advice

A BIT OF A DEPARTURE

June 7, 2016 By Melanie Hoopes Filed Under: Hypocrite's Almanac Tagged With: advice, dementia, schadenfreude, self help

When I started this column 10 years ago, I was really bossy. I insisted you do things like recycle and shop local and volunteer. After six years, it occurred to me most of you do recycle and shop local and volunteer and those who don’t, well, a column in a free magazine wasn’t going to change that.

Then I went the advice column route, which I might return to, wherein I attempted to solve the problems of hardworking Park Slopers in hopes of providing you perspective or at the very least, a healthy dose of schadenfreude. But now, that’s feeling a bit stale. So I’m taking a break from that, too. This issue I’m going to tell you something that happened to me and then I’ll attempt to make sense of it. If you’re bored by introspection, check back next issue when, most likely, I’ll be back giving advice to a compulsive liars and adulterers.

Twenty years ago, I taught improv to wannabe child stars in LA. One night I was waiting for parents to pick up their kids when I noticed an older woman, alone, clutching her purse on the corner of the busy street and our parking lot. Odd. In LA people are outside for two reasons: They are walking to their car from a nearby building or they are walking to a nearby building from their car. This woman was small but sturdy with a mop of wiry gray hair and wearing pants that they used to sell in the back of TV Guide in ten colors. She was making a great effort to not look confused but she it was obvious she was. She was walking in a figure eight pattern in blue terrycloth slippers. After the last parent pulled away, I went over and asked if she was okay.

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They say we differ from animals because of our thumbs. Another difference is that we are the only species to tell stories to one another to make sense of our lives.

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She was lost. She walked out of her house for a breath of fresh air and got turned around. Her daughter would be worried. Could I help her? Of course, I’d escort her back. She told me her name was Mary Murdoch and then she gave me her address. I went to my car to get my Thomas Guide, the pre GPS, indispensible street atlas/bible, and looked it up.

The address she gave me was about 25 blocks from the acting school across several busy streets. Was it possible she’d been walking for an hour? She didn’t look exhausted and certainly someone else would’ve stopped her and offered help. I asked for her phone number to let her daughter know she was safe. She couldn’t recall it. The heat, she offered, she couldn’t think straight. She repeated the address and asked me to drive her there.

When you decide to help a stranger there’s a moment when you regret it. This happened after I helped her into my car and shut the door. What was I risking in helping her? Could she be having a stroke? A heart attack? What if she died in my car? I decided if her behavior changed I’d drive her to the emergency room. I attempted small talk as we drove across West LA in my Mercury Tracer. At a stoplight I glanced over at her. She was looking out her window smiling, beaming even.

We pulled up to the address. It was a small neat craftsman with a front porch that ran the length of the front of the house. I helped her out of the car and up the path, but she stopped short of the front steps. I walked up and knocked on the door. A woman in her late forties answered but kept the screen door closed.

“Hi,” I said, “I think I have your mom?” I said gesturing over the shoulder to Mary who had turned a quarter of the way in the path to face a hibiscus shrub.

“My mom died 10 years ago,” said the woman at the door.

Mary walked up behind me. “This is my house,” Mary said softly studying a rattan bench on the porch, “but it’s different.”

“What’s your name?” the woman asked Mary.

“Mary. Mary Murdoch.” Mary looked down at her slippers like a schoolgirl caught late in the halls.

The woman made a short gasp and turned to me.

“We bought this house from The Murdochs twenty five years ago. Her parents?” She addressed Mary again whose eyes were still on her slippers. “Was your mom Lucille?”

Mary’s head shot up. “Yes, that’s my mother. Do you know her?”

The woman opened the screen door and gestured for us both to come inside.

The woman, Karen, and I introduced ourselves to one another and strategized. We asked Mary for her purse and checked the contents. The only thing inside was a green plastic checkbook cover with a single deposit slip from an account belonging to Joanne McMaster. No address below the name but there was, miraculously, a phone number.

“Hi, I’m with your mother,” I said to the woman who answered.

“What? No, you’re not,” she sounded annoyed. “Ma?“ A pause. And then to someone in the room with her “Shit, Mom’s got out again.”

I told her the address and it was her turn to gasp. “That was my grandparents house! We’ll be right there.”

Ten minutes later, Joanne, her husband Al, her kids—a boy around 8, and a girl maybe 10—and Lisa, a friend, were in Karen’s front hall. Mary sat on a chair facing into the living room with her back to her family.

“She’s been doing this now for a few weeks,” Joanne said. “She has an ID bracelet but she takes it off before she leaves the house. We put a card in her purse—she tears it up and throws it in the wastebasket. It’s as if she wants to be lost. I can’t watch her every minute and we don’t want to lock her in.” She looked to us for answers or maybe forgiveness. Karen and I smiled sadly back at her.

Conversation turned to memories of the house so Karen gave the family a tour. I stayed with Mary where we could hear Joanne saying “I like what you did with the kitchen,” “…there used to be a wall here” and “…we used to play marbles on the floor there.” Back in the front hall, the family offered their thanks for helping Mary and we said our goodbyes. I got back in my car and watched Joanne pull her mini van away from the curb. Mary was in the back seat with the kids, looking very small and—was I imagining it?—embarrassed.

Over the course of the next twenty years I would find myself returning again and again to that night as a moment when something shifted for me. Soon after that night, I got fired from that horrible teaching job, gave up my bungalow by the beach and made plans to leave Los Angeles for grad school in NYC. What about that night struck such a deep chord in me? Over the past couple days I’ve been turning it over in my mind and just recently, like ten minutes ago, I hit on something. My experience with Mary that night had a dream-like quality so I decided to try to interpret it in that context. Jung believed that dream characters can represent an unacknowledged aspect of the dreamer. So if Mary was me, what was she trying to tell me? Or rather, what message did she tell my subconscious that got me to pack my bags and leave LA two decades ago?

This is what I’ve come up with: Mary had dementia. Because of that, when she strayed from home, she’d gotten turned around. When she attempted to go back to the home she remembered, it wasn’t as she left it. Someone else was living there and they had knocked the walls down and put an island in.

At that time, I, too, was walking the streets of LA in my metaphorical slippers where nothing looked familiar. I had wandered from home and was, like Mary, in need of a stranger to guide me back. Los Angeles was like Mars to me. I think it’s like that for everyone who moves there at first. You either adjust or you don’t. If you do, you can make a home there. If you don’t, it’s hard to breathe and there’s nothing to nourish you. For the seven years I lived there, I waited for my own version of a Mercury Tracer to take me to safety. While waiting, I lost my bearings, my confidence and I believe, my sense of self. Seeing Mary lose her way set me into motion. I had to leave. To Joanne and her family, the night we met was just another time that Mary got out. For me, our meeting was an awakening.

They say we differ from animals because of our thumbs. Another difference is that we are the only species to tell stories to one another to make sense of our lives. This was one of mine. I’m sure you have hundreds of your own. I wish I could hear them.

See you next time.

THE MOTHER’S DAY MINDFIELD

May 9, 2016 By Nicole Kear Filed Under: Dispatches From Babyville Tagged With: advice, Brooklyn, children, dispatches, humor, Kids yoga, lifestyle, Mother’s Day, parenting, raising children

In my first few years as a mother, I totally fell for the Mother’s Day hype. It’s very name, and the Kay jewelers commercials that run constantly, led one to believe that it’s a day in which those who constantly cater to the needs of others finally have their needs catered to, the one day among the other 364 in which mothers are given their due, honored for the terrific martyrs they are.

Awesome idea. Stellar. Too bad it’s a load of malarkey. I should clarify here that I’m a holiday person. I make homemade costumes for Halloween and throw elaborate themed birthday parties for my kids. I hurtle myself headlong into Christmas, like a moony teenager falling in love for the first time. Once, when my kids and I boarded a bus only to discover the meter was broken and no fare required, I declared it “Free Bus Day” and we sang jubilant songs on the theme, on and off all day.

I like celebrations. And I especially like celebrations in which the person being celebrated is me.

I respect, but do not understood, folks who try to ignore their birthdays, people who forbid their spouses and co-workers to make a big deal. David, my husband, is one such person, and it caused some arguments in our early years together.

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I’VE RECONCILED MYSELF TO THE FACT THAT I WILL NEVER GET A WHOLE DAY OF HUGS AND KISSES AND GRATITUDE. BUT I CAN GET FIVE TO TEN MINUTES.

[/pullquote]He has a particularly strong aversion to surprise parties, which I discovered when I threw him one for his twenty-third birthday in our living room. I convinced him to take a nap, and while he was sleeping, I hung streamers, sneaked out the German Chocolate Cake I’d spent two hours baking according to his mother’s recipe, and ushered in the guests. When everything was ready, I woke him from a dead sleep by crying: “The kitchen sink! It’s flooding! Come quick!” Still half asleep, he stumbled into the living room in his boxers and T-shirt and when everyone yelled “Surprise!” he about-faced with nary a word and marched right back into the bedroom.

Looking back, my surprise party plan was not as well-conceived as I’d thought. I nailed the surprise part—the party part, not so much.

Of course, in marriages we give our partners what we want. I have been waiting patiently for several decades for someone to throw me a surprise party—for my birthday, Mother’s Day, International Women’s Day, even Free Bus Day, I’m not picky.

Sometimes, I wonder if maybe David has been planning a surprise party all this time, and he’s just playing a long game, so that I’ll be absolutely flabbergasted when it happens. It’ll be Mother’s Day in my seventy-sixth year of life and David will contrive for me to play mah jong with my girlfriends (by that time, I will have started playing mah jong and calling my ladies “girlfriends”). But when I arrive, instead of being greeted just by Ethel and Martha and Frances (my friends’ names will age along with them), I’ll be greeted by a room packed full of friends, my children, my grandchildren, maybe even the barista of my favorite coffee joint, who’s always thought of me as a mother figure. The mayor might swing by for a minute, say a few words.

There will be not only a chocolate fountain but a prosecco fountain and a marble bust in the exact likeness of me. This will all be possible because one of my three kids will have become a billionaire, having invented the cure for the common cold. After everyone yells “Surprise!” David will turn to face me, leaning on his walker, and he will say: “All these years, you thought we were slacking off, but we were really planning this. Happy Mother’s Day “

And I will finally feel satisfied on Mother’s Day. I will finally feel adequately honored.

It is no surprise that on a recent Mother’s Day, David’s card to me read: “I love you. I hope you have a great day. Just manage your expectations.”

For my part, I think my needs are fairly simple. While I would certainly enjoy a ticker tape parade, I don’t expect one. All I want are heartfelt, homemade cards from each of my children, some kind of dessert with so many calories it’s illegal in some states, and the privilege of choosing the afternoon’s activity.

Of course, I can’t help but hope that, on this one day, my kids will tone down the bickering, or even eliminate it—for one day, how hard is that? I can’t help but dream that they might toss me a moment of gratitude, in the vein of, “Thank you for your joie de vivre and the priceless gift of hope”—that, and maybe pick up their dirty clothes off the bathroom floor.

I always tell my kids that “practice makes perfect—or at least, better” and this is true of Mother’s Day celebrations, as well. Over the past eleven years, David and I have gotten better at hopping around the Mother’s Day minefield, without detonating any explosives.

The primary lesson David had to learn was that it is his job to oversee the children’s card-making. This came as something of a surprise to him. It was a little like watching the sausages get made.

When the kids were in nursery school or Pre K, this was a non-issue because their teachers made the construction of such cards mandatory. Those cards were the best, the Rolls Royce of Mother’s Day cards. Quality materials, like heavy weight card stock and tempera paint, were used. Time was devoted to the enterprise. The cards were both funny and sweet, including phrases like: “Today, I wish for you a donkey!” and “I lov u mame beecaws u ar nis and pretee and giv me candee.”

But when the children were either too young for too old for nursery school, they fell into a dead zone of cardlessness. A two-year-old will not think to make a card for her mother. A six-year-old will think to do it but lack the follow-through to make it happen, hatching extraordinary plans and then getting distracted, permanently, by a stale gummy bear under the couch. Thus, there was one Mother’s Day early on in which I waited and waited for the official Presentation Of the Cards and alas, I waited in vain.

“Why didn’t you have the kids make cards for me?” I asked David.

“That’s their responsibility,” he countered.

Then I let forth a bitter laugh. An “Oh, to be as ignorant as you!” chuckle.

“Why do you think you get Father’s Day cards every year?” I asked. “I stand over them and make sure they do it. And not just a two-second scribble either. I make them go back and revise and give you the good stuff. Acrostics, Haikus. Drawings with verisimilitude.”

So David started overseeing card construction. He doesn’t have the natural ability of a Pre K teacher, and I’ve yet to receive a sonnet, but he gets the job done.

I’ve learned a thing or two myself. I’ve learned to lower my expectations. The lower, the better. If I could bring those expectations to street level, and then pulverize them underfoot, that would be ideal. As it stands, I’ve managed to get them from Sky High to about Fifteen Stories High, which isn’t half bad.

I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that I will never get a whole day of hugs and kisses and gratitude. But I can get five to ten minutes. And the good news is, I don’t just have the chance for these moments on Mother’s Day. Because I’m a mother every day.

Much as I’d like to shout “Action!” and instantly call up Hallmark moments, these moments tend to happen spontaneously, sometimes at the most inconvenient times. I’ve noticed children get very lovey when it’s way past their bedtime or you’re in the middle of talking to someone else about something very important or when you really, really have to go to the bathroom. No matter when they occur, I try to savor the tender moments. I have a whole folder full of heart-melting, no-occasion notes from my kids, as well as drawings of me and them holding hands in a field of flowers and hugging in a room full of cats and smiling while standing next to Frankenstein (mysteriously, I am always wearing a pearl necklace, though I do not own one. Pearl necklace, I’ve learned is the signifier for “Mother”).

That’s to say nothing of the moments we share for which there is no paper trail. The early mornings when my three-year-old clambers into my bed and nuzzles in my shoulder. The bedtimes when my nine-year-old will curl up next to me as I read Little Women aloud. The sporadic, sudden hugs from my eleven-year-old who is so much taller than me that my head nearly rests on his shoulder now.

String these moments together and you get one hell of a Mother’s Day. n

Nicole C. Kear is the author of the memoir Now I See You (St. Martin’s, 2014), and the forthcoming chapter book series for kids, The Fix-It Friends (Imprint, 2017).

You Can Do This!

February 23, 2016 By Melanie Hoopes Filed Under: Hypocrite's Almanac Tagged With: advice, Alzheimer’s, counseling, family

Dear Hypocrite,

I know you’re not a therapist—you’ve been saying that for years—but I’m struggling with some real issues and looking for help or insight everywhere I can think of. You might just be the one to tell me something useful or perhaps make me feel not so alone. Besides, you’re free.

My mom has Alzheimer’s. It was obvious after several events (her walking out in traffic and setting her kitchen on fire) that she was no longer able to live at home by herself. I hired a part-time aide for a while, but she needed even more care, so last June I moved her into my apartment. I got a friend of mine to watch her during the day until I came home from work. When my mom stopped sleeping at night, life became unlivable. She’s now in a memory unit at a nursing home in Forest Hills. It’s a pretty dismal place. The people are kind but she pretty much wanders the halls all day looking for her “parents.” I visit her on the weekend. I don’t know what else I can do.

To add to this, I have many unresolved feelings towards her. She wasn’t the greatest mom. She was a drinker and distant and blamed me and my brother for getting in the way of the life she was meant to live. Obviously, there’s no point in talking to her now about my issues. She’s not sure who I am most of the time. On a good day, she calls me by her sister’s name.

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. I know you’re going to tell me to see a therapist or find a support group. Is there anything else I can do?

Signed,

Not So Dutiful Daughter

Dear Daughter,

I am so sorry for your loss. I know she’s still there for you to touch, see, and talk to, but a big part of what made her your mom is not there anymore and that is very hard to experience every time you see her. Add to that your unresolved feelings and you have a very complicated concoction of sadness and anger.

Even if you feel alone, you are not. I venture to say that many of the people you pass on the street are going through some version of your experience. What puts you in a special category is that you are the primary caregiver, which brings with it some serious stress and the feeling that you can never do enough for your mom. But here’s your new mantra: I can only do what I can. In other words, don’t try to do what you think you should or what someone else did. Do what you can do. You can only visit her on the weekends. So do that. Get to know her nurses, take her on a walk outside, bring her flowers…then go home and take a shower, see a movie, or have dinner with a friend. You need to extract the guilt from that cocktail of sadness and anger that’s already lodged in your chest. I do have some thoughts on sadness, however.

Yesterday I went for a walk around the track of a nearby school. It had just rained and there were big, beautiful earthworms crossing the track to get back to the soil. The only problem was the majority of them were headed toward the artificial turf that was in the center of the track. I couldn’t simply walk over them knowing they were going to a place that had nothing for them, that couldn’t sustain them.

My father has had Parkinson’s for fifteen years and I have a fourteen-year-old dog that is blind and deaf and can’t hold his urine. Seeing these worms cross the road to a place that would do nothing to keep them alive was more sadness than I could bear. It took me five minutes but I whipped every one of those worms back to the side with the real soil. A woman in full Lululemon passed by and asked what I was doing. When I told her she gave me a sad little look, not a judgmental one, but a look that said, “You poor woman. You feel too much.” At this point in my life, I do. Saving worms seemed the only option at that moment. I’m sure to Lulu I’ll be forever known as ‘The Worm Girl,’ but as nicknames go, it’s not a bad one. I’ve had worse.

We like to think we are in control of our lives. We keep our houses clean to the best of our abilities; we fill our days with errands and appointments to keep surprises to a minimum; we complain when teachers, food, or service fall below our standards. But all the while, as Carlos Castaneda said, death stalks us. There is suffering for those doing the dying and for those who bear witness to it. The witnesses have the job of easing the suffering of those fading. It’s normal to feel like you can’t do enough. But we do what you can. For my dog, I can change his food, give him cuddles, and take him to his favorite park. For my dad, I can visit, comb his hair, give him a massage, and buy him a pillow for his wheelchair. For the worms, I can fling them onto the grass.

To ease our own suffering, we need to get sleep, eat healthy foods, and exercise while knowing that the pain of sadness is something that we have to go through. But my dear daughter, you shouldn’t go through it alone. Here’s what you were expecting: find a therapist and get a support group. You need help. Get out there and meet people who are going through the same thing.

Again, I am so sorry you’re going through this. I know how it feels. My dad is not getting better. He’ll die this year or if not, the year after. And it will be unbearably sad. Somehow I will get through it. But until then, I will do as much as I can for him and ask for support from friends, family, and my therapist who is worth every penny of her astronomical fee.

Before I go, I have a question. Where is your brother? It sounds like the majority of the weight of caring for your mother is falling on your shoulders. Can you enlist him in more help? Can you let him know you’re feeling overwhelmed? Can you send him this column?

Daughter, I’ll be thinking of you. See you next time.

About Lucy

July 28, 2015 By Melanie Hoopes Filed Under: Hypocrite's Almanac Tagged With: advice, humor, hypocrite, parenting

Dear Hypocrite,

I love your column. Often when I’m facing a problem that I’m not sure how to handle, I’ll think about what you’d say and I follow your imagined advice. This time, however, I can write in and wait for your real response! My husband and I are struggling with this one. We’re hoping you can help us out.

My husband has a group of good friends from college. Over the years, I’ve gotten to know them and their wives and consider them my pals, too. We’ve gone on many trips together as couples, and now that our kids have finally made it to a good traveling age, we’ve started to take family vacations together. Last year we rented a house in Mexico and it was a success for the most part. The only issue is with “Lucy,” one of “Ann and Tom’s” children. My husband and I are not sure what’s wrong with Lucy. She talks constantly and is forever trying to enlist the entire group in playing a game. Ann and Tom encourage the behavior by playing her games which involve making animal sounds and answering senseless riddles. She’s forever hijacking conversations and telling stories that have no point. Her parents make no effort to curb her. She sabotages whatever is going on. Lucy is eight and already the last person I’d want to sit next to at a dinner party.

At the end of the Summer, all the families are meeting at a house in Michigan for ten days. The house is not as big as we wanted. Some of the couples have to sleep in twin beds, some are on a sleeping porch. There isn’t a lot of privacy. My husband and I are dreading being cooped up with Lucy. My husband wants to tell Ann and Tom that we’re reconsidering the trip because we’re not sure if we can tolerate Lucy’s behavior. I agree something needs to be said, but that seems too strong. How do we ask them to rein her in so we can catch up like old days?

Signed
What To Do About Problem Child

Dear What To Do,

First of all, there are no more old days. Kids change absolutely every dynamic they touch. Trying to get back to the energy of the old days is as fruitless as flossing your teeth with one hand. You won’t be able to do it. Let go of that fantasy now.

I hear you when you say you want to catch up, though. Being able to share your lives with people who’ve known you in your wilder days is the absolute best. The thing you need to figure out now is how not to fuck that up. And you, What To Do, are at the precipice of ruining everything. There are a couple of reasons why I’m going to tell you to do absolutely nothing in your struggle with Problem Child.

When I was twelve I was pretty sure I was done with the human species. I’d been betrayed by my friends and wasn’t feeling so great about my family. But there was one thing I had a lot of faith in. Squirrels. My backyard was filled with them. Every afternoon after school, I would sit on the steps going down to the yard and watch them gather chestnuts for hours. Every couple minutes or so, I would sneak a few inches closer to them, determined to be their Jane Goodall. I’d heard of some people who had squirrels at pets. I wanted squirrels as friends.

I wasn’t successful at forging the species divide. I was never able to hand them a chunk of Lender’s bagel like I wanted. After about three months, I turned my back on the squirrels and got on my bike. Within a few weeks I ended up getting a new pack of human friends who let me get close to them. The squirrel thing was a phase—one of a hundred or so I have gone through. Kids go through phases constantly. You last saw Lucy a year ago. I bet you $23 that the kid has moved on to another more or less annoying phase. You need to see where she is before you say anything to the parents about curbing her behavior.

There’s another even more important reason you shouldn’t say anything before the trip.

When kids are young, they are their parent’s possessions. Parents are hard at work guiding and shaping them. They do their best to create their child’s afterschool and summer schedules and encourage friendships for them that are morally sound and emotionally supportive. This is why parents can’t help but feel personally attacked when someone talks shit about their kid. Saying something bad about Lucy is the same as telling Ann and Tom that they are shitty parents. You say, “Lucy is hard to take,” they hear, “You have created a monster.”

You have two choices: You can sit this trip out or you can go. If you go, I think you will discover a different Lucy. But if Lucy is how you last left her, you’re allowed to drop a well-constructed, well-timed comment to her parents that may help the situation. Here are my suggestions.

“It’s so good to see you. Sometimes it’s so hard with all the kids around to get a word in edgewise. Want to sneak in a walk and talk?”

“What do you guys think of using a local sitter for the night? Catching up is hard at dinner with all the kids. I want to know how you guys are doing.”
“Lucy has so much energy!”

All of these statements can start conversations. The last one will work only if said without judgment. Say it like you’d say “Seven times seven equals forty-nine” or “Cows give milk you can drink.”

Good luck with this. I feel for you. But I also feel for Lucy. I wasn’t a fan of grownups when I was young because they were always telling me to be quiet so they could talk. Sitting there and watching them talk was excruciating. How could they be so boring? Would it really hurt them to play a game during dinner once in while?
See you next time!