Tuesday, September 15, 2020

The Itinerant Portraitist: Creativity In The Time of Coronavirus


After months of sheltering-in-place, working alone on a series of large scale oil paintings in her loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, one of the early hot spots of the Covid contagion, the Itinerant Portraitist, Brenda Zlamany ventured out into the world again, though as she noted, “a socially distanced one,” to paint watercolor portraits of 57 mask wearing subjects from direct observation at Glen Falls House, a historic hotel located in the Catskills town of Round Top, New York.


“My zip code in Williamsburg was the epicenter of the epicenter, but I stayed at home, deeply committed to Brooklyn, New York City, and my community of artists,” Brenda told me when I called her after seeing images of her wonderful new portraits of people in masks pop into my Facebook feed.


I met Brenda over a year ago, when she visited Sonoma County in California, following the Tubbs fire of 2017, as part of her Itinerant Portraitist project on the impact of climate change in America. Starting in 2018, she traveled to Sonoma, Key West, and Alaska, painting portraits and recording personal narratives from her subjects for future use in a documentary film that will accompany an exhibition of the paintings.


She describes this particular project on her web site: “I have recorded hundreds of personal narratives, including the dangers of whaling in a shorter season with less ice; being stuck in traffic with children while fleeing from hurricane Irma; the perils of driving a bus on the only road through Denali, where landslides resulting from melting permafrost are common; and how to pack chickens into pillowcases for a fast escape by car from a wildfire. I’ve also recorded conversations with scientists about ways to address the crisis, with realtors about the dangerous roles real estate plays, and with many others on the front lines, such as firefighters and politicians.”

 

The day she painted me, as I volunteered at Goatlandia near Santa Rosa, California, she included in my portrait a huge Red Waller pig, Henrietta, who lives at the non-profit animal rescue sanctuary.  In her backpack, Brenda carried a camera lucida, a drawing device dating back to the Renaissance. As we sat for the session in Henrietta’s shed, I told her the story of the pig’s rescue from a fire pit. 

     


When she mounted her iPhone precariously on the wall of Henrietta’s shed to record a video of us, and opened her sketchbook to begin, I sensed that I had met a kindred spirit, a feeling I suspect many of Brenda’s subjects have.  Henrietta, definitely fell for Brenda and even tried to eat her watercolors. We had a lively session to say the least. I recognized her as a fellow storyteller, with an interesting set of tools and a highly developed gift for not only capturing her subjects, but for truly understanding her fellow creatures.




Describing the Itinerant Portraitist as a “conceptual project that in some ways might walk a line between fine art and kitsch,” Brenda explained how something very special happens as the artist collaborates with her subjects. People participate in their portraits, watching Brenda work in her sketchbook that lays open flat, so that the subject can see the image as it emerges.  Her subjects feel profoundly “seen” as  they open up and talk about their experiences, which informs what Brenda creates. “It’s kind of like therapy, or confession,” Brenda noted.


The result of the session is a portrait, and in the Glen Falls House project, a limited edition print, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting local non-profit organizations. Brenda always takes digital photographs of her subjects holding their portraits.  But it is the series of portraits that represent something much larger. 


What struck me as unique about her particular Itinerant Portraitist “brand,” is that Brenda seeks out these personal narratives to make sense of complicated societal issues. She is doing what is perhaps, one of the most important undertakings of the artist.  In the faces of everyday people, the firefighters, residents who lost their businesses and homes, local officials and community volunteers Brenda painted in Sonoma, or the people who came to Glen Falls House, she manages to convey both the trauma and the resilience of a community. I found and continue to find her work moving. 


I stayed in touch with this unique visual storyteller, and now, a little over a year later, I was curious to hear how the Covid pandemic had impacted her decade long passion project, The Itinerant Portraitist. As we talked, another disastrous climate event was unfolding on the West Coast, with fires burning out of control throughout California. I told Brenda that sadly, I was no longer volunteering at Goatlandia due to Covid, but the non-profit was actively rescuing animals from the local fires.   


When I asked Brenda what Covid time had been like for her, she told me, “At first I thought that we would all get Covid and die. At its peak in New York, 800 people were dying each day; the ambulances that passed our building all night kept us awake.”  She went on to observe that the pandemic revealed that “there is definitely a caste system in the art world.”  She explained, “There were those who could run, and those who stayed in part because they could not leave.”  Brenda stayed put in her Brooklyn community, and ordered massive quantities of art supplies for the lockdown.


As I settled into the work of writing this new piece about her, I noticed another posting on Brenda’s Facebook page.  It was a video she took on the rooftop of her loft, on September 11, 2001, as the World Trade Center Towers went up in flames.  She’s holding Oona, her one-year old daughter, as she processes this distressing event with her artist friends, also on the roof. They watch a plume of smoke engulf the buildings, and the sense of a local community in crisis banding together is palpable. Brenda observed that interestingly, many artists left the city then, as well.  It occurred to me that paradoxically, while Brenda frequently travels the world as The Itinerant Portraitist, she is deeply grounded in her own local community, one where people have experience pulling together to support each other in horrific times. 


Before the COVID lockdown in mid-March, Jane Hart of Lemon Sky Projects, invited Brenda to do a residency at Glen Falls House, a historic hotel in the Catskills. The terms were never finalized, but the project was not grounded in a specific issue and would probably not have been part of The Itinerant Portraitist, which is as Brenda explained, “ an issue-driven project.”  She describes it as, “a multi-year exploration of the constructive effects of portraiture in communities around the world.”


 “The Glen Falls House temporarily closed and when it reopened, the Gallery where we were going to exhibit the portraits became a grab-and-go sandwich shop because the hotel’s restaurant had closed due to the Covid indoor dining ban,” she continued. The residency was put on hold and Brenda kept painting in her beloved Brooklyn.


Brenda incorporated a circus theme into her Covid lockdown artwork, using images of circus performers, in the tradition of Picasso, Goya, Toulouse Lautrec, Max Beckman, George Seurat, Watteau, and Calder, an apt metaphor for current times, and painted with joy and purpose, alone in her loft except for, Oona, whose college in Atlanta, Emory University, had sent its students home.


“I’ve been painting for myself,” Brenda reflected, “It’s like you don’t have a career. It’s just you. My daughter uses a term, FOMO– fear of missing out.” With no openings to attend, no museums and galleries to visit, Brenda also took a  break from social media, resisting the constant urge to share, and she returned to her early solitary studio practice, conquering her own FOMO tendencies and perhaps, discovered a greater authenticity.



“You found your creative bubble,” I observed, acknowledging how powerful, absorbing, and restorative artistic work is in such a dire time in human history. When so much destruction surrounds us, creation is ultimately our best defense and salvation. I felt happy for Brenda that she had transformed her Covid lockdown into what she described as a magical time; still, I wondered what made her want to pursue the Glen Falls House residency, which by nature of the experience, seemed to me to defy the idea of social distancing.  Her Itinerant Portraitist work, unlike her recent solitude, is socially immersive.  


Brenda chronicled how as things gradually opened up around her and the Covid infection rate declined in the city, she cautiously re-emerged. “In April, I left my studio for the first time and drove past closed museums and galleries and boarded up shops. In May, I started walking with a few friends. Then I went to some BLM protests where people masked up.  I saw that being outdoors with people wearing masks hadn’t spread the virus, so it felt less risky to go out. I did yoga in the park in small groups and had started to have a bit of a social life.”


Motivated by her curiosity about what the lives of the artists she knew who left the city to resettle in upstate New York looked like, and her own desire to resume The Itinerant Portraitist project, Brenda began to rethink how she could pursue the Glen Falls House residency. 



             

One of her first considerations was whether she could maintain a safe distance outdoors from her subjects in what had previously been a more physically intimate encounter.  She decided to use the loading dock outside of her Brooklyn loft to do some test portraits of friends.  “That worked out fine,” she said.


Next, she had to figure out how to exhibit the finished portraits; she remembered that at a previous portrait performance event at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, she had hung her watercolors in plastic sleeves on a clothesline between two trees. She ordered more sleeves with the intent of finding an outdoor spot where they could be hung. Fortuitously, at Glen Falls House, there was an outdoor tent with cables near the ceiling, perfect for hanging the watercolors.


After arriving at the Catskills hotel, she immediately set up her outdoor studio and within an hour, started to paint her subjects, who arrived at their scheduled sessions wearing their required masks. I asked how this differed from her previous experience in Saudi Arabia, where she painted portraits of women in full hijabs. 


“In Saudi Arabia, I learned that I had to pose my subject's eyes. Even though 2/3’s of their face was not visible,” Brenda recalled, "all the parts of the face are connected. While I cannot see what's going on below, the eyes change as the muscles in the face move to create different expressions. Sometimes I would need to say to someone, ‘would you please hold a smile for a minute, your eyes look sad and I do not think you are a sad person.’”


What she discovered as local workers, guests of the hotel, and artists who had fled the city to the upstate New York, participated in her Glen Falls House project, was this: “The men, women, and children from 6 to 70 years old, used their masks to make a statement.”


“I did not want to style them,” Brenda went on. Her subjects often showed up with several different masks and asked for advice. A conversation about what various patterns might signal eschewed. Most people, however, very deliberately chose masks they wore. They discussed fashion with Brenda and came sporting a variety of accessories. They requested that the artist make specific messages on their t-shirts, hats, and masks legible in the portraits. 


“If there wasn’t Covid, and I had the whole face, I would not have focused so much on the props,” Brenda noted. “I can tell any story in a face, but with only the eyes, everything else has so much more meaning.” 


One woman, a local artist who lives in a vast natural setting, wore a knife around her neck.




Brenda requested that another subject hold a chainsaw that he used for hotel grounds maintenance. An insistent subject asked Brenda to paint the rings she wore on every finger of her hands, as each one had significance to her. “These details became the psychological content of the portraits,” Brenda said.

                    



When I asked if people talked more or less with their masks on, Brenda described her subjects as desperate to talk. “The Itinerant Portraitist is a conversation driven project, a collaboration between artist and subject,” Brenda said. “We are on a journey together; a person uses me to see how they are seen.  The project is about communities discovering who they are.”  


After months of social isolation, the people came to have their portraits done at Glen Falls House, hungry for connection.  “They spoke about the narrative content of their clothing and jewelry more than they normally would, Brenda reported. “The sessions went on longer than usual. We kept talking as we covered everything about our lives.” Brenda found that she too needed to talk.


An emergency room doctor wearing a pink bandana reassured Brenda that in a second wave of the pandemic we won’t lose as many people because of better treatment options to replace intubating patients.




A woman and her young daughter proudly showed Brenda how they had dyed fabric and stitched the masks they made together as a fun lockdown activity.




A man wearing a multi-colored mask with fish on it and a black t-shirt that said, “THAT’S A HORRIBLE IDEA. What time?” told Brenda that he wore the shirt to send a funny message to his father, who is dying.



An illustrious former club owner/ local realtor and shop keeper covered in tattoos, showed up in a mask with a bright red mouth painted on it, with her blind incontinent dog. The dog during the session had a boner which Brenda documented in a portrait that made me laugh out loud. The conversation between Brenda and the woman ranged from boisterous to intimate. “She expressed concern about an upcoming trip she had scheduled to take her son to visit colleges,” Brenda recalled.




One boy wore a mask that said “Soda - Drugs,” from a pharmacy in Shelter Island, a destination he was lobbying his parents to take him to before his school resumed in a few weeks. “He wore that mask to send a signal to them,” Brenda explained.


A masculine looking guy with a bright green buzzcut showed up in a pink children’s mask with Pandas on it, and told Brenda that he liked the contrast in his look.  Another man in a blue rimmed visor wore a scarf mask with a drawing of a dinosaur on it. (I’m not sure what the significance of the dinosaur was, but extinction came to mind.)




Another subject wore a mask with a button pinned to it that said “Hudson Safe,” his message to his community to encourage mask wearing. 



The owner of Glen Falls House and also a local music venue in Brooklyn, forced to temporarily close, wore a t-shirt that he has been selling as a fundraiser to help out his employees with the expectation that it might get more attention when posted on Instagram.


Brenda didn’t recognize the very business-like woman who worked at the front desk whose portrait she had painted.  Her  face had been covered by a scarf, her cowboy hat, and glasses. When Brenda glimpsed the woman a few days later without her mask, “I said to her, ‘oh my god, is that you?’  She had such a beautiful face.” A few days into the residency, Brenda adjusted her session protocol, and asked her subjects if they could give her a quick peek of their features so that she could attempt to include the information hidden beneath the mask in the portrait. 



Portrait number #3 that Brenda painted, is of a resident from the nearby town of Coxsackie, who had gone to college at Wesleyan with Brenda.  The woman learned that Brenda was coming to Glen Falls House, and signed up for a portrait session.  Over 30 years ago, the woman asked her parents to purchase Brenda’s Senior thesis exhibition artwork for her graduation present. The woman invited Brenda over for dinner at her home, where Brenda’s etchings hung on the walls. “A friendship that never happened, happened,” Brenda described.



                                        
What I love about Brenda’s forays in the world as The Itinerant Portraitist, is that she never knows what is going to unfold or what stories she and her subjects will ultimately share. The stories have stories, revealing a colorful collage of connection, exploring what it means to be human and to belong to a community.  In specificity lies the universal.

“It was a bit of a shock to my system to do 57 portraits, after months of painting alone in my loft,” Brenda admitted. The event, attended by people who had come to the Catskills to vacation, or who lived and worked in the area, while sometimes challenging in the backdrop of the pandemic, proved successful on many levels.




As I scanned the series of masked faces Brenda painted at Glen Falls House, I realized how perfectly Brenda conveyed peoples’ desire to carry on with their lives. Her Itinerant Portraitist project, captures the zeitgeist of the moment. Brenda optimistically posited, as we concluded our conversation. “It may be a crisis that can fix things.”


Brenda hopes to show this collection of portraits back home in the New York City area; she recently applied for a grant for a project called The Itinerant Portraitist: Local Heroes. She’d like to do portraits and record the stories of essential workers in downtown Brooklyn. The Itinerant Portraitist, like many of us, misses her life of traveling from place to place. Her next exploration may very well take place close to home, as her journey continues.


I can hardly wait to hear about what she discovers, that is if I survive the West Coast fires, and the global pandemic, not to mention the results of the critical election this fall. I will take inspiration from people like Brenda, who make up my community of creative souls, determined to make things better. 




All images are by Brenda Zlamany. Subjects are in order of appearance: Jonathan Picco, Sue Zemel and Henrietta,  Minnie Keene, Portia Munson, Ray Ackerman, Genna Yarkin, Tiffany Fieldings, Ivy, Hugh Haggerty, Deb Parker, Flynn Brier, Dyllon Young, Shaheer, Jonathan Lerner, Greg Brier, Jacqueline Farrara, Gail Marowitz, and Brenda Zlamany

 








Thursday, April 9, 2020

Shirley and the Electronic Collar



About 5 months ago I met a couple on Dillon Beach while walking the dogs. They had three well behaved dogs off leash -- a pitbull mutt,  a terrier mutt. and a border collie. Percy, our Corgi enjoyed chasing a ball with the border collie, and we became dog friends.  

Recently, I noticed that the pit bull mix wore an electric collar so I asked about it. The woman showed me her remote control and explained how the collar worked. She put it on each of my dogs to demonstrate its function, and they both responded to the tone and vibrate prompts like a charm.  Usually, Percy and Sadie selectively listen to me. Sadie is capable of running far away when the moment strikes her, and both dogs are incorrigible when it comes to eating crabs and other beach crap. I decided to order them collars.

Yesterday, I used the new collars and walked the whole expanse of the beach without needing to put them on leash. I wore the remote around my neck, and toggled between dog 1, and dog 2, sending them tones and vibrations when they tried to eat crabs, or started running away.

This morning, confident that I had them under control, I started down the beach.  Sadie took one look at me, then looked away, and suddenly took off.  I sent her a tone, then a vibration, and while she stopped for just a split second, defiant, she ran in the opposite direction.  Percy followed after her, and they ran into the empty beach parking lot, then headed up the hill towards the Dillon Beach store.  

I finally caught up with them, put them back on leash, and returned to the beach, at which point I saw my friend with her dogs.  I explained what had happened, and she encouraged me to keep working with Sadie.  When Sadie headed off on her own or didn’t respond to my voice command, I should send her a signal, making sure she understood that I was in charge, not her.

After the woman, who is a rugged, no nonsense, slightly gruff type in her sixties, instructed me, Percy played with the border collie for a while.  Then Sadie trotted away from us.  “Zap her,” said the woman. I hit the vibrate button; Sadie bolted once again towards the parking lot, fleeing me and the remote control I wore around my neck; this time she headed to the right, on the road towards the campground. The woman helped me chase after her and Percy.

When we finally caught Sadie, roaming in the sand dunes, she was clearly agitated; she looked at me and shook; she wouldn’t even accept a treat.

“Sadie has always been in charge,” the woman observed. “Now you are in control and she is reacting.”  She told me that I was welcome to come to her nearby farm to train Sadie; she has a huge yard enclosed with a fence. “She’ll get it eventually,” she said, noting that little Percy seems to have adapted to the collar quite well.

As we exchanged phone numbers, the woman asked me my name “I’m Shirley,” she told me.  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “You’re Shirley. My mom, who died this past August, was named Shirley.”

I thanked Shirley for her help and told her I would give her a call, and that I would see her soon on the beach.  

As I resumed my walk, Sadie would not move.  She laid down in the sand, and I had to pull her along.  I detoured off the beach and walked around the neighborhood for the rest of our morning exercise, all the while astounded that my mom, Shirley, had somehow shown up in this battle of wills.

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Spinnin' Around


“I’ve been writing stories about my mother for a fucking long time, and I’m still writing about her; it’s all I can do,” I tell my friend Donna, when I describe the latest bizarre chapter in the saga of my mom’s dementia.   As she loses what’s left of her mind and now her body, I struggle not to lose my mind, trying to navigate tough end-of-life realities.

The caretaker at the small board and care home, where I moved my mother three months ago, instructed me to call Hospice by the Bay, when after a series of mini-strokes my mother started to seriously decline. 

Ironically, though the kind and competent Hospice team of professionals (a nurse and doctor and social worker) agree that my mom is in end stages of her life and should be made comfortable, kept in bed, and administered morphine and anti-anxiety medication, the caregiver, who has a complicated past that involves being a child of Holocaust survivors, holds stubbornly to her philosophy of ensuring that people with dementia live with dignity; she refuses to comply with the program.

I find myself in a surreal struggle with this caretaker, who denies my mother’s symptoms and is determined to keep her alive and rehabilitate her.  This has been going on for five weeks now; I intervene to administer her medications, or ask the Hospice nurse to stop by the home. But the comfort care ordered by medical professionals and desired by me is not happening. 

Dressed in clothes each day, and put into her wheel chair, my mom looks and behaves like a trapped animal. She is not comfortable. Her body is rigid, and she spends her days upright in her wheelchair, instead of horizontal in her hospital bed. It shatters my spirit to see her like this.

The last horrific phase of this dementia disease just won’t quit. Or perhaps it’s my mom, a narcissist, to her core, who won’t do the quitting. “She’s a tough one,” my daughter keenly observes.  My mom is stubborn, willful, and always insisted on having her way, so it makes perfect sense that she’s not going out easy. I can’t have a discussion with her because she lacks the cognition to understand what is happening to her, or weigh in.  

I watch her grimace and struggle to breathe when I visit. She huffs and puffs, as she sits mostly still, her hands shaking and fingers wandering. She stares ahead, stupefied, as I place in her lap a small stuffed animal who resembles our King Charles Cavalier, Picasso, who died this past December. As I have done for years, I soothe and comfort her.

On days when it’s not too hot, I take her into the backyard garden, and let the sunshine wash over her.  Twice recently, two hummingbirds, with chartreuse bellies have visited, hovering over the fading lavender Agapanthus. I think these hummingbird visitors are Pat’s sister Kathy, and her husband, Stan, who have both passed. I ask my father to come get her, but so far, Sid is too busy enjoying the afterlife of unlimited buffets, to comply.

I play her the tunes I have been playing for her for the past decade. The lyrics miraculously remained etched in her failing brain, until recently.  Sinatra declares, “I said, that's life (that's life) and as funny as it may seem/Some people get their kicks/Stompin' on a dream/But I don't let it, let it get me down/'Cause this fine old world it keeps spinnin' around.”  It sure does.

I have been giving her a low dose of liquid morphine, along with a spoonful of applesauce to cut the bitterness. I change her Fentanal patch, and reposition her in the adjustable wheelchair, tilting her back, placing a green pillow under her head, and another pillow under her legs that I support with the raised extenders, so she can rest.  

I don’t think she knows it is me anymore, though I tell her I love her, kiss her forehead, hold her hands, and tell her it’s me, the middle one, her daughter Sue, over and over. 

I had no idea that death could be such hard work. I close my eyes each day and try to envision a good outcome for my mom. I tell my therapist that I must be being divinely tested, or that I have some major lessons to learn from all this.  I am letting go, letting her go.  That’s life. That’s death. 

And then one night at eleven o'clock, she just slips away, around the same time that my dad died.

When the young woman from Keaton’s Mortuary hand delivered my mom’s ashes to my house, I thought darkly. “You’ve heard of Uber Eats, how about a service called Uber Dies? 

The kind bearer of my mom’s death certificate and ashes, is a mid- twenties, congenial Marin Catholic graduate. She sat at our dining room table as the sun warmed the space.  In the empty seat next to her, I envisioned by mom reading magazines or the newspaper. 

When my hyper literate mother could only look at the pictures, no longer able to read, my heart broke, as our mutual lifelong passion, vanished. But I remember her happily inhabiting this spot. 

I blink myself back to present, as the young woman gently showed me how to open the black plastic container to get to the ashes; she then returned the container to an emerald green velvet bag. I thanked her for coming by. She remembered I was recovering from surgery for a shattered wrist and so had dropped off the ashes to save me a trip to the Mortuary. 

Once she left, I promptly took the bag into my bedroom and placed it on my closet shelf, next to Poppy’s ashes. I have kept these in a cardboard box inside a white paper bag for eight years. When I stayed a few extra days in Scottsdale, December of 2012, Pat and Sophie brought Poppy home; they had an uncomfortable moment with TSA as they sent the packed ashes through the scanner. When I got home, I put Poppy on the shelf and figured I’d wait for Bubbe before I did anything with the cremains.

Jews normally don’t do ashes. We bury bodies within 48-hours of death. Catholics don’t do ashes either. Pat, an ex-Catholic wannabe Jew, recently noticed that Sophie and I had put the box with the ashes of Picasso on the bookshelf in the TV room. She says she is nervous about having all these ashes in the house, but I tell her that in November at Thanksgiving, when my sisters convene in Greenbrae, we will create a ritual to release the cremains of our loved ones.

Throughout ash delivery day as I traveled around the house, I glanced at photos of my parents together. In Maui at the Haleakala Crater. On the sofa in their Scottsdale house. At a cousin’s bar mitzvah party. Dressed up for their 50thanniversary party holding their grandchildren, Zak and Sophie, in their laps. They smile, heads positioned close together as if conspiring. 

Best friends and partners for 62 years, they were such different distinct people (extrovert/introvert, empath/narcissist, pragmatist/dreamer, yet they shared their passion for books, theater, music, film, sports (both playing and watching), beaches, family, grandparenthood, long term friendships, and of course for each other. Their relationship had its challenges, but they had such an interesting and enduring connection fueled by intellect and humor and love.  

My mom’s departure from the planet brings up my father’s death for me.  My feisty, blunt, non-traditional mother went about her life for the past almost 9 years, but she kept looking around the corner, hoping that my dad would show up.  For many years so did I; but with time I’ve accepted his absence and attempt to embody his presence in my life. Still, I miss him every day. And I imagine I will do the same with my departed mom.

I now understand what many of my peers who have lost both parents describe as being an orphan. It makes me feel vulnerable and sad. My history as seen through the lives of two very significant influencers, people who had my back, no matter, is gone. I’ve got my two loving sisters, who now are the people in my family who have known me for the longest time. I have my loving wife and daughter who deeply see me and support me. But my family has downsized and there’s no escaping the sense of loneliness when both parents have died.

As my mom lost her memory over the past decade, I couldn’t access our family’s past through her experiences; yet, she figured mightily in my daily routines and thoughts. I learned to live in the Now with her, as that was all she could access as her brain failed.  When my dad died, and her dementia decline began, I became her designated person; she expressed gratitude towards me and responded to my kindness with uncharacteristic sweetness. She stopped judging and criticizing me; she even told me that she loved my long wild curly hair, which she had ordered me to cut off in my childhood and teens. 

As I looked out for my mom, I practiced patience in a profound way. I struggled with her over many things – mostly her refusal to engage in the communities in which she lived.  “Go to exercise class,” I’d admonish her.  “Try the Sing-a-long, or play Bingo,” I’d plea, hoping that the activities at her Senior community would make her happy. She said “no,” to everything as the world got increasingly jumbled and frightening to her. 

But she mostly said “yes” to me whenever I asked her to do things with me. We colored in adult coloring books. We played simple card games. We drove around in my car belting out the soundtrack of her life. We went out for meals and we saw many movies. In return she expected me to be there for her, entertain her, think for her, and manage her fragmenting life.  

She had always spent time alone, but with my dad leading the way, engaged socially.  She liked spending time one on one with a friend or in small groups. She loved getting on the floor at age 70 with her two grandchildren to play; she delighted in beating her grandson in Poker and seeing her granddaughter perform.  She competed fiercely, be it in tennis or in card games, loving to win, hating to lose.

Her life had depth and meaning; she ran her pharmacy business, managed the household, devoured her books, embraced the computer, completed complex acrostics and crossword puzzles, played maj and bridge. She loved attending plays on Broadway, going to first run films, and watching sporting events. Yet with her dementia, all that fell away.

For almost a decade, I willingly stepped up to be her companion and caretaker, sometimes to my detriment.  I had to learn how to set limits with my demanding mom; it was a breakthrough when I finally turned the ringer of my phone off so that I would not have to answer her 20 or more phone calls a day, asking me, “what should I do with myself?” or telling me to come get her. 

Through much heartache, stress, and good therapy, I learned how to let her just be, and not be so reactive when she’d do or say things that didn’t make sense or offended me, make demands, or sadly when bad things happened to her because she had lost functionality. I so wanted her life under my watch to be good.  I so wanted to be the good mother that I wished she had been to me.  

I know in my heart that I was a great daughter and that I stood by her  side until her death.  Even as I write this, I am in disbelief. I wake in the mornings and remind myself that today she is really gone. I don’t need to stop by and see her or take her out. There is nothing I need to do for her.  I am free but filled with an aching loss. I am motherless and this is fresh for me. And there is so much to unpack as I grieve her.

Growing up, I suffered when my mother did not see me or take care of me.  I learned how to care for myself and how to mother others.  When I hit my mid-twenties, our relationship changed and we became friends. Then our roles reversed as my once super competent mom started losing cognitive function.  I spoke to my mother almost every single day for forty years; it did not matter that she could be difficult, I spoke to her always.

At the end I soothed her like a mother soothes her baby. I fed her mushy food, held her hands, rubbed her arms and legs, and told her repeatedly that I loved her.  That is all that mattered. Not what she didn’t do or what she did do, good or bad, as my mother.  What mattered was the love. All I could do for her in the end was love her.

I went to Chase bank to close her remaining bank accounts, the final bit of administrivia I needed to do. My mom taught me so much about money and finances. She ran our household, saved the family from bankruptcy, invested, or as she noted, “played the stock market.” By example, she made sure I had the wherewithal to be an independent woman. I shared this fact about my mom with the young woman who helped me at the bank and then cried in her cubicle.

I cried for little Sue, whose tangled unruly hair my mom tried to control by chopping it off.  I cried because I no longer could to talk to my mom about our stock investments over lunch, or tell her the latest Sophie news.  I cried because there were no more novels or films to discuss with her, or  lyrics to remember and rhyme with her.

I have difficulty relating to myself as an old person, but I realize that now, I am an elder, and no longer an engaged and devoted daughter. It feels strange, this untethering and change in my identity.  Over the years I have written so many bits and pieces about my mother, trying to find words to describe and understand her, and our relationship.  The words, they keep on coming; they are my comfort, my window, and my mirror.  

Emily Dickinson wrote: “Dying is a wild night and a new road.” I’d add, grieving is an unforeseeable day and a timeless walk. 

Since she died on August 22, as I lay in bed in the dark and I watch the colors show up in the dawn sky, I have my mother on my mind. 

I see her laughing with her brother and sister as tweens in Wilkes Barre. I see her standing with my dad, amazed at the construction their new house at Miller Beach.  I see her busy at the cash register of her pharmacy at Brooks Tower in Denver.  I see her scolding my father for poaching her shot on the tennis courts at their Scottsdale condo.  I see her at our house in San Rafael, holding baby Zak in one arm and baby Sophie in the other, beaming because she got to be their Bubbe.  I see her in the wheelchair I've pushed on the street to a nearby Mexican restaurant where she throws her head back to soak up the California rays. 

I keep hearing her voice asking, “What’s cooking, dolly?” And I say to the universe, “A lot, mom. A whole lot. Let me tell you."

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

I am Titanium






The Lycra Ligament and Muscle Brigade has been summoned into service to get my arm, wrist, and hand back into shape.

These tiny fierce trainers dress in sleek black Lycra body suits and with calm upbeat voices instruct me in tendon gliding, wrist bending down and back, palm turning, thumb circling, touching the tip of my thumb to the tip of each finger.

Karen, the kind PT at the Hand Physical Therapy Center of Marin, steps me through an exercise routine, taking measurements of my shocking limitations. Who knew all the things a second hand does until it doesn’t. Buttoning, wiping, twisting, opening, chopping, typing, texting, combing out tangles, tying — coming to grips (or a lack there of) with this disability continues to challenge me.

I take my physical abilities and high activity level as a given; this is the most limited I have been from an injury, ever. And the pain is exquisite. Shattering a bone and recovering from surgery has taken my mind off the recent death of my mom. I thought I would be in an altered state, grieving, but not coaxing a dead limb back to life. I had no idea.

I assure Karen that I will take the PT workout seriously though I undermine my credibility when I tell her about the Bone Menders and describe my new partners from the Brigade.

Dr. Hillary Redlln, at our post surgical appointment, talked me through my latest x-ray showing me the titanium plate now embedded in my arm where my radial wrist bone once lived. The spiderlike metal plate gIves me the heebie jeebies and it didn't help matters to glimpse the Frankenstein-esque stitches on my inner wrist.

But Dr. Hillary reported that the Bone Menders had been doing a great job; she gave me a removable black splint, and encouraged me to line up other resources to join my healing team.

In addition to scheduling Hand PT sessions twice a week for the next month, I called Marie Ongaro, my acupuncturist, and she saw me today, summoning the needle bearers and energy movers to do their eastern Magic on my injury.

There’s a lot of work to be done. Swollen and stiff, aching deeply especially at nighttime, this right hand does not feel connected to my body. I am trying to accept this temporary dysfunction, knowing that if listen to my inner helpers and outer healers,  do my exercises and take my vitamins and bone supplements,  it will in six weeks or so be better.

But the day-to-day progress, and the baseline from where I am starting this rehab give me pause. I can’t make a fist, turn my palms to the sky, or bear any weight on the wrist. When the PT told me not to lift anything heavier than a piece of paper, I looked at her like she was nuts.

This weekend as I watched the formidable 37-year-old Serena Williams lose to a Canadian 17-year-old in the finals of the US Open, I thought about recovery and rehab. Serena, with a number of health challenges, including coming back after almost dying giving birth, continues to dominate her world. But the amount of work this woman has put in to recondition her body to play at the top of her game is just extraordinary.

To be sure I am motivated to get my right arm, wrist, and hand back in good working condition so that I can return to two handed keyboarding, cooking, and of course playing Pickleball. I am humbled in the presence of the Lycra Ligament and Muscle Brigade, the Bone Menders, and the Needle Bearers and Energy Movers, as well as my team of female medical professionals.  

And to quote the Sia song, Titanium:

I'm bulletproof, nothing to lose
Fire away, fire away
Ricochet, you take your aim
Fire away, fire away
You shoot me down but I won't fall
I am titanium
You shoot me down but I won't fall
I am titanium
I am titanium