Mom & Me Four Archive

    I was spurred by inspiration, last night, until 0500 this morning, in several areas, the manifestation of the most obvious of which appears above, just below the description of my journal, in deep pink. After finishing the editing on The Teaching Interview, added to the right under the podcast links, it occurred to me that an audio introduction to The Mom & Me Journals might help it seem less intimidating to visitors. Even if you're a regular visitor to this group of sites you might want to listen to it. I explain the contents of all the links to the right. If you've been curious about any of them but haven't wanted to become entangled in yet more written words the Audio Intro reviews each link's material. The introduction announcement is a link to an mp3 file. I think the only thing I neglected to mention, by accident, is the amount of repetition in these site. After uploading the file and listening to it to make sure it was coming through okay I considered modifying it but decided, nah, the repetition in the site becomes obvious very soon after someone visits. Which is why I've set up search facilities.
    Although The Teaching Interview appears to be long, certainly longer than my plan for each interview, I cut 50 minutes out of it before uploading it. The 50 cut minutes consisted of:

• thought pauses;
• "Yes" or "No" answers;
• and a lot of elaborate questions and conversation by me concocted on the fly to try to provoke more elaborate answers from my mother. My concoctions were, for the most part, impotent.

    The truth is, I'm disappointed in The Teaching Interview, even though others may not be. I know that much more anecdotal and contemplative information exists within my mother's brain on the subject. It was just that I hadn't considered how to best extract it before I mined it.
    Thus, some of my inspired time last night was devoted to analyzing why I'm having what I consider to be only minor success interviewing my mother. My realizations are, in no particular order:

• I know, simply because I can read her eyes, that as soon as I ask a question, her mind produces images in response to that question. I haven't yet figured out how to get her to consciously focus on, control and describe these images. I've even used the technique of asking her directly, "Describe what you see in your mind in response to my question." It looks as though she's trying but I'm not sure whether she isn't used to doing this or is beyond this activity. Time, I suppose, will tell. I'm not, by the way, adverse to teaching her how to do this. I'm just not sure how to teach it. As well, even if I manage to teach this to her, progress may be slow and sometimes trumped by her Dementia-Lite.
• Although my mother admits (in one of the first two interviews) that when she was in her teens she suffered from a lack of strong self-concept and self-esteem, overall my mother's life is marked by the opposites. She is not, however, unlike me, egocentric. My mother's eyes always focus outwards. Her character dictates that interior contemplation is akin to obsessive masturbation, an activity that doesn't appeal to her. She isn't afraid of what she'll find, she's just not interested in it. The world outside herself is much more interesting to her than the world inside herself. This lack of a contemplative turn hasn't kept her from being a shrewd observer of human behavior, nor has it caused her to habitually behave in an unconsciously oblivious manner. Again, quite the opposite. Her lack of self-interest, though, makes it challenging to get her to settle down and talk about herself, her life and her past environments. She finally admitted, during the winding down of the teaching interview, when I gently and humorously upbraided her for not being forthcoming, that she "can't imagine that anyone would be interested in any of those things." This admission of hers effectively blocked me until I was able to think about ways around it last night. This morning at breakfast I launched the first. She was eating breakfast and meticulously combing her gossip tabloids.
      "Mom," I asked, "why do you read those magazines?"
      She was startled but had no trouble answering. "Well," she began, "they have lots of interesting information. And, it's fun to read about people. Whether or not what I'm reading is true, it's interesting. It helps me get a picture of what these people might be like, especially the little details about their lives. I don't care about their romantic lives, but the other stuff is interesting."
      "Exactly," I said. "Now think of yourself as an object of others' curiosity, especially the members of your family. Does it make sense to you that stuff about you that is of no interest to you is of enormous interest to others?"
      "Hmmm, I see where you're going with this. You're upset with me for not answering lots of the questions you ask."
      I laughed. "Shrewd woman!" I said. "You've found me out!"
      "Gail, I don't always remember a lot of those things you ask about."
      "Maybe that's true. But I know you remember a lot more than you admit to. The reason I know is that I can see you thinking after I ask a question, and I can see that you aren't searching, you're reviewing. Am I right?"
      Thought pause. "Well, yes. Mostly. Sometimes I really do forget."
      "Would you believe me if I told you that I can tell when you're reviewing a blank slate, too?"
      This time she laughed. "How can you tell?" she challenged.
      "Your forehead looks different when you're drawing a blank. It's not relaxed, it's scrinched and you look worried."
      She laughed again. Cagey woman that she is, she only half confirmed my diagnosis. "That's probably true."
      "Do you remember how hard it was for you to get interesting detail from Grandma?" I asked.
      "Well, yes. But it turned out that she had Alzheimer's."
      "Mom, if that's what she had, it wasn't affecting her when you tried to record her. The thing is, she had exactly the same outlook as you. She was interested in the lives of others, not her own."
      "I see what you mean."
      "And, now, because you weren't able to crack through that, to this day you continue to say, 'I wish I'd been able to get that out of Mother.'"
      "Yes..." She wondered where I was leading.
      "Okay, let me pose a problem for you that only you can solve. Do you want your descendants saying the same thing about you? Having no way of being aware of who you are, what you think, how your life went, what changes you went through, how circumstances changed around you from decade to decade, how you felt about and adapted to the changes..."
      "I'm very adaptable," she trumpeted. "I had a microwave, a computer and a movie machine long before you."
      I pointed my finger at her. "Exactly! Now, don't you think your descendants would be interested in knowing that?"
      "Well, yes!" It surprised her that she was beginning to come around.
      "Consider, Mom, that, especially after your death, your descendants will be as hungry for information about you as your are for the information in those tabloids. Do you want them to know who you are, who you 'were', to them? Or do you want them thinking and saying, 'Ah, she was just this stupid old woman who couldn't remember anything. What difference does it make? Her life must not have been that interesting if she didn't feel like talking about it.' Your choice, Mom."
      The "stupid old woman" and the "her life must have not been that interesting" got to her. "I see what you mean," she said.
      "So, you'll try harder?"
      "I'll try."
      "I'll remind you. Strongly."
      "I have no doubt."
      "You'll go along with me?"
      "If you remind me..."
      Always the sly one.
• I've thought of one technique I'm going to try. The next time we settle into an interview I'm going to try to work on her to imagine that she has a group of eager 9-11 year olds (upper elementary school age; the age at which children have enough awareness to absorb anything and ask audacious questions; also the age the children she most enjoyed teaching) sitting at her feet wanting to know every little detail about what her life has been like. It's not that I don't ask the audacious question, it's that I'm not a 9-11 year old, even though I feel and sometimes act like one. Maybe this will help.
• I'm going to remind her as often as necessary that if she doesn't consider her life interesting enough to talk about, neither will anyone else.
• The next time she says, "I don't remember," and her forehead is telling me she does, I'm going to tell her, "unacceptable. If you chose not to remember your life, you're guaranteeing that no one else will remember it, either."
• I think that deviating from the standard questionnaire organization is, for the time being, our best bet. I'm not sure what the organizing principle or subject for our next interview will be but something will come to me.
• I'm still working on the possibility of figuring out how to sneakily slip the open, computer connected mike into our spontaneous conversations. Many of them contain rich lodes of information about her life and her attitudes.

    So, onto the mundane miscellanea for the last few days:

• 1/23/06:
  • Two KFC thighs (she ate both), cole slaw and mac & cheese
• 1/24/06:
  • Bowel Movement at 2225: Fairly good volume; excellent consistency; easy elimination; very easy clean-up
  • Dinner: Home made ham salad, Doritos Nacho Cheese chips, V-8 juice, Mandarin Orange slices

    As for today, my inspired venturing through the wee hours of the morning kept my mother arising hourly throughout the night to check on what I was doing. Thus, she didn't get much sleep. After I finally went to bed at 0500 I didn't awaken until 1250. I let her sleep as long as she felt she needed. She was shuffling into her bathroom at 1345; thus she didn't eat breakfast until about 1445. I suggested we abandon statting (she's always in favor of this) and eat when and what we feel like throughout the day, making sure she gets her last dose of pills (excluding her bedtime lisinopril) about 7-8 hours after her first dose. So far she's had breakfast, a snack of left over home made ham salad, a glass of V-8 juice and a handful of Doritos Nacho Cheese chips, all of them separated from one another by at least an hour, sometimes more. Around 2200 we had 1/8 slice of home made apple/raisin/pecan pie; she had unwhippped whipping cream poured over the top. I'm not sure when she'll go to bed. She hasn't had a nap so she may finding herself interested in bed some time after M*A*S*H ends at 2300. We'll see. She's not particularly lively but she's doing well, considering everything, including the unprecipitous low hanging over us today. I just hope I feel like getting to bed at a decent hour tonight.
    Last miscellaneous detail: Bowel Movement occurred at 2310: Poor volume; rocky consistency; very easy elimination; very easy clean-up.
    She hasn't moved around much in the last few days. Maybe I can get her interested in the sample kiosks at Costco tomorrow.
    Later.