Zen and the Art of Caring

"When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things." -- Robert M. Pirsig

I want to hurry this summer. Get on with other things. Get back to the rhythm of my life as it was a few months ago. Good, smooth, making progress (or so it seems from my current perspective).

Now, I sit and look through old photos again. At once precious memories and more clutter in this world. Pictures to preserve something that is fleeting. I look at my parents, before I existed, before they knew they would be parents of me, of my sister. Before they knew each other. My mother with piercing eyes, neatly waved blond hair, in her chic 60's minis or self-designed cocktail dresses, posing on loungers vacationing with her girlfriends. My father, smoking cigarettes in the trenches of Korea or sunbathing in Hawaii. Who are these people, carefree and fun and free and beautiful? How did I come from them? Then the engagement, the marriage, the first apartment. Flirtatious gazes into the camera meant not for me, but for my father, holding the camera. So happy. I don’t remember when I last saw my mother genuinely happy like that. Probably not since my father died.

"I want to have that picture of my mother in her Sunday dress blown up and framed so she can be on the wall with everyone else before I die," my mother insists from her chair. "She must be so insulted. Do you have black and white in your apartment? Maybe you would like the black and white pictures." She makes plans for life and death in one thought, gazing at a cluster of black and white photos on her wall of all of us when we are younger. And of a winter scene of Central Park. So we spend the whole afternoon going through boxes of photos. The remembering and the sorting and the dissection of my past and future exhaust me. We do not find the photo she remembers seeing. Though maybe she remembers it just as she remembers the nurse’s aide’s name– incorrectly. (Later, I find it tucked into the frame of her bedroom mirror, in plain sight, like most of the things we seek in life).

I look at them so happy, my mom and all her girlfriends, healthy and laughing. They still call every week. I am suddenly convinced I am doing something wrong. My mother’s temple leans on my father’s cheek. The engagement. Forever was not expected to be so short They are so sure, so confident, so peaceful. My own confidence seems an illusion, my own independence an excuse to deny my fear and inadequacies. What happened to my sister and I? My loft apartment with my Ikea furnishings now seem cheap and lifeless, another example of my inability to commit to one thing, one place, to put down roots, to build a community. Like all else, it is fleeting. The only thing I sustain and cling to is impermanence – in homes, in relationships, in jobs, in beliefs.

My mother’s home is the one place that is truly home, my constant. No matter where she lives, everything seems to stay more or less the same. The picture by the door, the tea cups, the china, the Hungarian plates, the piles of cut out news articles – a home that is meant to welcome and comfort. And my mother, always waiting to welcome me home with love and pampering.
"What pieces of furniture do you want?" She asks as though this alone could preserve what will be lost.

All of it, I think. But then, what is it worth to me. Five thousand miles away, I cannot live in her house, cannot recreate it in my home. It is these details that seem to overwhelm and drive home how dire the situation is. My mother seems otherwise herself: moody, self-depreciating, tired and not wanting to be taken care of. She does not look weaker or more emaciated than my last visit. I realize it is the painkillers that probably create the illusion.

"She sleeps a lot during the day."
"Yes, the doctor mentioned that," my sister nods.
"What do you mean?"
"I asked how we could tell she is getting worse, her lungs are weakening. The doctor said she would be more tired and sleep more, and that is ok."
We step into the boat at Weeki Wachee, take photos of manatees, herons, and egrets before the storm comes.

I realize it is all an illusion that we have created, a physical manifestation of the idea of home and family and love that underlies each place we live and meet, each argument, each meal, each moment of laughter and tears. Like the furniture, I cannot ship this to Los Angeles and it is valueless without her presence.