WAIVER

Various professionals involved with my mom’s care have required my signature on various waivers and documents giving permission for services, fees, etc. on her behalf.  It’s gotten to the point where someone will ask me to sign a waiver for something, and I’ll be sure I’ve already done it.  But no, it’s yet another waiver for something else.  The latest is something to do with an eye exam and glasses. Or was it the dentist? I can hardly keep track.  After all, I’m not as young as I used to be.

For some time now, in fact, I’ve been thinking of writing some meditations on aging for my writers’ group and for myself--maybe someday, indeed, for my daughters, who are just embarking on their maiden voyage.  I know in some indirect way as well I am writing it for or to, or perhaps just because of, my mom and what she’s going through as she navigates the impossibly difficult territory of getting older and losing so much.  What was that Shakespeare wrote about the seven Ages of man?  The baby mewling and puking in mother’s arms, then the schoolboy with shining morning face, then the oldster sans teeth, sans hair, sans eyes, sans everything?

Actually that’s only three Ages, but my memory is obviously failing me... in my old age.  I keep trying to do the Sunday crossword in the Globe to fend off mental deterioration, but I think I’d have to also be doing Sidoku, solving quadratic equations, and playing the violin for my strategy to work.  

But how about the Seven Ages of Woman: the baby still breastfeeding at age three (god help me); the eight-year-old who’s wise beyond her years (aka annoyingly precocious at times); the mom (that’s me); the grandmother or Nana.  Well, that’s only four, but now we have seven Ages in total if I add in the three for the men.  See, I haven’t completely lost it yet.  I’m keeping track of things.

Actually, aging seems to be a major preoccupation among a number of the fortysomething women who are my peers--even more so, interestingly, than for those who are older.  To tell the truth, I don’t know many women who are younger than forty these days, and if I’m honest I’d have to say that I simply haven’t cultivated connections with women who aren’t within five or so years of my own age.  I would even say it’s true that I encourage my  daughters to pursue friendships with kids whose parents are the same vintage as myself (and my husband, who’s actually a few years older).  It’s a generational thing.

When I started teaching at twenty-three, I was the same age as most of my freshman students:  we dressed the same, watched the same TV shows, listened to the same music. I wore very red lipstick, flashed my wedding ring, and carried a briefcase so everyone would know who the instructor was.  I would make some remark about my youth, “when dinosaurs roamed the earth,” and get a big laugh.  Now they laugh politely, but I can see in their eyes they’re thinking, “Yeah, she is a frickin’ dinosaur.  But a nice one. Kind of reminds me of my mother.”

My mom--I can hardly believe this--had me when she was twenty-six.  An impossible age, and my dad was even a year younger!  But that was the norm at the time--even a little on the late side, considering they were highschool sweethearts in the small university town where they both grew up back east.  Their own moms were both older--late thirties and settled into their careers (an office manager and a teacher, respectively)--when my parents were born:  now that was more than a little unusual at the time.  This is one of many ways I see myself as reliving the lives of my grandparents, as if their life patterns simply skipped a generation: my meticulousness (hubby calls it OCD), my long-term career (I call it good luck), my stability of marriage (anyone married that long would call it hard work).  Considering the homage I owe to my grandparents’ generation, I should be happy--shouldn’t I?--if someone calls me... “Grandma”?

Well, not exactly but you’ll see what I mean.  The week before I turned forty-seven, I walked into a Canada Post outlet (no, this is not going to be a story about going postal) to mail some presents to the kids’ cousins back east. The friendly, grey-haired Chinese man behind the counter started chatting with me about sending off so many parcels at once, and I explained that since my husband and I were not from BC originally, I spent a small fortune sending toys, books, and games, etc.  “Well,” he said, “isn’t that nice that you send all those gifts.  And those kids, I bet they love to get the presents from their Grandma.”  

“These presents aren’t from my mother, they’re from me,” I was about to explain--when I realized in one terrible instant:  he thought I was “Grandma.”  I choked back what would have been a sputtered and incoherent response, and settled for a smile and a nod as I shelled out $147.  Argh!

Later that week, on my way back from teaching at UBC, a kindly teenager offered me her seat on the bus. “Please, ma’am,” she said, pointing to the space she had just vacated.  Heavily laden with books and papers, and with a sore back after a long day, I gratefully accepted.  As for the “ma’am,” although I could have done without it, as the saying goes, suck it up, buttercup.  It’s so much easier that way.

But Karma Chameleon (and yes, I know I’m dating myself with that reference) has a way of balancing things out for us, and it was only a few days later when I found myself waiting for a bus in front of the Hudson Bay store downtown.  I hardly ever give money to buskers, but this guy was pretty good, and I happened to have some spare change in my pocket.  As I threw the coins in his guitar case, the busker caught my eye, smiled, and said, “Thank you, miss.”  “Miss!”

I was so excited, I texted my friend Penny right away.  “Busker called me ‘miss’!!!!” (several exclamation marks)...

“Was he blind?” she texted back.

Well, so much for Karma & co.

And yet, most of the time, and mostly because I have wonderful friends like Penny who keep me sane,  I seem to be more or less staying afloat.  I watch, with admiration, the dozens of Asian seniors doing Tai Chi in the Lansdowne Centre Mall on my way to Kwantlen Polytechnic.  A recorded chant, accompanied by traditional music, guides them through a series of careful and intricate movements:  their faces are serene, even as I bull-in-a-china-shop my way alongside them, hauling my squeaky-wheeled briefcase and clicking my officious little heels as I speed towards my work.  Their instructions are in Chinese, of course, and because the only words I know are from Szechuan restaurants and a couple of anecdotes from my students, I hear only these stock phrases, which can’t possibly be what the recorded voice is saying:

“Guy mei bow” (coconut bun).

“Guy lan” (Chinese broccoli).

“Hum sup gwuy lo” (tacky white person).

Although the odds are pretty good, if you’re a Chinese senior doing Tai Chi in a shopping mall, you will be passed by a tacky white person.  Me, for instance.

So I click happily on with my heels, hoping and (now) expecting to be offered a seat later on transit by a polite young person. I see myself walking through life this way, wheeling and squeaking along with my burdens, managing all right most of the time, finding joy where I can.

Until I get the telephone call and the emails from my mom’s church friends, concerned that she’s not happy, that there’s something really wrong, that her personal dignity is not being respected at the care facility, etc.  What the fuck?  For some reason this sends me off the deep end and before I know it I’m on the phone yelling and crying at the minister (no doubt I will go straight to hell for this when I die, no purgatory for me), and saying that I can’t possibly have the “gentle conversation” they’d like me to have with my mom to try and find out how she’s doing and what if anything is really wrong.  

“I don’t know what kind of relationship you think I have with her that you think we could ever possibly have such a conversation!” I blurt through my sobs.  (I seem to have forgotten to mention the “easy out” of this proposed “conversation,” which is that my mom can hardly talk).  “The thing is, it’s the end of the semester, and I have literally hundreds of term papers and final exams to mark over the next ten days!  Did I mention I’ve been working two full-time jobs to keep my family from going bankrupt?  I can’t possibly take on one more thing!  All I can do is visit her once a week, and bring the kids with me, and try to stay cheerful and upbeat, and sign the latest waiver. That’s all I’m good for, believe me, signing waivers and such. I can’t have an intimate conversation with her.  I can’t. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, I don’t know what I’m...” I trail off as words fail me.  Waves of sadness wash over me.  I’m sinking.

Eventually the phone call is over, and I have a feeling the kindly and well-intentioned minister will think twice before contacting me again and suggesting that I have a “gentle conversation” with my mother.  The minister offers these words of comfort:  “We all know you’re doing your best.  It must be so hard for you; you have so much on your plate right now.  We’re all praying for you.  It’s amazing you’ve been coping as well as you have.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Forget Shakespeare.  To paraphrase Stevie Smith’s words in a poem from 1957, I’m much further out than they think--and not waiving, but drowning.