No. 5 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.
Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.
I love this photograph.
engram |’engram|
noun
a hypothetical permanent change in the brain accounting for the existence of memory; a memory trace
The darkness belongs to no one between the hours of three and four. A suspension of theories, feelings, conclusions, that adhere neither to the night nor to the day. It is a podium wreathed with dreams, memories, and thoughts that are not quite yours to claim. What can’t be deciphered in those hours is invented for coherence.
Winds carry stories in them.
Some nights I like to think the stories in the wind that come with the darkness belong to me. I wish all stories were love stories. I don’t know why I wish that since most love stories never manifest the way anyone wants, and if they do it is because we don’t know the whole story, clinging to the parts we don’t know.
The benevolent fog eases the darkness. The thin cloud of mist is an adhesive around the skin, an opaque cool that soothes the dry surface of existence. Fog differs from clouds only in that fog touches the surface of the Earth. My mother used to say foggy mornings meant the earth had exhaled deeply. She liked salty sea air dabbled in her foggy mornings. At night the fog is different.
Fidda Miroslav, my mother, kept my father’s name even though no one knows where he went after I turned seven. She neither filed for divorce nor did she allow others to assert that he was dead. He was just away.
In sixth grade Mrs. Lucas, my science teacher, called my mother for a conference to discuss that I might possibly have Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism. Apparently whether Asperger’s Syndrome is it’s own disorder or part of a spectrum of autism is disputed nowadays. Anyway, unlike most mothers, my mother neither panicked nor argued with Mrs. Lucas. She politely listened and then replied, “He is not autistic he is just eccentrically artistic.” My mother never attended another conference with Mrs. Lucas after that despite the teacher’s many attempts throughout the year.
Mrs. Lucas—a woman whose hair always smelled like fried bacon—was alerted to my “artistic” nature when she learned of my obsession with the “twin paradox.” In physics, the twin paradox is a thought experiment in special relativity, in which a twin makes a journey into space in a high-speed rocket and returns home to find he has aged less than his identical twin who stayed on Earth. This lead to intense research on thought experiments, where given the structure of the proposed experiment, it may or may not be possible to actually perform the experiment, which further resulted in reading books upon books on the special theory of relativity and time dilation. The question of whether something happening at one location is in fact happening simultaneously with something happening elsewhere became the focal point of all my observations.
My mother died when I was still in high school. I didn’t cry even though, being her only son, I missed her terribly. I knew then no one would understand me like she had. It wasn’t until I graduated from college with honors in Physics that I cried. After the night I cried for what seemed like the longest night, I never again considered whether I had Asperger’s Syndrome.
My son, Ingram, tells me they are right: I have early signs of dementia. They have got some fancy name for it now which I forget. The difference between typical age related change and my memory loss is that those who have the “typical” can remember what they forget within some acceptable time frame.
Signs include memory loss that disrupt daily life: forgetting recently learned information, important dates or events, and asking for the same information over and over; or trouble following a familiar recipe or keeping track of monthly bills; losing track of dates, seasons and passage of time; trouble understanding something if it is not happening immediately; forgetting where one is or how he or she got there; and in terms of perception, passing a mirror and thinking someone else is in the room.
I am not going to lie, I do become confused, suspicious, depressed, fearful or anxious. I do. But I was always sensitive. I think it is good to be sensitive.
Last night Ingram told me about his “friend” Lucielle. I thought he wanted to talk about a new woman given he has been divorced for two years now. But instead he told me how Lucielle is considering assisted suicide for her mother who is very ill with terminal cancer and endures anguishing chronic pain where she wails through the night. Lucielle lost her job because she had to take care of her mother and couldn’t afford a nurse or a nursing home.
I asked Ingram if he wanted to kill me. Not sure why but that shocked him.
He left me alone at the dinner table with left-over pot roast that Lucielle had cooked two nights ago. No different than how his mother had walked away fifteen years ago, except she left for good. Similar to his wife who cried during their last dinner together because she couldn’t continue taking care of him and me. I can’t help thinking that these last dinners happen elsewhere simultaneously except people don’t leave but they choose to stay.
Ingram says the grand-children find it frustrating that I stop in the middle of a conversation and sometimes repeat myself or struggle with vocabulary or call things by the wrong name. Doesn’t everyone?
Tomorrow I meet with Ingram and an attorney to draft my will. If my condition worsens I don’t want Ingram to suffer along with me and I don’t want to continue like they say. Besides, without remembering, I don’t know how I would make through the dark hours of the fog that no one can own.
Alzheimer’s. That’s the fancy name for it.
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By the time my grandmother passed away, she too had developed a serious case of Alzheimer’s. She would tell of the 1940′s like it happened yesterday and then ask again where I was taking her even though I had told her daily for a week before that I will be collecting her for her monthly doctor’s appointment.
I remember the very last time I took her to the doctor, I was in a sombre mood and a tad irritated at answering the same thing repetively. She picked up my irritation and said: One day we will all be gone, and the earth too will forget we were all once here- yet alone where we were headed)
Perhaps this is why I love the fog and feel most at home between midnight and dawn. As a child the night fog filled me with dread and wonder and I deliberately set out to conquer my fears, to find comfort in the darkness. But how much of that acceptance comes from knowing that the morning always comes. And how will any of us respond when we enter such a night that shall have no dawn?
Beautiful and affective piece, Annie.