The Haircut

It was a summer of interruption. “Summerus Interruptus,” I called it and I can’t remember another summer like it. Maybe its because there are four kids and two dogs and every time someone walks by our lawn the dogs bark, as if to defend their turf.

Maybe it's because my Dad’s dementia has progressed and so the three of us daughters shuttle him back and forth between our summer cottages to give my Mom a break. We want to spend some quality time with him before we all fade in his mind, and because this is what family does.

Maybe it's because even though I am supposed to be writing, and answering emails, I find myself drifting out to my beloved garden, the dahlias of all shapes, sizes and colors, the pesky crabgrass poking through the mulch. These are easy solutions to easy problems; pluck and they are gone. The chapter I’m writing? Not so easy. On day two of creation, I’ve already deleted most of it.

The problem of the dementia, the slow erasing of my Dad has no easy solution. We will watch, and help, repeat and explain and there is nothing at all to make it better. We are voyeurs to the demise of a man we love and the heartbreaking burden on my mother, who has raised the three of us and now, in her golden years, is caring for a toddler-like person again.

When the phone rang on my last full day of summer camp for the kids, I was deep in my emails, deep in crossing things off lists. I almost didn’t answer it.

“Lee,” my mother said, and I could hear the strain in her voice. “I’d like to ask you a favor.” My mother is a woman who doesn’t like to ask anyone for anything if she can help it. She is, by nature, a giver.

“Sure, Mom,” I kept my voice even but I rolled my eyes. Another interruption. All of these emails blinking at me, the people waiting for answers to questions, the fundraiser for the wounded soldiers, the plane reservations for vacation I had to untangle. “This is your mother,” I told myself. “Calm down, slow down, it will all get done.”

“Dad was going to trim my hair, like he always does. But he is feeling dizzy, he bent over in the yard and now he is lying down. I’ve got my scissors here and wet hair. Can I come over?”

“Of course,” I said. And it wasn’t until later that I realized the right thing to do would have been to go to her. I was too entangled in my own work and needs.

“Do you have some coffee for Dad?” she asked. And I realized that she would be bringing him, like a child, in tow.

“Come on over,” I said enthusiastically. “But I can’t guarantee I’m a great haircutter.”

In college I had a brisk business cutting men’s hair. I set up shop in the bathroom that connected the boy’s dorm to the girls, a feature that was a constant source of amusement for us young coeds.

Something about cutting my own mother’s hair, however, made me feel slightly nervous. I suppose that I wanted to do it perfectly.

A few moments later I heard her car on the gravel and her small, slight figure shuffled in. She had a makeshift cape of dry cleaning bag on her shoulders, an old comb, missing some teeth and a pair of hair cutting scissors.

I settled my Dad down, trying not to feel the pain in the look of defeat on his face. I gave him water and urged him to drink, fed him the leftover French toast, now cold, from my daughters’ pre-camp breakfast.

Then I went outside where my mother was patiently waiting for me to cut her hair.

‘I don’t know, Mom,” I said. “I don’t know if I’m going to be very good.

“Oh, its just a straight edge,” she waved my concerns away. The scissors were dull and I went upstairs to get my own haircutting scissors. She held a hand mirror out in front of her to watch.

There was something so heartbreakingly intimate about that act. I touched my mother’s hair, barely gray at 76. I was doing for her what she had done for me and my sisters for all those years when we were really young. I suppose she’d cut our hair at home as she is doing it now, out of frugality and ease.

“Its just a simple, straight across cut,” she said. My mother has never been one for vanity. I love her for that.

“I can take you to get it cut in town,” I said. “It was only $17.00 for me.

She smiled with her lips closed and shook her head. “Your father has been doing this for years,” she said. “It’s just fine.”

I thought about the act of my father cutting my mother’s hair. I wondered if, with his shaking hands, he would be able to do it going forward. I thought about my mother, who had once been told that the future was secure. Now I knew that she worried about the cost of this long, slow slide with dementia, the agonizing lingering of a partial person, the vast cost of health care and nursing homes.

I did a decent job. And then I looked her square in the face to make sure the sides were even and gently sloped the way she had requested. What had started as a dutiful task had become an act of love, a care giving of the ultimate caregiver.

No child is ever prepared when the roles reverse, sometimes, gently, like a beautiful slow dance, other times in an instant, the aftermath of an accident or illness. My sisters and I have learned to be the parents at times, to ease the fears the way my mother and father once snuck into our rooms to banish the monsters under the bed.

I am taking care now. I am noticing these small moments, trying to slow time down. I see these experiences as gifts of grace rather than inconveniences, interruptions in my busy day.

“It looks great,” she says enthusiastically, positioning the plastic hand mirror to see the back of her head. My Dad finishes the last of his coffee, rises from the stool steadily and beams at me. It seems the earlier events have been forgotten.

“You just come back if you see any strays,” I said. And they both bent to hug me.

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No Regrets

Well.  Summer's over.   I mean it isn't really over, it's not yet Labor Day.  Outside it's as steamy as a Turkish Bath and even the dogs are having dog days this August.  They are sleeping, listless in the heat and without the energy to bark. But I'm home.  I've left our summer cottage, driven back down south with reams of clothes and papers and food in freezer bags with melting ice.  I'm home and I'm grumpy and a little bit snitty.   Did I accomplish what I wanted to this summer?  I had lofty dreams about getting lots of writing done in the three hour stretch my kids were at camp, or the early mornings when i could sit by my computer with a ghetto latte (lots of microwaved milk not frothed and a tiny bit of java.) But I did.  I accomplished so much that I wanted to.  I hiked, I watched movies with my kids, I answered far too many emails and flirted with facebook, only to be driven back by the volumes of messages I didn' t feel like answering.  We finished that jigsaw puzzle of previous blog fame and we swam and laughed and cooked and ate.  But I didn't write.  Not much anyway. Every time I sat down to tackle something on my list, there was some kind of interruption.  And many of those interruptions were from my parents, most specifically my Dad.  I'd settle in front of the computer and through the screen door, cheery as a bluebird, I would hear his voice  call out to me "Helloooooooooo." For just a moment, a part of my heart would sink.  "I have three precious hours," the Type A part of my brain would scream.  And then the dutiful daughter part of me would muzzle it, put a pillow over those thoughts and push down.  And then they would stop.  I would stop.  "No regrets," I would tell myself.  "No regrets." As the summer progressed, my father and I fell into a regular morning ritual of coffee and chatting as he made me the half-way stop on his daily walk down to the general store to be fussed over by the ladies at the coffee counter.  Each morning was the same.  Ground Hog Day.  He'd stomp up the steps, come in, announce how winded he was from walking up the hill and then sit.  In the same tone I use with my children I'd chide him for not drinking enough water, put a full glass in front of him  and tell him to rest, maybe pull off his sweater as the day heated up. We'd sit and talk about the same things, the weather, when I was leaving, when my husband was coming, where the girls were.  I'd feel myself unwind, relax, the tension would leave my shoulders.  This was my Dad.  He has dementia which means that every week or month or so we can almost feel the little pieces of him slipping away, breaking off.  Dementa is a slippery eel. Some days he is more present and with it.  Other days he will have a hard time getting a sentence out.  He can often form the words, I think he knows them in his head, but they come out wrong or jumbled.  He hesitates a lot more now, more even than last month, unsure of what will come out.  In those moments I see the mask slip, the casual jaunty smile he wears and has always worn, of confidence.  Underneath the mask I see terror, pure, clean fear at what is happening and what the future holds. I am powerless.  I'm powerless to do anything as he asks me the same questions over and over in the span of 15 minutes.  I can listen and answer patiently and pour him some more coffee and smile at him in that loving way daughters smile at their Dads.  This much I can do. And as my mind flicks to all the things I need to get done, the dentist appointment to rechedule for my daughter, the school forms so Cathryn can play pre-season soccer, the college shopping list I need to put together for my son and the writing, always the writing, in the back of my mind, I force myself to relax. "This is what summer is for," I tell myself.  "It may be his last summer here and these moments, this time in the kitchen, these are the things that really count.  You don't want to have any regrets.  You want to feel secure that you spent the last good years letting him know he was safe, loved, cared for, before he slips away."  It's the very least my sisters and I can do.  It's the legacy of love. And so here I am.  Summer is over.  l'll be planning a trip to see both my parents soon in their independent living facility a state away.  But those visits aren't the same as summer.  Summer is the warmth of the dock, a cold plunge in the lake, delighted screams from the raft and all of our family around.  Summer is  freedom, roaming, his daily walk, the sunshine and the smell of pine and moon, of the July rains and my Dad's once carefully tended geraniums.  The other months of the year, lived out in their small apartment, make life seem diminished, circumscribed.  There are smells of new carpet and industrial cooking in the building.  It is a place to live, not a home.  It is not summer. I am home now, buried under a mountain of things to do.  But I have no regrets.  No regrets.

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A Three Stooges Day

After the failings of July weather, August burst out with brilliant blue mornings and clear, cool nights. I was racking up banner days with my kids; cloudless skies on the lake, a little canoeing, swimming with their cousins. Kicking back on the beach chair with a book, I could hear their squeals of delight as they played rag tag, throwing the wet piece of towel at each other and ducking under the raft.

I call these helium heart days. You go to bed with a lightness of being, fullness of day and a sense of completion. You’ve hit the mark as a Mom on these days, checked off most things on the “Most Wonderful Mom” list like “played with kids,” “meaningful conversation” or “maintained good cheer.” You know these days don’t come all the time, maybe not every week, and so you try to still them, to soak them in.

Coming back up to our cottage I spread out the towels on the railing to dry and turned on the stove to roast a chicken. I was determined to check the box for “healthy meal” on this day too. I loved this; loved the pace of summer, of not having anywhere to be that night, of knowing we would all open our books on the couch that evening or tuck into a movie under blankets.

And so to demonstrate my contentment, I did what most people do when they are happy. I let out a Three Stooges Curly “whoop-whoop-whoop,” as I was stuffing the chicken’s cavity with rosemary, onions and garlic. Truth be told, it was kind of a combination of Curly and Julia Child, inspired as I was by the French Chef to be pulling the bird’s goose-fleshy legs wide open.

“What was that?” asked my daughter Claire.

“The Three Stooges,” I said, casually binding the chicken’s legs together with string like a demure virgin.

“I’ve heard of them. I think we have the movie.”

“Well, let’s find it,” I said. “Every kid needs to know about the Three Stooges. Whoop- whoop-whoop,” and I quickly rubbed my hands on my head the way Curly used to do. My kids laughed.

They tried to imitate the Curly thing, but without a good example, the real deal, they had no traction. There was no Three Stooges DVD in the drawer.

“Let’s You Tube it,” I said. Honestly, what did we do before You Tube? Life must have been one giant game of charades. How did we function without the ability to view everyone’s pratfalls, oogle bad plastic surgery transformations or watch the woman walking down Fifth Avenue with her skirt hem tucked in her panties.

And so as I finished the dinner prep, boiled the beets and cut the tomatoes, the sounds of Moe, Larry and Curly emanated from my office computer. The girls were transfixed.

Heading upstairs with my glass of white wine to take a shower, I realized that amongst the slaps, whines, screams, kicks and whoop-whoop-whooping soundtrack, one sound was missing --- my kids’ laughter. My girls were watching, fascinated, but that slapstick kind of humor that was such a hallmark of the vaudevillian years was eluding them.

I had always sort of identified with the Three Stooges as a kid, being one of three girls. I was the oldest, Moe, the one starting the trouble and usually meting out the punishment. Watching a few of the clips, I’d forgotten what a complete bully Moe was, a serious tyrant, a dictator even, as seen through the eyes of my kids. But the expressions and the physical humor made me chuckle.

When it was almost time for dinner I walked in again to see them still both still mesmerized by the screen. That meany pants Moe was pulling Larry by the hair. And who was Schemp? Had Curly died? I couldn’t remember. Maybe he’d taken so much physical abuse that he had just keeled over one day.

“It’s really violent,” said Claire.

“And it’s black and white,” remarked Nora.

“Yeah, these shows were made even before I was born.”

“Wow,” said Claire. “That’s a long time ago.” I nodded seriously.

“Are they rated PG?” asked Claire. She was still stuck on the slapping, dragging, hair pulling and screaming part of the Three Stooges. Our kid’s did humor differently now. They had their own entire genre of “appropriate shows” that were educational. They learned other languages, how to get along, kindness and inclusion. There were Teletubbies and Dora the Explorer. Sesame Street taught them to count and read at an early age. Hannah Montana had her own identity and boyfriend problems to work out. There was absolutely, positively no slapping, hitting or boulders being dropped on anyone’s head.

“Use your words, Moe, not your hands,” I could imagine my Nora thinking as he popped Curly with an iron, screaming so hard his eyes bulged out of their sockets and veins stood out on his neck.

“That’s an outside voice Larry,” I imagined Claire thinking. But still they watched, with a combination of fascination and horror. Man, there went Moe again, swinging a two-by-four at poor Larry’s head. Well, that’s a brain injury waiting to happen, I thought as Curly’s eyes rolled back and Larry saw stars. I thought about all the things that used to pass for OK when we were kids, people on TV hitting each other in the kisser with golf clubs, no seat belts in the car, no bike helmets. Spanking was acceptable for the bad transgressions and the best ever was riding on the back of the station wagon, tailgate down, to get ice cream, legs dangling out over the road. All of this carefree recklessness I associated with my childhood. And I had loved it.

Sure, our kids were safer now and protected. We were smarter about so many things from diet and nutrition to political correctness and inclusion. As a generation of parents we had learned from our own parents’ mistakes and had gained from the knowledge of science, psychology and medicine that comes with the advancement of time.

But sometimes there is simply no substitute for the silliness of the “whoop-whoop- whoop.” There is simply no better, simpler, pure dumb-ass pleasure than the Three Stooges.

“Time for bed,” I called hours later. And when no one moved, I resorted to the technique my father had used in the good old days.

“See this finger?” I held out my pointer and Claire and Nora grinned, nodding. I had their attention now.

“See this thumb? “ they started laughing and running and in unison we all shouted….“See this fist…. You’d better run!”

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