{"id":5484,"date":"2014-07-11T10:31:28","date_gmt":"2014-07-11T17:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/?p=5484"},"modified":"2014-07-11T11:23:32","modified_gmt":"2014-07-11T18:23:32","slug":"light-and-dark-servings-long-as-hell-much-like-emotional-turkey-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/?p=5484","title":{"rendered":"Light and Dark Servings, long as Hell, much like Emotional Turkey Dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"

Light Stuff<\/strong><\/p>\n

With BlogHer \u201814 looming, I decided to have business cards made up.\u00a0 Minimum order was 100, so damn if I know what I\u2019m going to do with the other 98 of these bastards come next month, but I am enjoying how they turned out:<\/p>\n

\"5\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re pretty crass.\u00a0 You OK with that?\u201d\u00a0 My husband asked when he saw them, tone half-way between eyebrow-raised amusement and mental-health-professional check-in.\u00a0 \u201cI mean, you\u2019ll have to hand them to an actual person.\u00a0 Who you might want to impress.\u201d<\/p>\n

I love them.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m uncomfortable as hell about it.\u00a0 Now the only thing to do is to go to BlogHer and face down my two biggest fears.\u00a0 1) I won\u2019t talk to anyone.\u00a0 2) I\u2019ll have to talk to someone.<\/p>\n

Darker Stuff<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thank you for the insight concerning day care for my dad, and my mom\u2019s reaction to it.\u00a0 It never ceases to amaze me that third-person insight can cast\u00a0 light that is impossible to create on my own.\u00a0 I have spoken to my mom since, but she seems to still be of the same mind-set as before.<\/p>\n

Another part of what happened when I saw my parents was that my dad has gotten mean.<\/p>\n

I mentioned the big blow out in passing last post:\u00a0 During Middle\u2019s hospital stay, my parents and I were tag teaming visits to the hospital and childcare for Middle\u2019s two-year-old.\u00a0 During that time, my phone died.\u00a0 Because my parents both had phones, my mom offered to give my Dad\u2019s, so each team would have a phone.<\/p>\n

Truth:\u00a0 This was a logical solution.<\/p>\n

 
\nTruth:\u00a0 There are a lot of things my dad can\u2019t do anymore, but he forgets he can\u2019t do, so he gets angry when people act like he can\u2019t do them.\u00a0 One of these things is using a phone.\u00a0 Another is driving a car.\u00a0 A third is operate things like baby gates.<\/p>\n

 
\nTruth:\u00a0 My dad seems to read the emotional content of situations perfectly, even if they are filtered through demented thought process.\u00a0 My mom and I had the phone discussion right in front of him, with both of us understanding Dad\u2019s phone was useless to him.<\/p>\n

My dad was PISSED OFF.\u00a0 Rightly so, I’m guessing.\u00a0 I mean, we treated him like he was less than equal — a child with no say-so over his own possessions, or a piece of furniture, or well, like a demented person.<\/p>\n

(Here\u2019s where I have problems processing, because treating my dad less than equal seems ghastly cruel.\u00a0 He is still a human being.\u00a0 He is used to pitching in and being a valuable team player.<\/p>\n

But when Mom treats him like an equal\/rational adult, Dad will problem-solve things with solutions like, \u2018Well, I\u2019ll drive down there and do that\u2019 which is not a solution at all, because he can\u2019t drive, or run an errand on his own.\u00a0 Mom then has to hem and haw about why that solution (which would totally work if Dad was still his old self) won\u2019t work, and Dad gets irate because if you buy into the lie that he\u2019s still a functional adult, his solution is sound.\u00a0 To me, it feels all kinds of gross, perpetuating his dementia somehow, when the conversation takes on a weird dimension which is not based on reality.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, when Dad called me and Mom out, I immediately started bawling.\u00a0\u00a0 My dad, who taught me everything about being a good person, and I had slipped right into treating him like he was barely even there.\u00a0 It was so easy, too!<\/p>\n

That evening, after I\u2019d had a chance to think things through, I broached the topic again,\u00a0 saying, \u201cYou know, we had that fight this morning and…\u201d<\/p>\n

Before I could finish, this triumphant\/angry smile lit up his face and he pronounced, \u201cAnd YOU<\/em> lost,\u201d in a tone suggesting he was putting me in my place.<\/p>\n

I was so shocked.\u00a0 My father has always been smarter\/more powerful than me.\u00a0 Never in my whole life has he used a tone to lord a win over me, like some smug victory.\u00a0 In many respects, he was a harsh, perfectionistic, demanding parent, but his motives were always clear-cut — to lift me up into a better state of personhood, never to push me down.<\/p>\n

My sister, Middle, is something of a brain specialist.\u00a0 She can explain in vivid detail the pathways in the brain affected by Dad\u2019s dementia, and why personality changes are a function of vascular deterioration in different parts of his cortex \u2013 that his behavior is nothing more than the lights going out in the cityscape of his mind.<\/p>\n

But I find myself wondering if his reaction was because maybe his life is all about being wrong now \u2013 the landslide of negative reactions from people, the confusion in their faces when he tries to express himself, the off-kilter feedback that lets him know he\u2019s not smart anymore, he\u2019s not really who he was.\u00a0 Maybe the way he tried to make me feel \u2013 small and wrong \u2013 is a cry in the dark, and expression of how he feels all the time.<\/p>\n

Or at least, the way I made him feel when I took his phone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Light Stuff With BlogHer \u201814 looming, I decided to have business cards made up.\u00a0 Minimum order was 100, so damn if I know what I\u2019m going to do with the other 98 of these bastards come next month, but I am enjoying how they turned out: \u201cThey\u2019re pretty crass.\u00a0 You OK with that?\u201d\u00a0 My husband …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,30,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dad","category-imcomingout","category-mission-impostible"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5484"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5513,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5484\/revisions\/5513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}