Odd Mom Out

“Yes,” Allie agrees, standing and smiling cheerfully. “We love Eva. You go take care of your mom. We’ll keep an eye on your daughter.”

I nod, grab my purse, root around for my keys. “I’ll let Eva know I’m leaving. Maybe she’ll want to come. But if she doesn’t, I appreciate your keeping an eye on her.”

“Don’t think twice about it,” Robert reassures me. I smile at him gratefully. Maybe I’m not married, maybe I don’t have a lot of girlfriends in Bellevue, but these people have become my extended family.

In the house, I find that Eva has locked herself in her room. “Eva, open the door.”

“No.”

“Don’t do this. Open your door. I’m late to take Grandma to the doctor.”

Her door opens, and she stands in the doorway staring at me with so much anger and loathing that my breath catches. “Eva,” I say softly, reproachfully.

Her upper lip curls, and she shakes her head, tears glittering in her eyes. “Go take Grandma. I don’t care. I don’t care what you do.”

“You don’t want to come?” I ask as calmly as I can, refusing to dwell on her rejection or contempt.

“No.” And with a wretched sob, she flings the door shut and locks it again.

I stand in the hall listening to her footsteps cross her bedroom and then the thud as she throws herself onto her bed.

Swallowing hard, I push hair away from my face. “Okay,” I say, my stomach cramping as though filled with bits of broken glass. “I’ll be back by five. If you need anything, everybody’s in the studio, and they’ve promised to keep you company.”

“Just go.”

I do. With a last glance at her locked door, I head for the garage, back my truck out, and head across the bridge to Laurelhurst, where I grew up.

Laurelhurst is an affluent lakefront community in Seattle with winding, tree-lined boulevards, large homes, and eye-popping views of Mount Rainier and Lake Washington.

Our home isn’t the largest in our neighborhood, but it’s beautiful, a sprawling white two-story house built in the late 1930s by a renowned Seattle architect, and the garden is just as mature, with towering trees, a sweeping lawn, and lush perennial flower beds. It’s the kind of house that June and Ward Cleaver would have lived in, with a garden perfect for entertaining in the summer.

Dad’s already gone when I get to the house, and Mom is waiting at the door with the housekeeper, who is doing her best to keep Mom calm.

“She’s a little agitated today,” Elda whispers to me, handing me the notebook Dad has left for me before walking Mom to the truck.

Driving, I wind my way through the neighborhoods closest to University of Washington’s east campus, heading for the university hospital’s medical center. At traffic lights, I thumb through the notebook that Dad has kept on the progression of Mom’s disease.

I’ve never seen it before, and it’s unnerving.

I read about outings they’ve taken, her prescriptions and reactions, as well as day-to-day problems, including Mom’s increasingly erratic behavior. There are issues of incontinence. Wandering. Rage. Tears. Hiding things. Sadness. Confusion.

There are such good days that Mom seems to be almost her old self again, and then there are days where she’s unable to perform even the most basic, everyday task, a condition called apraxia.

Suddenly, Eva’s tears and tantrums and theatrics seem less urgent compared with what Mom’s going through and the stress Dad’s been under.

No wonder Dad wanted me to bring Mom today. He must be overwhelmed. He must have needed a break.

Now and then, I glance at my mom as I drive. She’s quiet while I’m at the wheel, content to gaze out the window in silence, but her quiet turns to agitation as soon as we park and head for the doctor’s waiting room.

“I don’t like this place,” she says, grabbing at my arm as I reach for the doctor’s office door. “I don’t want to be here.”

“It’s okay, Mom. We’re together, everything’s okay,” I say, taking her hand, sliding my fingers around hers. I’m holding her hand the way I hold Eva’s, and I walk her inside the office and toward one of the groupings of chairs. “Why don’t you sit here while I check us in.”

“No.” Her hand grips mine tightly. “No. I want to go. I want to go now.”

“Soon, Mom, I promise.”

Thankfully, the doctor sees us almost right away and I sit in a chair not far from Mom while he checks her vitals and asks her basic questions.

Mom doesn’t answer him. Instead she stares at me, expression fiercely unhappy. She thinks I’ve brought her here against her will. She thinks I’ve forced her.

“It’s okay,” I whisper.

“Don’t talk to me,” she snaps.

The doctor looks at me over my mother’s head, the dark eyes behind the glasses professional but kind. “Any questions? Anything new you or your father has noticed?”

I flip through the notebook, go to today’s page, where Dad has written in his small, careful script:

“My wife keeps leaving the house, ‘wandering’ through the neighborhood. I’ve put locks on the doors, but that doesn’t stop her from trying to get out anyway. Where is she going? Why does she want to leave?”

My stomach knots as I read the entry to the doctor. But the doctor doesn’t seem at all disturbed by Dad’s observation or questions.

“Wandering is obviously a serious problem,” he answers, “not only because it puts the patient in danger, but because it also creates worry and guilt for the caregiver. The secret,” he adds, “is to understand why the patient is wandering.”

“So there are specific reasons?” I ask.

He nods. “Most often the patient that wanders is trying to go home, and in this case home isn’t a house, but a place free of problems and worries. Wandering can also be due to pain or fear, it may be boredom or the desire to accomplish a task. It might even be because your mother is looking for something.”

“Can we leave now?” Mom asks, standing.

She’s still in her paper dressing gown, and it threatens to unfold, exposing her thin, bruised body completely. I take her hand, gently seat her again.

“How do we know what the reason is?” I ask, stroking the back of her hand, trying to help her relax.

“That’s where you have to play detective,” the doctor answers. “Go on walks with her. Take notes. Pay attention to what she’s doing. Once you think you’ve discovered the cause of the wandering, then you can try different things to end the behavior. But always be gentle. Nonconfrontational. Your mother doesn’t mean to upset you. She’s genuinely confused.”

On the way home, I stop at University Place and treat Mom to an ice cream. As the disease progresses, she becomes increasingly childlike, and like the girl she once was, she loves her ice-cream cone again. Today we sit inside Ben & Jerry’s, each of us enjoying our treat.

Mom looks at me over her cone and takes a lick. “I miss Eva,” she says, looking at me intently.

“You’ll see her soon,” I answer,

reminding me all over again of the situation waiting for me at home.

Mom just smiles faintly, as though she doesn’t believe it, and finishes the rest of her ice-cream cone in almost beatific silence.

I drop Mom at home. Dad’s there, and I tell him what the doctor has told me. Dad nods. He’s read the same thing in one of his Alzheimer’s books, but he’d hoped the doctor would have more insight into Mom’s particular case.

“I didn’t know she was wandering off,” I say, watching Mom disappear into the house while Dad and I talk in the driveway.

“Pretty much daily.”

“Is that why there are all the childproof locks on the doors?”

He nods, his face heavily lined. “I don’t know what she’s looking for, but she keeps going for the door, over and over. And when I stop her, she gets angry. Swings at me.” His face tightens. “It’s getting harder. She’s getting more unpredictable.”

“You can call me more, use me more. Eva and I can come watch her for an evening or a weekend and you can get away. I know you need to get away.”

He nods vaguely, stares off into the distance. He’s silent so long, I think he’s forgotten me, and then he turns back and smiles wryly. “I thought once we got you off to college we’d be free to travel, do things. I never imagined this. Never once in a million years.”

There’s nothing I can say. I just give him a quick hug and kiss and head on home, back to the problems that await me there.

The farther I travel on the 520 bridge and the closer I get to Bellevue, the more my stomach knots and the tighter I feel the tension in my shoulder blades.

Ever since I was a teenager I’ve been aggressively creative, wildly individualistic, and I’ve tried to raise Eva the same way, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that I’m the one out of step here. Not them. It’s me.

Every day, I’m surrounded by mothers who defy the description of motherhood. Here it’s the norm to get rid of your postbaby tummy as fast as you can, whether through dieting and exercise or a quiet visit to the plastic surgeon. Here it’s admired, even respected, to augment one’s breasts if one, or one’s husband, perceives they’re lacking. Here being fit, being sleek, being groomed, is vital to the mommy job. It’s as though mothers have all swallowed the marine mantra “Be all that you can be,” which here seems to mean “Be as good as, if not better than, everyone else.”