Letting Go of the "Friday Nights"

 For the past 40 years my parents' core group of eight couples has celebrated Friday nights together - usually eating at a local restaurant and later gathering at one couple's home for dessert. They have also traveled together frequently: Europe, Yellowstone, Alaska, Sea Island, and assorted cruises. More than dining and traveling companions, they are, of course, close lifetime friends. The children of the group also formed friendships, and some of us refer to our parents collectively as the Friday Nights.

First Henry, and then Bill, Ross, and David passed away, leaving four widows who have formed a sub-group. As adult children, we have  had a hard time saying goodbye to each of these Friday Nights. At the funerals when our eyes have met, I have seen my own unspoken fear reflected back to me.

Early this first day of 2010, my mother (far right) called with the news that Betty (second from left)  had died an hour earlier - another victim of Alzheimer's Disease. A few days ago Mother visited Betty at the nursing home, as she has done faithfully during the course of this disease. This morning she described her old friend to me: vibrant, sweet, smart, and an excellent mother to her bright, independent children. My mother grieved her lively friend but released her suffering friend - modeling friendship for me: love, faithfulness, and grace.

Faithful Friend

My father (left) and his first friend, Lawrence (right), have known each other from their very earliest years growing up in the St. Elmo area of Columbus. After Lawrence's family moved out to the country, Daddy visited the "Cheney Place" and enjoyed riding horses and playing with his friend on their farm. They've remained friends for 82 years.

Now, Lawrence has Alzheimers' Disease. In sad irony, Reba, his wife and stalwart, seemingly healthy caretaker for this disease's duration, died last month, shortly after a surprise lung cancer diagnosis. Lawrence does not know that she is gone.

For several hours every Monday, Daddy sits with Lawrence at the nursing home  - feeding him, getting him water, making him comfortable, trying to converse with him. I know that this must be incredibly hard for my father, but he is glad to be there for his friend, even though his friend no longer knows him.

Today Daddy made an extra trip to the nursing home to visit Lawrence and tried several different ways to content his old friend.  He remembered that Lawrence liked ice cream - a lot - and went to find some for him. After something of a hunt, the staff produced a cup of strawberry ice cream, which Daddy fed to him. Lawrence eagerly ate all of the dessert. And then he cried. My dad's eyes welled up in telling me about it. "He cried because he enjoyed that ice cream." Probably true, but I think that Lawrence cried because, at some level, he knew that he was loved.

Wobbling Towards Job Satisfaction

The part of my job that I love, the part that feels like I was SO born to do this -- working with students -- sinks to the bottom of the to-do list for too many days at the start of every school year. I have always dreaded and found unsettling the necessary beginning of the year tasks, especially creating a workable weekly therapy schedule and completing due process work to place new students. During these first few weeks every year, my job satisfaction dips, and I must continually remind myself that despite the bumpy start to every year, I really do love my job and will feel competent again...any day now!

No matter how bad the day, how wobbly the start, or how unsettling changes at work may be, one constant for me is the camaraderie I find there. I work with a wonderfully supportive group of gloriously independent, smart, and talented colleagues. We got together this week-end to celebrate one group member's milestone birthday (don't have permission to tell which milestone). If any of us thought about the downside to our professions, no one let on to it: we laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Laurie's surprise party provided an opportunity to celebrate not only a birthday, but special friendships.

So, thanks, Laurie, Jackie, Wynn, Tiffany, Susan, and Becca* for reminding me of what is important about why we go to work each day: to give something of ourselves to others.

*Retirees, especially those who volunteer at school, are included!!

Don't Think So...

Plan: Bike the Chattahoochee Riverwalk today. Not incredibly hot; slightly overcast. Shouldn't be crowded; close by. We'll ride past the Dillingham Street bridge to see what we missed yesterday.

Execution: Haul the two, 15 year-old bikes out of the storage building to find out if they are rideable. No: four flat tires. Fife, with Will assisting, fixes three, but the fourth needs a new tube. Off to Jordan Bicycle shop with the bike wedged into the bunjee-strapped trunk. Back home with the repaired bike, we try to mount the impossible-to-configure bike rack on the car trunk, but succeed only in denting and scratching my car. An hour of adjusting the six, c- and s-clamped straps gets us nowhere: the rack collapses when the first bike is placed. Hrrrumph! Frustrated, but not ready to quit.

We change venues -- the neighborhood will do. Few sidewalks, so we're forced onto the street. Cars speed past us 20 miles over the speed limit; their drivers cast impatient looks our way. Look left-right-left-right; dart across the curvy road to the only available sidewalk. Heart races and the 24 year old mother reflex cranes my head back to check on Anna. Handlebars turn, following my head. Wobble. Older instincts control the bike: straighten, balance, glide. Now, dodge the broken Bud bottle. Did Anna see it too? Duck under that low-hanging Mulberry limb. Thwack. Puff the disturbed gnats off my nose and forehead. My head itches. Rubbing the neon helmet back and forth does not help. Straighten up to look for the woodpecker drilling a nearby Sycamore. Bump over the drainage cover in the middle of the sidewalk. Remember Diane crushing her right hand in a bike tumble last week. Lean over to grab the racing handle bars again. Relegated to watch sand, grass, cement, and asphalt rush past -- not exactly what I had envisioned.

Evaluation: Riding my childhood bike was as simple as hopping on in the carport and gliding down the driveway to the low-traffic street. No combination lock, no bubble-headed helmet, no gear, no ornery bike rack, no arthritis. Yes, of course, there was the occasional derailed chain and flat tire, but riding my bike to school, to the store, to a friend's house, to explore the neighborhood, or just to feel the wind on my face was functional, uncomplicated fun. Might have been fun today if the bike rack had not frustrated me so and if I had been pedaling my 1961 Western Flyer cruiser with a much nimbler 6 year old frame (mine, not the bike's).

Confusing Wisdom and Memory

Musings from a Virtual Hammock

My personal hero for the day: SARA REISTAD-LONG of the NY Times, for her article on the aging brain, creative thinking, and wisdom. My friends know that my memory challenges terrify me. Reistad-Long, quoting researchers at Harvard, the University of Toronto, and the University of Michigan, reported on new paradigms of memory, attention, problem-solving, and wisdom. I took the good news as three bullets:

*Older people have a larger collection of accumulated knowledge than younger people -- and, therefore, have more information to store and manage.

*Younger people may appear to be more flexible in retrieving packets of information, but they are less flexible in being able to make creative connections between these packets.

*Older people access these collections to problem solve, and do so in a more holistic manner than younger people.

My favorite quote from the article:
“It may be that distractability is not, in fact, a bad thing,” said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. “It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.”
My little ADHD brain magnetized to that one.

Isn't this what we 50-somethings have long suspected? My friends, seeing the panic on my face when I realize that I have completely forgotten what should be so easily remembered, reassure me that I "have too much on my mind". I do. BUT, I always fear that the real reason that I don't remember is that I knocked myself unconscious while disassembling a swing set about 15 years ago. While that fear may be correct, the same injury could have made creative thinking more likely. Thank you for sharing, Ms. Reistad-Long.

Related article: For a Sharp Brain: Stimulation