Recalibrating

No one knows what the big picture holds, or the long term, but there has been recent progress in the condition of that young man I have been sad about. A few weeks ago I went to see him in the hospital. He was just lying there, gazing emptily, and I sang a childhood song to him, as I sometimes do, because I've read that the brain retains musical connections. Then I talked to him, in big concrete brightly colored nouns and simple narratives. Remember the splash and sparkle of the swimming pool? Remember walking up the steps to your house, opening the door, and seeing that funny cat Smoky? At the mention of Smoky, he suddenly grinned...a broad unequivocal smile...and his face seemed filled with light.

Then I put a marker pen in his hand and a notebook under it and asked him if he wanted to write something. He took the pen purposefully, and without even looking at the page, he wrote out these words, clearly: I love you. I swear this is the truth. It took my breath away. My sister had said she'd seen him write words, but now I'd witnessed it for myself.

Language.And could there be three words more compelling, poignant, earth-shattering, miraculous, or heartbreaking? Maybe it was just a fragment from the song I had been singing. Maybe it's what he's heard being said to him over and over for the last five months. Maybe it is simply what he wanted most to say...to anyone...to the world. I am. I feel. Connect to me.

And everything changed with those words. I don't know when or if he can coordinate fragments into a consistent, cohesive whole, summon skills as needed, find his voice or walk again. I don't know what kind of life he can have. But I see him differently now.

Not long afterwards, he was transferred from the hospital to a skilled care facility. I went to see him several days ago in this new setting. He responded to his name when I greeted him, and he grinned, a goofy, off-kilter grin that I find very heart-rending, and we looked at pictures of dogs in a magazine. He smiled at the pictures, and he turned the pages, and it was a very pleasant and satisfying time together.I suppose it is strange that I see the turning of pages in a magazine as a great accomplishment, at least in this context. But everything is strange lately, and there is so much we can never understand.When all of this first happened, my brother said the key would be to recalibrate...change expectations, adjust ideas of progress, stop replaying what has happened and proceed with what is. I thought that was a good word for it: recalibrate.

And I use it far too often, but I guess in time we must all recalibrate.I went to see my mother this week too. She was very lonely so I took her out for ice cream and to the 99-cent store and she asked me why she was feeling so old. "Maybe because you're almost 90," I said, which actually means I wrote that down on paper, because she can't hear me, although she insists that she can. Anyway, she's always surprised to learn how old she is.Maybe we're always surprised.

She'd recently fallen again, although she still walks too fast, swinging her cane randomly and at great peril to anyone nearby. She is profoundly deaf even with her hearing aid, and I can't even imagine how much meaning and communication is lost to her. It must be like being underwater, voices drowned into indistinct murmurs very faraway. One day I bought her a pair of headphones for watching television in her room, and I thought it would be an amazing breakthrough for her to be able to hear as well as watch, but somehow she just couldn't adapt to it, and she wrapped up the headphones and hid them in her drawer, and I was again reminded of the myth of Sisyphus and the folly of taking that on.So I recalibrated. Her battiness has actually become sort of funny and benign, and she's generally pretty cheerful. Why make it more complicated by trying to force my sensibilities onto her?

We had a fine shopping spree in the 99-cent store. I bought her colorful hair ties, a hot pink hairbrush, scotch tape and new sunglasses.

And as this has become a catch-up, catch-all sort of post, I should also add that I made a brief return to teaching recently, which completely reinforced the wisdom of my having retired. It was a special event, and I was invited to do "a poetry thing" with sixth graders. It started out something like this:

Kid#1: EWWW. What's going on with your arm?Me: Okay. Let's just get it out there. I have weird arms. It's called double-jointed. I used to think it might get me into the circus, but then I realized it's a little creepy but not really that exciting.

Kid#2: Does it hurt?Me: No. It's just one of those things. But you know what? Writers and poets notice stuff like this. They notice everything. The world is strange and amazing and so many people go through life not even fully conscious. But you're in sixth grade! Sixth graders have their eyes wide open...blah blah blah...

I finally got to some sort of prompt, but I fear I did not inspire much poetry, although there were some curious imaginings on being 8 feet tall, musings on the contents of a backpack, and one pure-hearted girl's spin on what peace would look like. Well, that's the way it goes sometimes. And good things eventually happen if you put in the time and the energy. But I'm feeling too exhausted to do this anymore, and I'm trying so hard to figure things out, I've lost the knack of explaining.

But the gig came with a small stipend, which turned out to be just enough to pay my dental bill, which brings me to another thing I did last week. My friendly local dentist removed a vintage filling that had been in there since the 1960s and replaced it with a brand new one...an oddly unsatisfying transaction but said to be necessary to avert future pain.

Ah, the memories that came back to me while I sat in that chair! I remembered childhood visits with my brothers to a dentist in Brooklyn, a small Jewish man whose name was Dr. Sultan. He seemed very elderly––although anyone over 50 seems ancient to a seven-year-old, so who can say?––and he always had classical music playing on the radio, the kind of music that trundles along without any discernible melody, occasionally interspersed by an announcer's voice telling the name of the piece in serious, hushed tones. The office itself had that sharp, scary dental smell, which instantly evoked anxiety, and Dr. Sultan didn't use any Novocain on us, just drill and fill, straight up. "You're a good soldier," he would say, over and over, as we endured the agony. Finally my brother Eddie said out loud what each of us was feeling: "Why do we have to be soldiers?! I don't want to be a soldier!"

Good point. Good times.And today one of my main ambitions is to keep my teeth for the rest of my life.(You see? I've recalibrated...)