Phoebe Kate

My 92-year-old mother-in-law has decided to go into a “senior vacation residence” — a euphemism, of course, for what used to be termed an old folks’ home.  What she’s picked out doesn’t look like the old folks’ homes of yore.  The layout of the place bears a striking resemblance to the inside of a cruise ship.  And for a moment or two, the visitor is fooled by this decorative trompe d’oeil…but not for long.  An old folks’ home is an old folks’ home, no matter what you call it.

Anyway, yesterday my younger son and I went by to check out Granny’s new digs for ourselves before the old girl signs the lease and writes the check.  Like I said, it’s an attractive place.  The managers and staff are affable.  The aromas of dinner cooking in the kitchen were remarkably appetizing.  There was a table of dressed-to-kill ladies heatedly engaged in a cut-throat game of poker.  A pianist was playing Cole Porter on the baby grand.

Not bad.  Not bad at all.

Which was why I was puzzled by my growing feeling of pure terror. My heart palpitated, my palms sweated, I felt dizzy, I couldn’t breathe.  If I didn’t get out of there immediately, I would pass out on the Aubusson carpet under the giant crystal chandelier.  It wasn’t a Club Med party boat this residence looked like — it was the doomed Titanic and all these Golden Oldies were going down in it.

As we drove away, I realized what had triggered the massive panic attack.  “That’s my future!” I told my son.  “One day I’ll have to go to a place like that.  I’d rather be dead!  I don’t want to spend my last days with a dreary bunch of old people!”

My son reminded me of two things.  First, “Phoebe Kate shalt abideth in an old folks’ home” was not one of the laws God imparted to Moses on Mount Sinai.  And second, if I should end up in such, it would be nothing like what I’d seen that day.

“You’ll be hanging out with the rest of the 60s generation,” he told me.  “They’ll be cool, like you.  Peace, love, flower power, weed.  You’ll all groove to the Doors and the Stones and Dylan and Led Zeppelin.  It’ll be a blast.  Woodstock revisited.”

I’d like to think that — that when we Baby Boomers become octogenarians, we will bop around the halls of old folks’ home in faded jeans and flip-flops and tie-dye shirts and peacock feather earrings and peace symbol necklaces and love beads, humming “Let the Sunshine In” and “Yellow Submarine.”   We’ll stage sit-ins demanding that only organic food be served in the dining room.  Cool old musicians with long gray ponytails will play Jim Croce songs on their guitars to entertain us.  The lobby won’t have a crystal chandelier but an enormous disco ball.  And we’ll all sneak out after dark and smoke a doobie (for medicinal purposes only, I assure you.)

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. Perhaps the process of aging won’t change us fearless, freewheeling former hippies into old farts who fret about their bowels and fear everything and everyone.  Hopefully, the egalitarian, magnanimous, big-hearted, fun-loving spirit of the 60s will carry on into our dotage and turn old folks’ homes into a happening sort of place to be.

Oh well, if not, there’s always 2012 to look forward to.  Rock on, Mayans.

–phoebe kate

So went the old 60s R&B song (c’mon, you remember that one, it’s a classic and later recorded by the Hollies, Anne Murray and a bunch of others a lot better known than its original singer, Doris Troy.)

The song’s subject was love at first sight, about seeing a certain stranger and ZAP!  ZOWIE!  Cold chills, hot sweats, heart palpitations, weak knees and a loss of good sense and your right mind.  Oh, yeah — it’s heady stuff all right.

Well, yesterday I had that experience — or I should say, I was the object of someone else’s obviously intense emotions.  Only in my case, it wasn’t a mysteriously intriguing and compelling male who looked like Johnny Depp who gazed into my eyes across a crowded room and was instantaneously smitten.

It was a woman, and it definitely wasn’t love she was feeling for me.

The scene of this unpleasant and rather unsettling encounter was the radiation oncology waiting room at a medical center where I take a terminally ill family member (aka The Patient, to respect his privacy) for treatment five days a week.

The waiting room being somewhat crowded, The Patient and I settled ourselves in chairs next to a 70-ish woman conspicuously attired in very expensive designer wear from head to toe.  The moment I sat down, I could sense the vibes coming from her and they were more toxic than chemotherapy drugs.

I took out my book and started reading.

She kept giving me sideways glares that would promptly cause plants to wither, render plums into prunes and turn a cover girl into an old crone in 60 seconds flat.

And then, with a little snort, she gathered up her Prada purse and made a big production out of moving to another seat — from which vantage point she continued to shoot me dagger looks.

Now, FYI, I was washed, brushed, fluffed, deoderized, made up and well-dressed.  I wasn’t reading Do-It-Yourself Terrorism for Dummies or a magazine with vivid color photos of people performing unspeakable acts with underage children and barnyard animals.  There was no reason for this woman’s reaction to me.

This is the first time anything like this has ever happened to me and I’m still reeling.  The waiting room is a friendly place and I’m an affable person.  Everybody there is someone in the midst of perfectly dreadful circumstances, be they patient or caregiver.  That creates an automatic and easy-going camaraderie.  Our shared fate enables us to smile, chat like old buddies and sit in each other’s company with empathetic amiability day after day, week after week.

Except for that woman.

Maybe I reminded her of the daughter-in-law she can’t stand.  The girlfriend that her ex-husband left her for.  A teacher she had in school sixty years ago who gave her a bad grade.  A trusted friend who let her down.

Hell, maybe the lady’s a bona fide mental case.  Your guess is as good as mine.

Just like love at first sight, hate at first sight is a powerful but totally irrational emotion that blinds a person to reality.  A precipitate romance may ultimately result in heartbreak and messy personal situations, but gratuitous ill will does a whole lot worse.  Globally, it’s responsible for wars, pograms, persecutions, violence and injustice.

And in everyday life, it causes people to be just plain rude.  Of course, I’ll never know why that woman behaved the way she did and I feel sorry for anyone who has become so embittered.

But pity notwithstanding, one thing is true.  I really hope she’s not there tomorrow.

– phoebe kate

In the last two months, my life has changed drastically.  I’ve been caring for a terminally ill family member (henceforth to be known as The Patient) and will be doing so for the foreseeable future.  This necessitated an abrupt, overnight relocation from a rural area on coast of NC to the Raleigh/Durham sprawl 300 miles away. 

After extended stays in hotels and a brief stopover in a family friend’s rental house, I recently found a place I can call my own – well, at least for the duration of a six month lease — where The Patient and I can live during his treatment. 

I really like my new home  — it’s a gated townhouse community with attractive landscaping, tidy lawns, all the amenities and well-designed, bright, airy, spacious 2 and 3 bedroom units.  It’s quiet, safe and darn pretty.  And if that isn’t enough, my neighbors are exceptionally friendly and pleasant, too. 

Who could ask for more  — especially at this moment in time.  It’s a weird and disconcerting experience to care for a dying person, and I passionately embrace any vestige of normalcy and stability, even if it is only superficial.     

And this place is perfect, really — so perfect, in fact, that it reminds of the community where Jim Carrey’s character lived in The Truman Show.  Any day now, I expect my fellow residents to heartily greet me with, “Good morning, and in case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night!”    

When we moved in, The Patient was pleased with our digs – or so he seemed, at least up until last Friday.  The home health nurse who comes to check his vital signs asked how he liked his new home.

He froze her with an arctic gaze and disdainfully remarked, “It’s a ticky-tacky community chock-a-block with ticky-tacky little houses.”

Okay, he’s not a well man.  Maybe that was one of his bad days when nothing made him happy.  It’s understandable. 

But if we are what we eat, as the health nuts tell us, and we are what we drive, as the hawkers of luxury cars insist, then our dwellings must say volumes about us.  Which simply means: if this is a ticky-tacky community with ticky-tacky little houses, then I guess I am a ticky-tacky little person.

Or maybe just a desperate one…

– phoebe kate  

When I was a kid, I was sent to a school taught by nuns.  Hell, my parents were Catholics — what choice did I have?

Nuns, somehow, have always seemed to strike terror even in people who have never met one, much less been taught by them.  They’re spooky, alien creatures who seem mummified in off-putting outfits (usually black) with their hair hidden under ponderous headpieces designed either by misogynists or mad scientists.  The order of nuns that ran my school wore Dracula capes and weird caps with deep, wide, flaring folds that looked like they were meant to receive messages from other parts of the galaxy.

Which, I suppose in a certain sense, they were.  Nuns, like priests, were in DIRECT COMMUNICATION WITH GOD ALMIGHTY.

Or so we Catholic kids thought.

Of course, nowadays many orders of nuns wear miniskirts and makeup and live in condos instead of convents.  Once I met a rather attractive lady enjoying a Margarita at a summer house party held poolside.  I said, “Hi, I’m Phoebe Kate.”  She said, “Hi, I’m Sister Lucy Marie.”  She was wearing a snazzy little 2-piece hot pink bathing suit and had lots of tousled streaky blonde hair cascading over her well-tanned shoulders.     

I don’t doubt that good Sister’s sanctity and holy vocation, but I’m still reeling from the sight of a nun’s boobs and belly button.  And the funny thing is, in spite of her fashionable and people-friendly exterior, she still struck terror in me, because nuns are MARRIED TO JESUS CHRIST and he’s the SON OF GOD.

Yikes.

Anyway, I learned many things of value from the women of the cloth who taught me when I was in grade school, but paramount among those lessons was THE FURRY LOOK, which was anything but warm and fuzzy and comforting.  

Moreover, it was the look of a wild animal just a second or two away from going on a rampage. The nuns had perfected it and it was how they controlled a classroom of 30 unruly kids without having to raise their voices or resort to the ruler to rap knuckles or any other body part in convenient reach. 

They’d just focus their eyes on the miscreant students in such a way that it raised the hairs on your body and made you break out in a cold sweat.  The stare was palpable — you could feel it even if your head was turned in the opposite direction.  It was akin to being stared at by a grizzly bear who had every intention of chewing off a limb or two of yours if you didn’t respect its territory RIGHT NOW.

And it worked.  Even the most obstreperous, incorrigible, yahoo boys froze in the midst of their misconduct and mended their ways when nailed by that Look.

When I was a teenager, I practiced that skill on my parents whenever they told me I couldn’t stay out until 1 A.M. on Saturday night or I had to go bring joy to Great-Aunt Carolyn who was cantankerous, contentious and incontinent.  ”Don’t give me that Furry Look,” my mother or father would say.  ”It won’t do you any good.” 

Well, it may not have helped my case back then, but I’m finding that it sure does now.  Not so long ago, I was with someone who made some remarks that were totally out of line.  My usual response to such infringements is a verbal one, but I was too tired to engage in further conversation.  So I just narrowed my eyes and stared at the person.  

Without blinking.  For a long time. 

Very long. 

So long, in fact, that the individual got flustered, stopped mid-sentence, had to look away and quickly changed not only the subject but the tone of voice.  An unproductive conversation ended without my getting upset or wearing myself out with useless emotion and disagreement.

Thanks, Sister Angelica and Sister Rosalie and Sister Beatrice and Sister Josita and especially Sister Regina.  I may not remember any geometric theorems or all those dates in history, but you taught me one thing I’ll never forget.

–phoebe kate     

We all think that being well is a blessing.  After some consideration and objective observation, I have to admit that I’m not so sure about it any more.

Undoubtedly, we can all name some people we know who’ve never had a sick day in their lives.  My mother-in-law is one of them, for example.  In all the years I’ve known her, she’s never had the flu, a stomach virus or even the sniffles.  She has a cast-iron constitution, eats like a horse and could probably digest iron filings and ground glass if they were seasoned with a few heads of garlic and enough olive oil. 

Rolaids?  Robitussin?  Benadryl?  Ex-Lax?  Extra-Strength Excedrin?  She’s only heard about these remedies on TV.  Her medicine cabinet has been as empty as Jesus’s tomb on Easter morn for decades. 

When, however, the inevitability of sickness and disease finally catches up to these kind of folks — uh oh, watch out.  Overnight, they turn into full-blown, raging hypochondriacs.  They’ve had no preparation to deal with discomfort of any kind or put it in any kind of perspective.

Every ache and pain is baffling, ominous and dire.  Every sneeze heralds the advent of the swine flu.  Every cough is the onset of tuberculosis or cancer – or double pneumonia, at the very least.  Suddenly, they become agonizingly aware of their bodies and study the color of their skin, the texture of their tongue and all the moles, spots, blemishes or freckles that have looked the same for decades, although they swear such things are growing to gargantuan sizes while they sleep now.

Ironically, for all their apprehensions, they are difficult, impatient patients.  They don’t understand or tolerate waiting in doctors’ waiting rooms, wearing hospital gowns, lying in a hospital bed or living under conditions that aren’t pleasing to them. 

They have been so damn well all their lives that they balk at necessary pills, shots, treatments, dietary changes and or any change to their customary routine — “I don’t need this!” they vehemently protest.  ”I’ve never taken any medicine before!  I’ve always eaten everything I want!  I don’t see any reason why everybody’s forcing me do all this silly stuff!”

It’s great to enjoy good health for as long as one can.  But all the same, I say: blessed are they who have experienced affliction sooner rather than later and learned to accept their physical limitations.  Blessed are they who understand that life for biological creatures is dicey at best and not always fair or nice. 

Blessed are they who have realized early on that there are circumstances over which they have no control.

Blessed are they who have learned that they are helpless.

Because, no matter what we say or do, we all are…ultimately.

–phoebe kate