Mallory's Camera

All day long yesterday, I was terribly distracted.

Like I’d walk into a room and then for like an eighth of a second, I’d forget walking into the room, I just suddenly found myself in the room, thinking, Huh? Why?

This is not an uncommon thing for me. I’ve been doing it all my life.

Not absent-mindedness so much as mini-fugue states.

But, of course, I’m of the age where every deviation from the conventional scope of attentiveness must be weighed in the light of encroaching dementia.

Is this how it announces itself? All of a sudden, you find yourself in a room?

I must say, it was not an unpleasant sensation.

There’s a certain tranquility that comes from forgetting why you’re somewhere.

Almost as though you’re shedding ego the same way snakes shed skins.

###

Went across the river for my blood draw.

Results came back this morning: T4 looks to be in normal range on the new elevated Synthroid dose.

Hopefully, this means the dose won’t have to be recalibrated up.

After that, I went over to the community garden, which felt a bit like having a vivid hallucination of my long-ago childhood.

There was Claude puttering with his squashes!



There was James reinforcing the paths with woodchips.

I do love the community garden, but it is such a long way to drive!

I’d gone over with the intention of breaking down all the tomato cages, but whaddiya know: My tomatoes & chili peppers are still fruiting and daytime temps are supposed to get back to 70° tomorrow.

“The frost will not come for two weeks!” Claude told me decisively.

So, I’ll leave the cages up for another couple of weeks.

###

In the evening, there was a super-moon & a comet.

I saw the super-moon.

Yesterday was the sixth most beautiful day in the history of the planet. Just lambent blue skies and redbuds all in high bloom:



Got back from my tromp just in time to pick up an aggravated phone call from Belinda: L had wandered down to the Dairy Queen where she’d ordered a fish sandwich and two ice creams and then driven off without her food—

“Plus my employee says she smells,” Belinda added.

“That’s odd,” I said. ”L doesn’t even like ice cream.”

“She smells, Patrizia—”

“C’mon, Belinda,” I said. “L has been sketchy about hygiene the entire time I’ve known her. Which is more than a decade now. That’s nothing new.”

But Belinda had gotten it into her head that she was either going to call Kurt (L’s son) or Adult Protective Services.

And since I don’t like things to go on behind people’s backs, I reluctantly wandered out of the Patrizia-torium to confront L.

“Linda, I know you don’t like talking about this, but I don’t think you can avoid talking about this: Both Belinda and I have serious concerns about your cognitive state—“

“Cognitive state!” she sputtered. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means we suspect you’re affected by dementia,” I said.

L glared at me with weary dislike. “I have been flakey my entire life. That’s not the same as dementia.”

“Belinda says you went to a doctor today, and the doctor told you you have dementia—”

“I went to an eye doctor today,” L said. “My vision seems blurry. I thought maybe there was something wrong with my eyeglass prescription.”

“And what did the doctor say?”

“The doctor said there was nothing wrong with my prescription.”

“And he didn’t mention dementia?”

“No, he did not mention dementia. And I don’t appreciate being interrogated like this.”

“Okay,” I said. “I just thought you ought to know. People have concerns. Also, you forgot to pick up your order at Dairy Queen—”

“I didn’t forget,” said L. “The girl forgot to give it to me. But I’ll go back to get it now.”



Fort Bragg is this rather interesting blend of Redneck World and Aging Hippie Rest Home. We did some fun things while I was there, attended an Earth Day celebration, visited the spectacular Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, walked the amazing Mendocino headlands.

The rhododendrons were in full bloom at the Bot Garden. I hadn’t realized rhododendrons are native to the Pacific Coast:





The headlands, of course, are extraordinary, and the scene of youthful misadventures too numerous to catalog, although, mercifully, most of the hard evidence has vanished.

Although this is the blowhole where we used to drop acid and go swimming. Because we were fuckin’ nuts:



After five days in the wilderness, I headed back south to Sacramento, driving over Highway 20—the weirdest and most otherworldly of California’s highways—through Lake County, the weirdest and most otherworldly of California’s counties:



I’d spent 45 years in California, the majority of my adult life. But this was the first time I’d ever seen Clear Lake.

###

In Sacramento, Deb & Ky gave me the run of their newly refurbished guest cottage. They were absolutely the kindest, most gracious, most welcoming hosts you can possibly imagine.



And the next day—having dropped off the rental car—I took off for the Bay Area by train.

Most interesting thing about the train ride?

The almond trees of the Central Valley now go all the way down to Vallejo. It’s the demand for almond milk, I suppose.

And the acres and acres of grape vines that once dominated agriculture in this area seem to be receding as the demand for wine dips.

In the end, it’s always about economics.

Flying into Sacramento on Thursday.

Sacramento & the SF Bay Area are roughly equidistant from Fort Bragg, which is on the coast, in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere.

But the Sacramento freeways are easier to navigate.

###

The fabulous gracegiver has offered me her Sacramento guestroom for random comings and goings, so I’ll spend the night there and then take off for the coast early Friday.

I’ll spend four days with Old Pal Eleanor.

That oughta be enough time to sort out what’s really going on with her, right?

I’ll have to rely entirely on intuition—because one of the big issues on the Lost Coast is that access to healthcare is severely restricted.

Like when Eleanor first got her diagnosis, I asked, “Well, did you get a second opinion?”

But on the Lost Coast, there are no second medical opinions to be had.

###

Eleanor has always been very, very scattered. Exceptionally brilliant. But scattered.

Almost every place she’s ever lived in has been a total disaster housekeeping-wise because she gets involved with projects, then puts the projects down, does not go back to them, becomes involved with other projects, so the clutter layers on top of itself like some kind of adventure in entropic archeology.

Her second husband, Bill, bullied her out of this while they were living together—which she actually liked.

And I can kinda feel her setting me up to bully her, too, as when she calls to ask, Should I get rid of this antique dinner table for eight that was handed down from the plantation the Faulkners (not her real surname) owned either in pre-Civil War or Reconstructionist Alabama?

And I am thinking, I don’t fuckin’ know! How could I possibly know?

I am not much of a bully!

I prefer to deep-freeze my enemies.

But anyway, I am suspecting a lot of her mental anguish stems from an inability to navigate an increasingly disorganized living space and a total absence of any routine, since she doesn’t have to work.

Routines are good! Habits are good! Hanging your keys up on the same hook every time you come into the house is good since it establishes order and saves you countless hours searching for lost keys!

###

Anyway, my mission while I am there will be to sort out how much of what’s going on with her is due to her simply having become overwhelmed by entropy and isolation and living on the Lost Coast far away from civilization, and how much is organic decline.

###

Talked with Public Policy Eleanor for two hours on the phone yesterday.

(Yes, it is difficult having two close friends named Eleanor! Both claim they were not named after Eleanor Roosevelt, although given their age, who else could they possibly have been named after?)

I wanted to let her know that I will be in Berkeley on Wednesday & Thursday—

“Would you like to stay here?” she asked.

“Well, of course, I want to stay there!” I said. “Although being the über-polite person I am, I wasn’t gonna ask, I was gonna wait till you offered—”

Public Policy Eleanor is one of the most lucid people I know; her thought processes are like a textbook on optimal executive functioning.

“If you do decide to live with Eleanor,” this Eleanor said, “and she does, in fact, have dementia, and she wants the option to die with dignity, one of the things you’ll need to be very cognizant of—especially as it pertains to her financial resources, which are greater than your own—is the issue of elder abuse—”

Good thing the top elder law/estate planning attorney in Monterey County is the father of Ichabod’s best friend and a buddy of mine, too!

###

I’ll be back in Sacramento Thursday night, returning to NYC Friday morning.

I am feeling utterly overwhelmed.

Though most of the trip planning is actually done at this point, so really, it's just a matter of hopping on that conveyor belt.

The flight to Sacramento leaves at 6 in the morning, and I still have to figure out whether I want to stay overnight at a hotel near LaGuardia or take a town car from Hyde Park that leaves at three in the morning.

I don’t know!

Really, I just want to close my eyes, click my heels together, and be in California!

The New Yorker hits it out of the ballpark with this cover.

###

I got all the answers right on the IRS certification exam. It was a difficult exam, too.

###

And I’m ready to go back to being a grasshopper, jumping from shiny green leaf to shiny green leaf, playing Que Sera Sera on my hind legs because the life of an ant, struggling to push those oversized corn grains, constantly worrying & agonizing over some future that may or may not materialize, is a real fucking drag.

I love my kids, but goddam it, Ichabod just irritated the shit out of me on the phone yesterday.

I told him I really wasn’t sold on long-term care insurance. That I would have to ponder it longer. “Here’s the deal, Ichabod,” I said. “Long-term care insurance counts as an asset, which would make it harder for me to qualify for Medicaid assistance. But any long-term care insurance I could afford really doesn’t reimburse at a level much higher than Medicaid. So, in practical terms, it’s not a sound value proposition.”

“Well, it’s your decision, of course, Mom,” Ichabod said. “But at some point, we need to have a lengthier conversation about this—"

And I thought, Given the fact that at least 25% of every phone conversation we’ve had for the past three months has been about ‘What do we do with Mom when she starts peeing on herself?’ I’d say we’ve already had that lengthy conversation.

“—and it might be a good idea if you got yourself checked out by a neurologist—”

This was an insult.

“Why?” I asked. “Have you noticed any evidence of cognitive decline when you’ve talked to me?”

“No-o-o-ooooo. But RTT has said some things to me—”

Oh, great, I thought. Triangulation!!! RTT should really take care of his own cognitive issues before he points his finger at me.

I felt like slamming down the phone at this point.

But I did not.

Instead, I said very calmly, “Cognition is something I keep a very close eye on because of the history of dementia in my mother’s family. I can assure you there’s been no decline in my cognition. There has been a rise in my levels of anxiety because I need to figure out a suitable living situation within the next four months. Cognition and anxiety are not the same thing.

“And also, of course, what I can never say in front of RTT—because any mention of the word is intensely triggering to him—is that should I begin noticing any decline in my cognition, I will move to Vermont or Oregon to take advantage of their liberal assisted suicide laws—”

At this point, I was tempted to throw in a Soylent Green joke!

But judged it prudent not to.

Inappropriate humor might be taken as a symptom of impaired cognition, right?

But I am not gonna end up like Annie.

###

Anyway, the entire phone conversation with Ichabod made me think, Fuck all this. I am sick of being anxious! All I really want to do is travel and write shimmering, startling, beautiful words. Those are the two things that give me strength! And I need to be strong. I want to be strong.

###

For whatever reason, Ichabod & RTT prefer me to be weak. There’s a certain satisfaction in that role reversal thing, I guess. (Cue Rolling Stones playing, Under My Thumb.)

But I am done with being in perpetual panic mode.

I am what I am, boyZ!

It will all work out.

Following the events of last Labor Day, I’d made the decision: That’s it.

It was clear to me that so far as my mother’s family was concerned, I was the red-headed stepchild. I had always been the red-headed stepchild. I would always be the redheaded stepchild.

And who the hell needs to interact with that?

So except for my quasi-cousin Katherine, I stopped.

Nothing dramatic.

But I blocked their numbers. And I didn’t think about them.

And then, Saturday night last, I’d dreamt of Annie.

No narrative, just a flash: She was living somewhere, and she hated it. She was deeply unhappy.

So when I did phone with Ichabod the following day, I trotted out the casual question: Do you know how Annie’s doing?

He did not. He’d tried to call her about a month ago, but she hadn’t called him back.

Yesterday, he texted me: Hi Mom just wanted to let you know that Annie is in Oregon now in a home for people with dementia. Apparently, there was an incident that led to that but I don’t have details yet.

Huh.

##

In retrospect, the first clue that something was wrong with Annie was a phone conversation I had with her when we were living in Monterey.

This would have been in 2007 or so.

Fifteen years ago.

“Patty,” she said, “the weirdest thing has happened. There’s this word. And I can’t think of it!”

“Word?” I said.

“Yes, for that thing. You know that thing! It goes up and around and sideways, and people scream when they ride on it. At the Santa Cruz boardwalk—”

“Do you mean rollercoaster?” I asked. I was genuinely puzzled.

“Yes!” she said. “That’s it! Oh, my God. Thank you!!!”

I remember thinking “rollercoaster” was a pretty weird word to forget.

Cognitive decompensation didn’t even occur to me.

###

We were doing family Zoom calls for about a year there at the height of the pandemic.

Annie would sit there and rock. As though she were autistic.

Occasionally, she would act out conversations between large stuffed animals.

One time, though, she did snap back to being a person I remembered.

Shortly after Haley moved into Rik’s dilapidated old mansion in Berkeley, Haley stumbled across a copy of Thunder La Boom on one of Rik’s commodious bookshelves.

“I didn’t know you had written a novel, Ga!” said Haley.

I could not believe Alicia hadn’t told Haley her grandmother was a writer!

In fact, this was the novel that had paid for Annie’s Soquel property—now worth millions, which was something you’d think would impress money-mad, covetous Alicia favorably.

“It’s a very good novel,” I told Haley. “You ought to read it.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s about a woman who becomes a topless dancer after she leaves her husband when she realizes that despite her extensive education, she has exactly zero in the way of marketable skills. And that woman’s various misadventures.”

I think I went on for about five full minutes, a complete Thunder LaBoom exegesis! Alicia and Haley were stifling yawns.

But Annie was hearing me.

“Thanks for that, Patty,” she said when I paused for breath. “Yes, that’s exactly what I was trying to do in that book. Thanks for getting that.”

###

Occasionally, during the year we were doing those weekly Zoom calls, Alicia would call me to rant and rave about how difficult her mother was being.

They were fighting over money!

Annie was spending $40,000 a year!

“Forty-thousand dollars a year in Santa Cruz?” I’d say. “You should consider yourself lucky, Alicia. I would imagine that even maintaining a sustenance level lifestyle in Santa Cruz would cost $100,000 a year. And anyway, doesn’t she have like a million dollars in the bank?”

“Yes, but it’s in a trust!” Alicia would snap.

And I would think (but not say), So fucking what?

Annie was living then with her long-time partner Stew. Stew was utterly and selflessly devoted to Annie, and that didn’t change when her brain lurched off the cliff. She was living in Stew’s house, and Stew paid for everything. The only things that Annie spent money on were the checks she wrote out to animal rescue organizations.

Okay, granted: She was writing out too many checks!

“You do understand that your mother is maybe one year away from going under completely?” I’d ask. “So, really, it’s kind of a waste of time to argue with your mother about anything.”

And also kinda mean, I’d think. But these massive Annie/Alicia battles over power had been a lifetime dynamic.

And also, Alicia has never understood very much.

###

Alicia and Stew not-so-cordially loathed each other.

You’d think it might have dawned on Alicia that she really should be paying Stew for all this caretaking, selfless devotion factor notwithstanding.

But it did not.

I kinda think the incident, whatever it was, must have involved some blowup between Alicia and Stew.

I’m wondering whether I’m curious enough to find out.

I’m thinking, No. I’m not that curious.

###

Part of me is also wondering whether I should reach out to Stew, thank him for everything he did for Annie over the years.

Stew and I have always liked each other in that way that two strangers standing in a crowd at the scene of a massive trainwreck might feel an arc of sympathetic understanding.

If I did, I’d write him a letter. A letter with a stamp.

Most of me, though, is thinking, Nope! Don’t. Danger, Will Robinson! You do not want to interact in any way, shape or form with these people! Let them remain photographs in a dusty yearbook.

###

Of course, it does not auger well for me that both my mother’s sisters developed dementia in their declining years.

My mother died too young to develop dementia. Which is not to say that she wasn't utterly insane in a different way.

Yesterday, I could not remember the word “crocs.”

You know, those ugly but oddly endearing plastic shoes with the little holes in them?

So, I took a deep breath and began free-associating.

And the first thing that came to mind was a delightful podcast I’ve begun listening to recently called Off Leash, which is all about dogs.

On a recent episode, a man with a delightful Florida drawl told the tale of how he had rescued his King Charles spaniel after a large alligator leapt from the bayou and snatched the little doggie in its jaws.

What’s the difference between an alligator and a crocodile? I wondered idly.

Ding, ding, ding!

Crocs.

So long as I trust those collateral brain byways to produce the right answers, I guess I’m safe.