More on the pundit…

As I drove away, I wondered if the pundit, in all his erudite cynicism, really understood the implication of his statement. If climate change is happening, and if we have no choice but to "get used to it," well, that is going to require a lot of effort, time, and money on the part of a lot of people. In fact, it is probably going to require considerable government spending.

Or to put it another way, my pundit, in all his libertarian logic, was in fact arguing for the very sort of government—activist, regulatory, a welfare-state—which he has built a career out of opposing.

Other memories...

Other memories, mostly confused: searching for motels and hotels that were "pet friendly" Oreo, our dog, you see), searching for restaurants with patios and al fresco dining (the dog under the table with a bowl of water and a snack, us up above wilting in the sun), generally not finding such restaurants and so picnicking along the way in the shade of a tree or a dumpster.

Meeting remarkable people: the farmer/used car dealer who let us eat lunch on his property, the enormous bearded biker in black leather who took a great liking to Oreo and told us how wonderful, kind and loyal is that marvelous beast the dog. Better than humans. Who will betray you to your enemies. Or the law.

Enormous storms: lightning blasts from the highest of the high right down to the ground at your feet, black rolling clouds which (at one point) turned into the dreaded funnel and did some real damage in the town we had just left.

And heat. Heat. The great shimmering terrible heat of the drought.

*

Moving through Kansas was fascinating and terrible. The summer of 2012 was a summer of drought. You would drive through fields and fields of corn…blasted dead, withered, leaves brown and wrinkled as parchment. It was hard for the farmers. It will be hard for many others in terms of higher prices for food.

In one little town we stopped for lunch. Again, we couldn't find a place to eat where we could take the dog. But there was a little park, sort of in the very center of the community. We got sandwiches at a Subway, took out our folding chairs, and ate outdoors.

I say it was a "park," but envision nothing green. Nothing verdant or living. The grass was brown and dry. It was even brittle, for lack of a better word. You could touch it and it would not spring back.

Then, to add a touch of biblical plague to the scene, there were huge grasshoppers everywhere. Great horned locusts, like something out of Exodus. You would move or take a step and they would bound off in every direction, startling the dog who would try to pursue them, then fall back confused and maybe even a little afraid.

We ate our lunches and left.

I remember this incident clearly because shortly before it happened I'd heard on the radio that a certain and intelligent Right-Wing pundit had apparently said something along the lines of, "Global Warming is happening. Get used to it."

It was an interesting remark. It conceded that climate change is underway, yet did not extend the cause for that to human activities. Further, rather by implication, it suggested that even if climate change were due to the combustion of fossil fuels, well, that was the price for the modern world.

There may be something to the idea, I don't know.

And yet…

It did strike me as I looked out upon the brown waste that it is easy to say such things when you are sitting in an air-conditioned office, knowing that a chill drink is only a short walk to the fridge away, and knowing too that you are wealthy enough to afford significant increases in your food budget.

The rest of us… that's a different story.

About UVA

…it is one of the few colleges in America I've seen that genuinely has a touch of Oxford to it. Most of our schools do not have that…not even Harvard and Yale, both of which tried so hard to be our national equivalent, our place of spires and Thames, medievalism and brick, gowned scholars and merry undergrads in straw hats gone punting…

But Yale, Harvard, others…they never quite got it. For all their struggles, they became simply urban schools. Oh, excellent schools of course, full of brains and ambition. But city universities all the same.

And the merry undergrads? The scholars in black robes? They grow more rare with every passing day. Replaced, you see, by striving careerists, professionalists, specialists… heads full of facts and performance enhancing drugs (Nootropics, I think the word is)… for whom the concepts of merriment and medievalism, let alone punting, seem genuinely ridiculous.

These others, these new men and women, they are what society says it values. They will succeed. They will go far.

But, I wonder, sometimes, will there ever come a time when these chill and perfect creatures, so hard and so strong, will awaken to the haunting question…

What is life for?

Son Rise In Charlottesville

For me, the high point of the trip was visiting my son, David, and seeing his new digs. He has recently begun a graduate program at the University of Virginia. We met him at Charlottesville and he gave us a tour of the town and the school.

It was fascinating watching him, listening to him…conducting us through lecture halls and workshops, displaying the models and scale drawings, explaining the 3D printers and CNC machines.

And thus the thing occurred which happens to every parent at some point, or several points…

The question …

From whence came this confident young man? This familiar stranger? And where did he gain these astonishing talents?

Something different...the trip

I'm going to take a break from writing about the Home. I will come back to it. But, something different for now.

I realize that I have not said much (or, really, anything) about the trip here…our drive from Massachusetts to New Mexico. That's partly because I've left that to Martha, whose own blog goes into much more detail about the trip (see "Traveling West," at mttucker.blogspot.com), and does so in a much more interesting way than I could manage.

But, it's also because the trip simply didn't register much for me. I'm not sure why. When I think about it, all I can recall is a succession of highways, trucks and cars, sixteen wheelers and fast food restaurants.

It is rather surprising. I'm usually a more thoughtful traveler than that. But not this time. All I could seem to think about was the road, the traffic, and keeping Martha in sight (she was in the car, I was in my little truck with our dog, Oreo).

Yet, here and there, an idea did force its way into my otherwise well-armored brain.

So…

Vistors (4)

Fourth: last.

One final visitor. The guest who never leaves.

The invisible one.

He is here most well-behaved. Never melodramatic. Never crude. No splashes of red, no scarlet patterns to be observed. No. He is gray and quiet. In his way, I suppose, a gentleman. He regrets the inconvenience of the hour. The failure to phone ahead.

And then the ambulance comes without a siren. Leaves at a leisurely pace. There is, after all, no hurry.

In the morning, of course, one sees a single red flower in a vase on the desk near the nurses' station. There is also a note in a calligraphic font saying something about loving memory and listing a name.

And the faithful Mr. Carlos, that excellent man, is in the vacant room with his industrial carpet cleaner, removing all traces of stain…

All memory of presence.

Visitors (3)

Third set: the irregular.

"It is a lonely place," my father says, meaning the Home.

Most of the patients receive few visitors. Time and circumstance prevent it. Time and trouble consume us. If my father were still working, he would not have the days to attend to her. If I were still in Massachusetts, if I had not been able to move, then I could never visit her for an hour every day. Most people, even the most well-meaning, the most attentive, the most compassionate, must make trade-offs. If it is a question of the grandparent or the child, the present or the future, we know which must be selected.

And if they are not compassionate. If they are not well-meaning. If the daughter or the son is, shall we say? challenged in terms of empathy or even sense of simple obligation, well, then…

"It is a lonely place," my father repeats, this time meaning the world. In its fullness. And its chill.

Visitors (2)

The Second sort of visitor is the semi-regular.

This is the group that comes on a regular basis, but does not stay as long. This is me, for example. I live across the street from the Home. So, each morning, I walk over and see her (and my father) for an hour to ninety minutes.

I'm not the only one, of course. There are others. A brother who comes to see his elder sibling (a stroke, I think, or a fall) at least every other day. Adult children of this or that surviving parent. A nephew.

We come. We do our best. I, for instance, read a lot to my mother. She was fond of mystery stories. On the table beside her now are Tony Hillerman (Hunting Badger), Henning Mankell (The Dogs of Riga), Dorothy L. Sayers (Whose Body?), Agatha Christie (Murder on the Orient Express)…

I read and I read. She seems to listen. Seems to enjoy the sound of my voice. May, indeed, attend to the stories.

Which is good. Though, I think, my other purpose is as important, or more so. That other purpose is my father. When I look and see him in the padded chair beside the bed, and I realize his eyes have closed, and all his enormous burdens have if only for the moment been forgotten, when he sleeps …

I know I have won. I have triumphed. I have achieved something, however small, of genuine virtue.

The Visitors (1)

One last group I shall discuss…my own. The Visitors.

People who come to visit the patients fall, again, into distinct categories. At the top end, the rarest, are the super-regulars. These are individuals who come all the time. They are present every day without fail, and usually for the whole day. They are, as a result, as much a part of the community as the Staff and the patients themselves.

At the particular Home where my mother is there is only one Super, and that's my Dad. He appears inevitably between eight and eight-thirty, goes to her room and waits, speaking to her, reading to her, stroking her hand and her head. He remains there until about one o'clock in the afternoon, then he will go and have lunch and take care of whatever business he needs to transact. After that, very often, depending on circumstances, he will return to the Home in the late afternoon and stay until early evening.

As I say, the Staff is in awe of him. He is their romantic hero, I think. The Man Who Is Always There For Her. The Man Who Never Gives Up. The little man, the frail man, the old man…who is, under it all, under all the illusions of weakness…

Constructed of steel and silver.

The Patients Are…

…surprisingly quiet. They make little noise.

Of course there exceptions. The woman in the bed in the room next to my mother's who called out regularly, monotonously, once a second, like the pained turning of the smallest hand of the clock, Help. Help, Help. A nurse would appear. The sound would stop for ten minutes to an hour. Then resume.  To whom did she appeal and why? I never knew. She was simply gone one morning. And her voice, her call, her understated panic vanished with her.

Then there was the man down the hall. I never saw his face. His room was shadowed. I saw him in the bed. The covers up to his chin. His face directed to the TV on the wall, but not (I think) seeing it. He, too, would call. In his case, a name. A woman's name. A wife perhaps? Someone already dead? (Or, worse, indifferent?) In any case, whoever she was, she did not come. He was not comforted. And one day too his room was empty. The ambulances appear as a rule at night, you see. They are not perceived.

But, for the most part, they…the patients… are quiet. In their beds. In their chairs. Terribly quiet.

*

There are three sorts. Patients I mean. There is the non-ambulatory sort. The people who never leave their beds. Or, if they do, then it is only through the intervention of nurses and aides and machines…for example, a device that is somewhere between a large sling and a small forklift. It lefts them up, out, swings them away from the miraculous inflating/deflating bed that fights bedsores and brings them, gently as possible, into the wheeled chair. Then, after a sojourn in the sun or the front office, it swings them back again.

My mother is one such.

The second sort: The semi-ambulatory. These come and go with rather greater ease. They do not spend the whole day prone. They are assisted out of their beds into their chairs and then rolled about to various destinations—the large front room, where the nurses or aides read to them; the dining area where they are given their meals (if they can feed themselves), various functions here and there, sometimes to the little Van that takes them on outings. The State Fair, for example.

The third sort: The fully or at least mostly ambulatory. They are here for recovery from some devastation or another. A fall perhaps. A shattered hip. A replaced knee. Pneumonia. They move about the halls not in chairs but with walkers. In time, they may go home. To some home or another. Probably not to care entirely for themselves. But, perhaps with a home health aide. A daughter or son. Someone.

*

There is crossover between the three groups. Sometimes, rather improbably, (I hope, one day, my mother) the non-ambulatory will transit to the middle. One morning, one afternoon, a patient will show such improvement that they are able to move, to speak, to command the relative autonomy of their very own wheelchair. Perhaps even go home to the care of a family or of a personal attendant.

However, the more usual course (alas!) is the other way. Someone checks in expecting to be here only a few days, a week or so at most, just until they're "back on their feet." Only, it doesn’t happen that way. They do not regain their feet. Perhaps the feet do not regain their former function…instead weaken, blacken, must be amputated. The walker gives way to the chair. The chair to the bed. The bed to…well, where-ever it is that one goes to from there.

Which is an interesting thought, is it not? Could I perhaps have it backwards?

*

I wondered thus as I walked past a room today, one near my mother's. In it was a woman I've seen here before. She is ancient. Far older than either of my parents. Her hair is utter-most white. She is motionless. Has been motionless the last month.

She lies in her bed. She looks toward the ceiling. I've never heard her speak. The nurses switch off the lights. Apparently their brightness bothers her. What illumination there is in the room leaks from the window in the tight white projections (almost spectral) of a Venetian blind. Plus, there is, of course, the silver flicking of the obligatory television tuned to no station in particular. So all her flesh is pearl in color…hair, face, hands…while the body is clothed in the black of a coverlet that reaches to her chest.

She is the least ambulatory, the least mobile of anyone.

And yet. And yet. Somehow, I feel a kind of tension when I see her. A bowstring tautness. Something of the preparation. The moment without motion. The second before the anticipation. The waiting before the flash and the blur. The diver on the board. The gathering of nerve. The catching of the breath.  The strain. Then… action. The leap. Thus what is most without motion is the most in movement. The least mobile the most upon the wing.

And the woman, the others…they shimmer in their shadowed rooms, possess the illusion of silence, know however the great secret of stillness.

To wit, that it contains the flight. And within the breathless dim is discovered …the fury, the flurry, the exaltation…

The exit…

The child's laugh.

The final bell before the summer's boundless energy.

And speed.