I dream she is small

I found this today in a notebook shoved between books in my bookcase:
Sept 22, 2007

Last night I had a dream that my mom was with me and that she was very small, like a little person. And that this was because she had begun to shrink little by little because of her illness. I am not sure if she is aware of her condition or not. We go to a corner store and I buy something. I turn around and she has the idea that they have something of hers. She's not sure what it is but she looks for it anyway and goes behind the counter, to the employee side. I have to go get her and tell her firmly that she can't be back there and that they don't have anything of hers. Then we go outside and cross the street. I am very worried about her because she's so small so I pick her up and carry her on my hip, like a child. She says "You're so sweet." I ask her if she knows that she has been shrinking and it seems like she doesn't understand the question. I think at this time we are in Argentina. I think that she'll end up disappearing before I come back to California. Afterwards (or before, I don't remember), we go to a museum in the countryside. She likes this a lot and we buy the artist's book. 
Then we're in her house in El Cerrito. She is in another room and I go outside with the phone to call Joel and tell him I'm here and ask him if he has told her that she's sick. But before I finish dialing, I hear that he's already in the house. I go inside and I notice he's in one of his bad moods. He doesn't look me in the eyes and he criticizes us for buying the book. She's uncomfortable. So am I.

I think I only go to buy myself time. For every week that I'm away, an accumulation of guilt, worry and absence grows inside me. What if it's all changed? If she can't walk anymore or has become new and happy and energetic and I'm missing it? Thousands of potential tragedies and mini joys. I used to be so incredibly in-tune. I carried her illness for her and it almost killed me. I'm still carrying it so i know I can't do that again. But what I get instead is a profound uselessness. She used to need my intuition and the millions of ways I found to talk her into the shower once a week. Now all she needs can be paid for by Joel.

The most useful I've felt lately is a couple months ago I came to visit in the early evening- 5 or 6pm. And they were already getting her ready for bed. They had pulled the mattress off the bed and onto the floor so she doesn't fall off. She was sitting up on the edge of the bed, facing a mirror but not looking into it. Is this how they do it? I know she takes a bunch of sleeping pills which only work for a few hours before she gets up to pace around her bedroom until morning. I came in and sat next to her, slightly behind her and held her a little bit, rubbing her back and squeezing her shoulders a bit. She relaxed, letting some of her wight fall back onto me which almost pushed me down. I sang her lullaby very softly, ones she sang to me but I don't remember the lyrics and she can't recite them to me now. That is one of the biggest losses for me- my own childhood memories. Details I would like to ask her about are gone. And it was just her and me for so many years. There are no witnesses to us growing up together. Her a young single mother (younger than I am now), making it up as we went.

Slowly she let me pull her back to lay down completely (although her feet are still hanging off the foot of the bed). She closes her eyes buy never stops moving her hands, gently pulling at her clothes, nervous energy trying to smooth something away. I lay next to her stroking her hair until she sleeps. All of my friends have toddlers and I imagine that they all must be putting them to sleep in the same way right now.

It was a good visit because I was useful and I did something you can't buy. The women who care for her couldn't believe she was asleep so soon. Usually she paces around for hours before sleeping, they said.

I can't believe my mother has to sleep alone every night. A woman so fun, beautiful and loved.

When we come back inside the house after taking a walk outside, she always immediately stops in her tracks and looks around cautiously as if there must be wolves hiding behind the couch. This is because it seems very dark to her inside because her pupils haven't adjusted yet. There is no explaining it to her. You can only turn on all the lights and tell her in a calm voice that it will not seem dark in a few minutes. This has been happening for a long time now and even though a year ago she was much more capable of understanding words, we could never convince her. You can think I'm an asshole but this makes me think of her as a dog. Because now she understands the tone of your voice but not your words. And when her senses tell her there is danger, you cannot argue with them. Her senses always win, even when they lie. She is like a dog hiding under the bed on New Year's eve, trembling because the world is ending. Call me an asshole, I don't care.

She gets spooked more and more. It can be something as logical as a creepy movie on TV or as bizarre as a Land's End Catalog. If I am lucky, she will pull it out and show it to me and say "that is really scary." That way I can throw it away and tell her everything is ok. We have to encourage her to go to the bathroom. She usually doesn't want to even if she hasn't peed all day. One day as I tried to gently push her into the bathroom, she pointed to a part of the wall where the paint had chipped away near the floor, saying that was really bad and creepy. We taped a piece of white paper over it and she exhaled and she thanked me. Once I came over when she had been alone and she was hiding from the TV in the kitchen because somebody was plotting to kill their mother in law on Days of Our Lives. I changed the channel. Her drawings and paintings are all over the house. There is one of a lizard on a dark red background hanging above the couch. One day she indicated that that was spooky too. I took down her own painting and she smiled at me and stroked my hair. She is always so relieved and thanks me in sort of an embarrassed way. She thanks me that same way when I help her zip her sweatshirt or tie her shoes. They are the moments when she realizes how vulnerable she is compared to us.

She hasn't been able to change the channel for over two years now and when she is alone during the day, she inevitably ends up watching daytime TV. But she still finds a way to mock the stupidity of Soap Operas. She does this with hand gestures and rolling her eyes. I know what it means because these are her old tricks and she has always hated Soap Operas. She used to advise me against them like she might advise against drugs. It was good advice.

Today I said good bye to my mother. Today I said good bye to today´s mother. To my mother of today, not of 3 years ago when I left, not the one of January next year when I will be back. The today one, the one I just 20 minutes ago said good bye to, she is the one who has been so so gently kissing my cheek all day, telling me how much she loves me and looking at me so tenderly. She is the one that finally understands that I am her little girl even though she still has no recollection of having raised me. She is the one that understands that she doesnt understand and so she just tucks my arm into her arm and leans on me. She knows that her friends came to have pizza at her house tonight and that they are all talking to eachother because she doesnt know how to talk to them. She knows.

She has a new toy, a small duck on a keychain that has a tiny button that makes the duck go "cuac!" when she presses it. She can never find the button and just presses it´s head instead and gets frustrated. We have been working on remembering where the "cuac" button is for the last two days and luckily now she mostly remembers. So, when her friends were eating pizza in her house and she was so happy to have them here but wasn´t part of the conversations, she would say "oh yeah, well..." and push the duck button. "oh yeah, well cuac!...that´s what I think about that!" and this will crack her up. And her friends will laught too, sort of nervously and she will feel like they are all laughing at her joke. But I think she knows this too. There is an expression that passes quickly at the end of the other expressions that tells me that she knows she has just done something very rediculous because she can`t. She can`t do what they do. Because she has always been brave this way. She throws her ego out the window in order to enjoy herself. She doesn`t give a shit what you think.

This is the mother I said good bye to today. I dont know who the mother I will say hello to in January will be. She may not remember my name, she will definatly be using words even less acuratly than she does now. But she has been so happy and sweet lately, not half as worried or tense as the mother I met again in February for the first time in 2 years. This mother will feel very lonley when she finds herself spending her days alone again. How will that lonliness shape her? Why am I leaving?

I found this painting today in a pile of magazines, scrap paper and old mail. I have no idea when she painted it, but it is not very old. It blows my mind. I think she must feel like that fish laying on top of the water instead of in it with the rest of us. She will never admit vocally that something is wrong. But sometimes I know she knows and it breaks my heart.

Strangest thing. Going to see my mom sort of centers me now. In all this uncertainty, cell phone charger in the warehouse I am staying in SF, bike and flip-flops in a friend´s house in Oakland, my negatives and photo paper in El Cerrito, not-really-boyfriends away on trips, work that isn’t my work and pays badly.

Today I took a nap and awoke panicked and anxious, convinced that I needed to join the marching band in Rio or learn the piano as soon as possible or I would certainly go my own degree of nuts. That I had to have a heart-to-heart with someone and tell them how much they meant to me. With my best Oaktown girlfriend who hasn’t been able to see that her eccentricities are her superpower. With that secret boyfriend I had 4, 5 years ago. Tell him that even though we needlessly kept it from everyone at the time, and even though we see each other every week now and pretend it never happened, that our year together wasn’t nothing. That it happened, and that it made a permanent mark on me.

Then I stopped by mom´s to pick up my negatives and to spend a little time. I sat down next to her and she put her arm around me. We were both completely concentrated with that gesture, into the point of a pin. I realized this was the best form of communication I have with anyone right now. That this moment was the most useful and true one I´ve had in at least 48 hours.

How could this thing, this bizarre illness that continues to twist and turn my mother´s mind, that has been the source of all above mentioned instability, that has caused me to give up everything I worked for, that has caused me so much sadness; how could sitting with her be what gives me the most peace?

Beats me.