One of my big takeaways from the AARP seminar on Family Caregivers was that stress is a silent killer. Stress causes inflammation. Stress causes the production of cortisol. You must learn to manage the stress of being a caregiver.
Duh.
My expanding waistline is all the evidence I need of my overproduction of cortisol, and by the time my next physical rolls around, I will have aged ten years. But hey--thanks for the info.
Stress follows me wherever I go now. I can't leave shit behind. Even in my dreams. Last night, I had made buddies with a cool black dog. He was somebody else's, but he really took to me and I to him. We became real pals. I don't know where this all took place. We were on a trip, maybe. I wasn't at home. There was a girl somewhere in the mix, but I can't remember who.
Oh, God. . . am I telling you my dreams? Sorry. I was trying to get to the part where I watched an alligator eat my little buddy. It didn't happen quickly. The dog fought it, but it was useless. I woke in a sweat.
At least it wasn't my dog.
But what do you make of that, doc? What do you think it means?
That part is telling. People don't fully remember or can't fully recount a dream, and yet Dr. Freud thought they were revealing. I may have repressed a major component of the dream that would change Freud's unravelling of my tale.
But surely. . . the black dog. . . you know?
I had a million things to do when I left my mother yesterday. I hung out with her until eleven and knew I'd be back in a few hours, but those hours were worrisome. I drove to a pharmacy to get drugs. I went to a hardware store to rent a carpet cleaner. I sprayed my lawn with insecticide. I did laundry. What I WANTED to do was go somewhere with a camera. It was three and I still had clothes in the dryer. I decided to hop up to the Cafe for a mimosa if I could get one.
When I pulled into the tiny parking lot, it was full. It was full but for the handicapped space. I pulled in. A man, maybe my own age but probably much younger, with hair as long as mine but thin and very greasy, stared at me through his thick lenses. He stared hard, but I have learned that is what people have to do when their vision has gone to shit and I don't take as much offense as once I did. I reached into the glove box and pulled out the handicapped parking hang tag and slipped it over the rearview mirror.
He quit staring.
When I walked into the cafe, there was a long line to the counter. It was hot. But I hadn't been here for a long time and I needed to write something and I wanted the mimosa. Maybe I wanted to write something and needed the mimosa. Either way. . . I waited. And when I turned around, the greasy thinning long haired man with glasses was standing in line behind me. He was in ragged clothing, disheveled. We stood for a very long while but as we moved forward, he moved up beside me. Strange. I was one person from the counter when he moved up ahead of me. I thought about saying, "What the fuck are you doing, pops?" but I changed my mind. I decided to relax and see what he was doing. And when the fellow in front of me moved, so did the greasy fellow. He had a little open daybook with all sorts of numbers scribbled in it. He was humming and shuffling and showed the girl behind the counter some numbers. The little daybook looked ancient. The counter girl leaned forward and nodded and started making him a coffee. He took out a wad of bills and counted out four dollars. She handed him back a quarter, which he put into his pocket, grinned, and said, "Keep the change." The counter girl giggled.
It was "my" girl, the cute cafe con leche girl who makes me Sunday mimosas.
"Well, hello you."
"Is my dad o.k.?" I asked nodding toward the back of the greasy fellow.
She didn't giggle or smile, just nodded.
"Is it too busy today for a mimosa?
"Not for you. Maybe for somebody else, but never for you."
I know it is a game, but fuck. . . .
She got a couple of oranges and a bottle of Prosecco and headed to the juicer. The line behind me was long. In a bit, she came back with a big glass of mimosa juice.
"How have you been?" she asked.
"Bad. How about you."
"The same."
"Bad?"
She nodded in the affirmative.
"What's wrong?"
"Just life stuff."
"You break up with your boy?"
"No."
"Do you want to?"
"Maybe. I don't know." She laughed. "God, I shouldn't say that. Don't tell him."
It turns out that she went back to school and didn't tell her boss, and now she is juggling her time.
"Do you still go to dance classes?"
"I cut it down to once a week. I used to go to the gym five days a week. Now I get there maybe two."
"I thought you looked a little soft."
"What?!"
"Kidding."
This whole time she was trying to run my credit card.
"This machine is slow today. Your zip code is ________, right?"
"What the fuck? Are you shopping online or what?"
She knew my zip code? How.
"I saw you running one day on the Boulevard."
"No, I would never. I was on the next street over."
"Well, I remembered and figure you must live in that zip code."
Yea. . . it's just a game, but fuck. . . .
The girl already has a bachelor's degree and she works in a jewelry store as a silversmith, but she said she wants to be a nurse. I shook my head no.
"I don't want to work in a hospital. I want to be a midwife."
She's like a new age hippie. I kept shaking my head no.
My card finally went through. And so. . . .
When I got back to my mother's house, she seemed to be doing o.k. She was watching the news. Fox. It seemed to make her happy. I tried not to listen, but oh, my. . . what lies those people tell. I began making dinner. I was going to use all the leftovers we had to make a "Leftover Stew." I took the chicken from the night before and put it in a pot of water to boil. It was a whole chicken without the legs which we had eaten the night before with our lentils and rice. I chopped carrots and celery and potatoes I'd brought from my house which would just sit there and rot if I didn't use them up. I put them in the pot with the chicken and seasoned them. Then I made a cocktail. My mother decided to come sit outside with me. We chatted and when my cocktail was done, I went back inside to check on the soup. She followed me back in. After about an hour, I took the chicken out, deboned it, and put the chicken meat back in the soup. Then I got the half bag of spinach I had brought from my house and dumped it into the pot along with leftover garbanzo beans and the brown jasmine rice and lentils from the night before. I stirred the pot until the spinach had wilted, then tasted the broth. I seasoned it a bit more and turned off the burner.
Leftover Stew. I was proud of myself. All of that would have gotten thrown in the garbage in a few more days. Nobody would have eaten any of it. But I have been shocked by the grocery bill lately, and I am becoming a thrifty food guy. The stew was good--but I should have had an onion or two. Still, it was really good.
After dinner, I went to the car an dragged out he rented carpet cleaner. It looked complex, and I sat reading the instructions for awhile to figure it all out. And when I had, I said, "I'll do this in the morning. I don't want to do it at all, but tomorrow I will."
I cleaned up the kitchen and poured a drink. Outside, the sun was going down. Of course outside. I got my mother's many pills together in a little cup. She took them at eight. At eight-thirty, she went to bed.
I watched something on YouTube, but not for long. I checked my emails and texts. The wedding in the far north went well, I was told by both mother and son. There was a text form my Miami friend. She's been on a long romp in Scotland with her mother and sister. They were in London now. She's been sending me pictures. Tonight's was a Photo Booth headshot of her. Silly girl stuff that I have never tired of. I will never, I think. My intellect developed more than my emotions, I'm afraid, but my emotions are often in the driver's seat going far too fast through the curves.
"Don't be stupid," my intellect cries from the passenger seat.
"Shut the fuck up. . . I'm driving now!!!!"
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