Necessity of Fear and Broken Spoons

The beautiful human paradox of wanting and not wanting at the same time

When I was still in Rochester helping my mom get situated, I dreamed that she and I were at a theme park. We waited in line for a rollercoaster as the sun set and turned the metal scaffolding into glowing iron. When the line finally queued up, a sudden moment of confusion in the crowd separated us and forced her into the car just in front of mine. She sat with a family—multiple adults and children. Barely seconds after joining them, she was already yukking it up. I hollered in her direction, “Hey mom! Mom!” but she didn’t respond. Just went on having a ball with those strangers.

Finally, one of the kids tapped her shoulder and pointed in my direction. She looked over and gave me a quizzical look. I waved at her. “Mom!” I shouted over all the noise. “Mom! I’ll see you at the end!” She cocked her head, looked around at the people surrounding her, then said sternly, “Who are you?” Right then I jumped up from my deep, dreamy sleep. A lingering heft sat on my chest and hints of my mom’s voice echoed in my ears. There was, too, a residual feeling of relief—because how happy I'd be to let it all go. To pass my mom onto another family who might pick things up where I left off. How nice it would be, I thought, to forget and be forgotten.

This morning I laid in bed and stared at the ceiling while thinking of that dream from weeks ago. It was an unusually vivid one for me—its landscape wrought with discernible symbols and a reality-based narrative. It arrived in the throes of a moment during which my mom and I were discussing her sudden awareness to her memory loss. I encouraged her to do word searches and other games to stimulate brain function, while she read a thick pamphlet on dementia and applied it to her life. One section mentioned having trouble recalling the names of places and chronological events. To this she said, “Yep. That’s me.” To another suggesting caregivers refrain from prefacing statements with the questioning word, remember, as in, Remember yesterday when we covered what foods are carbs and which ones are proteins, she said, “Good idea.”

I pull up my bedsheets as rays of sun creep towards my face. I think about what it would be like to leave all these memories, these responsibilities, this abundance of difficult and burdensome love and care, behind. To want and not want at the same time has become the trying norm. Still, I crave an ending.

My mom knows her memory is going. “She’s aware that she’s not aware,” is how I’ve explained it to medical professionals during her various intakes. And as these words leave my mouth, I wonder how frightening it must be to witness your own transgression. To be able to comment on your own forgetting. To notice that what used to accessible, a simple recall, is now elusive. “I try to write everything down so I don’t forget it,” my mom often says. Which, when it works, is a fantastic strategy. But a page of memories can also exacerbate confusion. The diligent jottings mutate into cloudy constellations with mysterious meanings.

Many particulars of my mom’s life have grown absent from her consciousness. Recent details are the most likely to wisp away. Last week’s medical appointment notes, for example, or the name of the kind nurse who stripped her bed and, while doing so, shared photos of her kids. “I need to get better at remembering names,” my mom often says. “I have so many new things to learn.”

She can, however, readily retell stories from her past. On command she can describe, with ease, her childhood ice skating costume down to the last piercing sequin sewn on taut taffeta. Or when she accidentally saw the Supremes perform in 1966 at the Venetian Room in San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel. She was attending her senior prom with my dad, her then-boyfriend, and they somehow ended up seated two rows back from a vibrant and young Diana Ross and company. This story sounds the same every time. Her face and voice turn young as she tells it.

My mom (kid on the L), The Supremes

I read somewhere that every memory is a memory of the previous memory. Which is to say, all recollections are constantly being diluted. All constantly getting further and further from the original truth.

Not too long ago someone shared with me an anecdote about something I said that influenced one of their major life decisions. And no matter how much I chewed my lip or squinted or winked, no matter how hard I tried to wring details from the hardening folds of my aging brain, I, for the life of me, could not summon any memory of the impactful moment we, apparently, experienced together. It was simply gone. As if the me from then is no longer the me from now. I wonder, is this how my mom feels? Because, it seems to me, to lose memory is to lose bits of the self.

I shake off the dream. I’m sick of all these mom thoughts and just want to get on with my life. I get out of bed and follow my typical morning routine. Bathroom, teeth, yoga, shower. While I’m in the kitchen preparing breakfast, I catch myself staring out the window. There’s no hint of yesterday’s rain. No clue of the occasional creek that, barely twelve hours earlier, turned an otherwise dry ditch into rapids that sliced the green space between my condo and the one adjacent. A flurry of robins dances with cardinals in the low morning sun, their flitting colors compliment scattering mashes of wet leaves from the towering tulip poplars, red maples, white oaks, and others. I breathe in deeply and imagine the damp smell just beyond my window. I raise my mug and hold it there for a bit, warming my hands before I take the day’s first sip of coffee.

View from my kitchen window

I bring my attention to the sill. To the various artifacts lining its ledges, each powdered with a fine layer of dust. All are momentos infused with the past and catalysts to so much more. There’s a painted piece of wood I picked up on an Icelandic beach. A smashed cross I found while I was on a walk. The inukshuk given to me by Peter, my hostel host in the Canadian Arctic. Fronds from an Arizona Trail cactus. Each thing is a doorway. To memory, yes, but more specifically—to me. They calm me. They are me.

This morning my eye stops on a broken wooden spoon in the bottom right corner. Late last year, its handle snapped as I hastily carved its bowl. At the time I was rushing, hurrying to get it done so I could gift to a friend that night. But the torque of pressure between my hand and the knife’s blade was too much for the soft grain to endure. It gave. And when it broke, I quietly laughed. But not before feeling a spike of rage. Of utter frustration. I should have gone easier on the pass. I should have mellowed the knotty rise with a swatch of sandpaper, not the rushed belly of my carving tool. To make matters worse, it was my last blank for miniature spoons. I lamented the fact that I’d have to show up empty handed. Without a trinket to say, “I am so happy to see you. I love you.” I was forced to endure one tiny death. Which is something I feel I’m growing used to.

The spoon

Though I cursed that spoon, I had the wherewithal to understand the profundity of it breaking. I saved it from the trash and placed it where it now sits on the window’s ledge, catching my eye in the calm of this morning. I think of my mom’s dreamwords again as I take in this visual metaphor. “Who are you?” she asked me. Paradoxical words that both connect and let go. Words that remind me of so much that’s happened this past year. That hint to my folly. Her words confirm that I need to refocus and move along. To strike a balance. To live again.

I’ve come to accept the necessity of pure effort, whether futile and otherwise. I’ve come to embrace, though that’s probably not the correct word, moments of inordinate joy and and unexpected terror. Because it’s precisely these things that assure me life is real. Life simply is.

I chuckle again. Everything, I think as I take the spoon in hand, is perfectly meaningless and absurd. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile.

On the contrary. Life’s absurdity is what makes it so infatuating, so electrifying, so beautiful. Each ridiculous and terrifying anticipatory path, each clickety-clank and rickety rise to the top. Each gut-wrenching plummet to a sharp and painful curve that takes my breath away. Each scream. Each resulting bruise. It all makes me want to get in line to do it all over again.

I want what I fear. I trust it knows far more than I ever will.

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