Mom's Continuing Antics

Mom & Mary Kay at Applebees 9-10

So I give you my first real blog entry, trying not to inundate everyone. I find it’s a little harder to write now that I no longer have the daily discipline. My traditional stream of consciousness approach doesn’t really lend itself to a blog. So I’m finding I have to organize a posting by subject matter. And I’ve already compiled a list of subjects that I feel a need to write about.

But today I’m writing about Mom.
I took her to dinner on Thursday and, as I was approaching the solarium where she awaited her Lourdes meal, I was astonished to overhear her regaling a lady in the room with the tale of my beard. "He’s growing it because he’s making a movie. When the movie is done, he’ll be shaving it." The nurse looked at me and said, "Proud mother," but I got the distinct impression she was being sarcastic. She’s made no secret of the fact that she hates this thing and wants it off.

Actually, there are a number of people who have made no secret of the fact that they hate it and have no bones about letting me know. What they don’t believe, what they won’t accept, is that there are an equal number of people who think it looks great. When I tell them that I’m shaving it as soon as a theater project is complete (they assume I have it because I’m an actor doing a role), they are horrified, plead with me not to shave it. When I went to the Orchard Lake Art Fair, I met this Polish woman who is probably the most talented portrait artist I’ve ever seen. Her work takes your breath away. Her paintings are not just portraits, she actually succeeds in showing the souls of her subjects. They are breath-taking. When I have the money, I’d like her to paint me, but she charges five grand. When I told her the beard was temporary, that I would be shaving it in the foreseeable future, she too became horrified. She actually told me that she would not paint me if I shaved the beard. At the other extreme is Mom’s hairdresser Eileen at the Harbor Salon. When I’m ready for the beard to come off, I’ll be going to her. She’s in the club that makes no bones about telling me how much she hates it. In fact, whenever I take Mom in, Eileen spends the whole time berating me for this mess on my face. So I get it from both ends and I’m getting pretty tired of it.

I have complete strangers coming up to me all the time and telling me I look great. I also have complete strangers coming up to me all the time and telling me I’m ugly. (And I’m going to shoot the next person who calls me Santa Claus. At least at church, they call me Fr. Solanus.) I can understand the former. But the latter? In polite society, when you see someone you don’t think is attractive, we’re taught to just keep our mouths shut. And yet, when it comes to this beard, complete strangers have no qualms about coming up to me out of the blue and insulting me. What makes them think they have the right? Why do they even care? Why does anybody even care? Even some of my artist friends have given me a hard time about this. Artists are supposed to be bohemian, free spirits. And yet they’re bothered by this beard? And as fellow artists, you’d think they’d be the first to understand how this beard has incentivized my creatiive output. But they don’t! I just don’t get it. Why does anybody care?

But all that not withstanding, I was astonished that Mom was telling this story in the solarium, even though she got one of the minor details wrong. It amazed me that she remembered all this and was able to recount it with almost complete accuracy. For a 94 year old who was diagnosed with Alzheimers 12 years ago, I continue to be completely impressed by her mental acuity. Except for the fact that she can’t remember what she did five minutes ago, she’s pretty much altogether there.

In 1998 she was diagnosed with Alzheimers by Dr. Danny Watson whom I think any doctor in Michigan would agree is the top specialist on this disease in metro Detroit. He really thoroughly tested her before he laid that verdict on us, so I’ve never been inclined to dismiss it as a faulty diagnosis. (I was not so lucky with him. He also thoroughly tested me when I started with the dizzy spells. He was one of about six specialists and two family doctors I went to in the hopes of arresting the problem. But he, like the rest of them, could find nothing wrong. At least they were able to confirm that I was not in any danger and that’s all I really needed to hear.) He put her on the drug Aricept in 1998, saying that it would keep her from further declining as long as it was working. The downside is that it only had a five year shelf life, so in five years or so, it would wear off and then she would decline to where she would have been if she had not been taking the drug at all. In other words, a precipitous decline and death. Which is what anyone with this disease wants, not withstanding the more ideal option of dying in your sleep before this happens.

Well, it had already been seven years when she went to Lourdes and it was still working just fine. A couple years ago, they supplemented it with another drug Namenda and, between the two of them, she seems to continue to be holding just fine. A few years ago, the news was that there were now a number of documented cases in which the drug was continuing to work a good deal beyond the five year window. Last year, they were saying that it’s possible for it to last ten years or longer. More recently they’ve been saying that they don’t really know anymore how long it lasts.

I’m just very thankful that it is doing its job so well and am grateful for every week that I and we still have with her. This was particularly evident when Mary Kay Baumback was in town from Phoenix yesterday on her way up to Flint for her 50th high school reunion. Mary Kay was amazed at how well Mom is doing. In fact, most people cannot believe that she’s 94. She can easily pass for 80. In fact, I know people in their 70s who look older than she does and are in worse shape.

And once again, at our lunch at Applebees yesterday, she regaled Mary Kay with tales of growing up in Ann Arbor (and again told everyone the story of my beard). We had a very nice little reunion lunch.

So Mom’s antics continue ... and that pleases me to no end.