August 6, 2022

Frankie and I are moving again. For the sixth time in seven years. What can I say? We like to keep things interesting.

Seriously, I think it’s safe to say I’ve spent most of the last seven years (ever since I moved to Riverside), if not in full-blown crisis mode, than at least in temporary limbo land. If my life was a book, these last seven years would be a titled chapter “Dealing with an Aging Parent and Other Life Sacrifices.”

Not to sound ungrateful. The very fact that I have life at all is a testament to my mother’s own sacrifice. Really. What is motherhood, if not an exercise in selflessness, of putting someone’s own wants and dreams ahead of your own? I am indebted.

Which is why I originally moved from the one-bedroom apartment I loved and once foolishly dubbed “my forever home,” to live with her in a three-bedroom apartment after her first fall in 2017. We made it more than a year before her doctor stepped in and stated the obvious – it was a bigger task than I could take on myself. She moved to an assisted living facility in January of 2019. And I moved on to two more one-bedroom apartments in Riverside, but always slightly uneasy, never settled. I never felt I could safely land or “get back to me.” Until now.

But guilt has made its’ home with me. Maybe it’s just part of the process. Part of watching a parent get older. Well, she’s 80 now. Let’s just say it. Watching a parent get old. I remember when she was 72 and so offended that some writer in a book she was reading used the word ‘elderly’ to refer to someone her own age. She’d be less offended now. 80 qualifies.

I feel guilty for not being able to take care of her from my wheelchair. “It’s not my fault!” I lamented to a friend one day. “That’s right, it’s not,” she said. “It’s not your fault,” she repeated, her eyes full of compassion. “It’s not your fault,” she whispered again. And right on cue, the tears welled up in my eyes, like we were on the set of Good Will Hunting and she was Robin Williams. Where was this emotion coming from? She had good-will-hunting’d me.

So I feel guilty, yes. And simultaneously relieved that my disability has gotten me off the hook. In the same way, I’m secretly (or not so secretly) glad to have found a way out of working nine to five. It’s another perk. If I were able-bodied, then surely I’d be taking care of her. And the seven-year chapter where my life is paused would be a whole lot longer. I think about Grey Gardens, the documentary, and then the movie. We are Big and Little Edie, but in my movie, Little Edie is in a wheelchair, so she escapes the falling-down mansion and taking care of her mother, and can live her own life. I dodged a bullet. But being relieved is just one more thing to feel guilty about.

For a while I looked at apartments out at the beach, just to be close to her. As usual, I had romanticized our entire mother-daughter relationship. I imagined myself living close enough to ride my power chair over to her place whenever I wanted. We could eat lunch out on the facility’s screened porch and watch movies together. I even looked at a community that bordered the same lake (retention pond) and pictured myself waving to her across the water. How ridiculous. The reality is my mom watches game shows now, instead of movies, and couldn’t make it out to the lake without assistance, much less see me waving.

The truth is, she’s declining. She fancies herself above it all when it comes to typical “old people activities,” like arts and crafts or bingo. She’s always been a little “too cool for school” and there’s only so much happy encouragement (she calls it nagging) I’m willing to do. After all, you can lead a mom to activities, but you can’t make her take part. My mom has always been strong-willed and a little difficult, but I give her a free pass. When I was growing up, she made it through single motherhood with a teenager, battled multiple addictions, and sought plenty of therapy for her own traumatic childhood. She holds a get-out-of-purgatory-free card as far as I’m concerned.

At one point, the ladies who clean for me proposed that my mom and I share another three-bedroom with a live-in to care for us both. I recoiled in horror at this suggestion. It seemed like the set-up for a bad sitcom. Golden Girls gone wrong. I didn’t want to be Dorothy to my mom’s Sophia. I wanted to star in my own show! But their suggestion just illuminates the cultural difference. The cleaning crew is from Mexico, a country that reveres its aging population. Families take care of their own. It’s commonplace there for multiple generations to live under one roof. In contrast to America, where I was told from an early age that dreams really do come true, all I needed to do was spread my wings and fly (parent-speak for go to college, move out, and pay my own bills).

So feeling a little lost and on a whim, I stopped by my old apartment complex in Riverside to see what they had available. They did have an apartment. And not just any apartment. The exact same apartment I’d had to leave back in 2017. My old “forever home,” complete with the wood floors and handicap bars I’d already paid to install.

Now granted, I am the kind of person who’s likely to look for meaning everywhere, but this seems like a pretty happy coincidence, no? The woman living there had given her notice months ago, but due to some technical glitch, the apartment wasn’t showing up on their website as available to rent. I’d like to think it was waiting for me. In hiding until I showed up.

Kismet aside, the rent was a bit high. So, trying to curb my impulsiveness, I decided to wait and watch the website, the glitch having been corrected since my interest. Moved by a slightly cooling housing market, the price then dropped by a few hundred dollars. I pounced and made it mine.

So this Friday, things will come full circle. Five years ago, I opened the door to my newly hired assistant, Gia, who would help me pack up and leave my forever home. I was in the midst of a personal crisis, I remember telling her, my mom still in the hospital. Who would guess that almost to the day, five years later, I would be opening the door to that same assistant, so she could help me move back. I’m shaking off as much guilt as I can and spreading my wings to fly again. And now I have a comfortable landing spot. Here’s wishing you all the same luck and good destiny. Remember sometimes when you’re lost, keep looking for meaning. Sometimes, it just may be that the universe really is conspiring to help you find your way. Behind the scenes. With a mysterious glitch. At least that’s what I’d like to think.