.

She’s been almost breaking down under the stress of caring for her mom who has Alzheimer’s and is declining.  Parent care — the logistics of it — the doctor’s appointments, the constant monitoring of mental and physical states, making sure they’re eating, checking their pills, listening to them on the phone babble incoherently about this and that — is terrible, but what’s been worse is the emotional toll it takes on Jennie.  She feels alone in her struggle.  I mean she’s not, I am here to support her, to help with some amount of logistics, and also to care for her when she gets home at the end of a long day so she doesn’t have to lift a finger around the house.  And there are hundreds of thousands of people in the US alone who are dealing with similar issues, waging the battle of caretaking declining parents.  But facts don’t change how she feels. Watching her mom and dad decline daily — dealing with horrible things like bodily functions and the continued shock of her mother occasionally looking right at her face and saying “I don’t know you” — it makes Jennie alternately weepy and angry — the anger comes from the fact that her brother isn’t doing enough to help.

So somehow we dumped care on her brother for the weekend and left on Friday.  It’s a two hour drive and we talked about her parents and the care situation for most of it.  One thing I hate about talking about this is that it doesn’t seem to do any good.  We don’t reach any new conclusions or solutions.  It’s just bitching, complaining, lamenting.  Some themes:

I wish my parents had a retirement plan other than “Let’s make Jennie care for us.”  

I can’t believe they’re both going to go around the same time, they’re both failing at the same time.

My stupid brother isn’t doing enough and wants to make everything my problem.

I can’t take being with my mom when she can’t even remember who I am.

Nobody understands what I’m going through.

Over and over and over again.

I want to talk about anything else.  The whole point of getting away is to talk about other things.  I can’t talk about my own internal world — what’s going on with me.  She doesn’t want to hear it.  She thinks she has the worst life in the world right now and her pain is so great that she can’t see beyond it to anyone else, including me, who she supposedly loves.

I wonder sometimes if she loves me or just enjoys how much easier I make her life because I care for her so intently, the way I might say I love a car because it doesn’t break down but I don’t actually love it — a car has no personality, no real soul.  It strikes me how uncurious she is about me.

We hit the road mid-day on Friday.  Traffic is heavy and I say things like how are there so many people on the road at 2:30 on Friday in mid-December?  It’s not like people are going down to the Cape — are they?  Does anyone work until 5 anymore?  

I’m trying to shift subjects but two seconds later she turns it back to her parents again.

Sometimes she accuses me of trying to change the subject and I don’t deny it.  You say the same things over and over again.

I start to think that she needs to be on anti-anxiety medication or something.  Her brain is looping.

Finally when we get to Newport and we’re hitting the main drag, she’s forced to see the outside world instead of her inside world.  Shops and people and dogs being walked, the strip of blue ocean behind the buildings on our right side.  A woman in a fur coat crosses the road without looking at traffic and everyone is forced to slow down for her.  Wow she’s fucking entitled, Jennie says, making me laugh.

Yeah, I say.  Not even at a crosswalk or anything.  And what’s with the fur?  Isn’t that out of style? 

She looks like cruella deville

But without the stupid cigarette

I think in the live action reboot they took the cigarette holder away

Jesus.  You can’t even have a villain smoke anymore in a Disney movie?

Nope, no smoking anytime, smoking is bad for you.

The rest of the street is jammed with places to shop and eat, an oyster bar, an ice cream place, the Newport Fudgery (“Let’s get fudge later!” Jennie squeals).  Antique shops and stores to buy ski equipment and places to get christmas ornaments and knick-knacks, a store full of paintings, a thai restaurant, more than a few coffee shops and cafes.  It’s a dense wall on both sides, more than we can properly look at, and gives one a sense of excitement, that if you care to explore this street on foot, you’ll find stuff you never knew existed.

We find the parking lot, I take the bags, we check in.  We make conversation with the staff inside — it’s a wonderful hotel, a renovated old mansion, updated with things like Central Air and WiFi, but retaining the old fireplaces and ornate moldings and finishings.  It’s been decorated festively:  boughs and garland and candy jars and a big christmas tree with a million white lights that Jennie instantly falls in love with.  One of the advantages of being out in the world is that Jennie is forced to pay attention to new stuff.  It’s one thing to try to be ‘present’ at home, where everything around you is familiar and droll — can you really be present, soaking up the details of your kitchen table for the thousandth time?  No, you’re bored, so instead you retreat to your internal thoughts, which, if you are Jennie, consist, mostly, of worrying about your parents.  It’s easier to be ‘present’ when in a world of newness and novelty, when strangers are asking you things like “Have you stayed with us before?” and “Will you be joining us for afternoon tea in the parlor?”  Promises of peach coffeecake and ginger brownies are made.  I look at Jennie and I can just see it:  Her frame of mind is shifting.  She’s starting to be here with me, talking to the locals, looking at the world around her, instead of hiding in her head.

When I have experiences like this I often think:  Yeah, money definitely can buy you happiness.   A nice hotel and friendly staff and good treats — all purchased with money, free time, and a car — they can all bring you happiness, and quite easily.  People who think money can’t buy you happiness are either deluding themselves or haven’t experienced both states:  both having money and not having money.  Not having money sucks balls.

I have wasted most of my writing time going on and on about the trip down and how Jennie was doing, I can see that now, but it’s too late and I only have ten minutes now.  Over the weekend I mostly managed to stay out of my own head and instead paid attention to Jennie and the world around us.  We ate snacks, we bought fudge and jelly beans and salt water taffy.  We listened to crappy christmas music in stores and at restaurants — the oyster bar we went to on Saturday night had a track list that featured songs combining classic christmas tunes with Raggae of all things, a feat which left my head spinning and not knowing whether to be irritated or laugh.  The hat store I went into had one of the sappiest good ‘ol boy style country music voices I’ve ever heard singing “Away in the Manger.”  It was so hokey and over the top emotional that I gagged and left, telling Jennie that no store that played music that shitty would be taking MY money, no matter how much I need a hat, no sirreee, and she was laughing at me the whole time.  She said it sounded like he was trying to “Out-Christmas” the world somehow.

Another store had a fussy kid in it, red faced, in the middle of a meltdown, refusing to walk another inch, and exasperated parents trying to convince her to do otherwise.  “You’re too old to be carried,” said the parents.  “No, you’re too old,” said the kid back.  “Too old, too old, too old, bwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.”  We heard drunk people outside of our hotel room at 11:30 at night and marveled that people were out in 25 degree weather this late getting trashed.  And then spent time reminiscing about being younger — times in our own lives when we would be out late doing exactly that.  We cuddled and made love and watched two entertaining horror movies, the grade B classics Puppet Master 2 and 3, in a row, on a cable TV channel called Comet.  (Jennie remarked: see, I have the talent to find the channels that show the worst movies, no matter where we are.  The only thing I could think of to respond to this was you sure are a keeper, sweetie and I got a playful punch to my arm as a reward)

There were more exhausting periods, too.  She brought up her parents here and there and I had to bite my tongue from saying awful things like “jesus christ please don’t talk about them I am so fucking sick of them” like I wanted to.  Instead I just listened.  And she told some stories I’ve heard too much — stories she’s told way too many times, stories about her friend Konstantina and stories about guys she’s dated in the past and stories about her time in film school with her old friend Peter.  But instead of saying “I’ve heard that one before” like I sometimes do when I’m short tempered, I let her talk and pretended it was the first time she’d told me any of these things.  I was, at times, bored and disengaged but I think this is true at times during every day of my life.  We ate wonderful food out at restaurants and let the staff at the hotel take care of us when we were under their roof and we talked and laughed a whole bunch.  It felt like we were a normal couple for the most part, just out and about, exploring a new place, killing time, doing our best to enjoy our often difficult lives.

We looked outward at the world, and outward at one another, all the while allowing some of the light around us to penetrate into our darkening internal spaces.  I’d like to think there was some healing, recovery, and recouperation.

But now it’s Monday and we’re already doing our normal adult things again — I’m getting texts from Jennie complaining about this and that, and I just want to ignore her and work on things for my own job instead of constantly, constantly supporting her own problems and issues and family.

PS I wish I wasn’t such a complainy-assed bitch sometimes.

PPS we will get an update on our Science Baby next Monday, 12/19.  It’d better be OK.  Here’s hoping.