Bad habits
When I started this newsletter I did not expect to write about my mom at all. She’s been doing the same thing for so many years that it felt like she’d never change. But change, of course, is the only constant. Her memory got worse. She lost the ability to drive. The guy I found to drive her car for her started “borrowing” her car to deliver pizza. He started introducing her to friends of his who were interested in living with her, who were “not homeless,” as he put it. I was fine with this as long as she was, which she said she was—when she’s very worried she tends to tell me that there’s nothing wrong at all, because she doesn’t want to be a bother to me. She asked the guy to drive her to Sears so she could buy some looser clothes, because she was having trouble breathing, she said. She was so worried that she’d started feeling like there was something tight around her chest.
Long story short, she now no longer has a driver. The full version involves a friend who isn’t homeless who used to work in real estate, who’s now in the import/export business from midnight to five a.m., which I suspect means he is a colleague in the business of delivering pizza, but which might well be true—everyone in Miami seems to have some connection with the import/export business; my father once made our livelihood selling electrical supplies to the Bahamas—but who also seemed to be keeping a box of something in the back room of my mother’s bookstore, which was actually less frightening than the prospect of his convincing her to sign something that sold him her house. On the plus side, he left promptly after the arrival of the Coral Gables Police.
So we’re in the market for a driver. Ideally someone who can also help my mother order groceries, prep some meals, and scare off any further import/export realtors. If you know someone, please email me. Right now she’s trying to get to her bookstore every day by Uber, which she still does not know how to use. Once this week she called nearly in tears because she’d spent more than an hour failing to get a ride.
My plan with all of the above was to write something smart and philosophical about constant change and the word karma, which, in Sanskrit and its literary predecessor, Pāli (in which it is rendered kamma), is best translated as “habit.” We are the heirs of our actions. Gradual but relentless changing of one’s habits is basically the core of Buddhist practice, right on down from words and actions to the habits of our minds, breaking and reforming neurologic ruts—and what kept my mother going for so long was exactly that. Her habits. She knew how to drive her car because she’d driven to the same places every day, or every week, for thirty years. Now that the car is gone, she is totally at sea.
But what I want to write about instead is guilt. I’m still in Portland with my husband and our children, visiting my husband’s family, having such a good time that I actually feel bad about it. The weather here is almost perfect. The kids are bonding with their grandparents, and with their cousins—all six grandchildren are here together—and yesterday we all went berry-picking. Then we ate pizza on the deck. I learned a lullaby in Hebrew. And that was just yesterday. My husband joked that I’m really learning to be Jewish now that I’m experiencing guilt.
But that’s not really what it is. I am happy and my mom is lost. So if you happen to know a trustworthy, English-speaking caretaker/driver, like I said, please email.
Read, read, read
Among the many fun things I’ve been doing here is Portland was hanging out last week with Justin Taylor, a friend of mine since undergrad who’s latest book, Riding with the Ghost, is absolutely brilliant. It’s a memoir about his father. One of the cool things he does in it is craft whole passages about what happened and then stop and tell you that that’s not how it really was at all. We all constantly make stories. Those are the bases of our mental ruts. We tell stories and we believe in certain things and then we realize (sometimes) that those things aren’t really true at all. The past may be immutable and dead but what we understand of it is constantly alive. It changes. Justin is particularly good at being entertaining while struggling to figure this all out.
One of my colleagues at the cool think tank that I’m on vacation from this week told me about Dense Discovery, a newsletter she likes, that I am now a fan of too. A couple weeks ago the author wrote an issue about phases: “A friend of mine recently admitted that he’s currently into really trashy comedies,” it starts.
Portland: Antifascist, but not anti-fun.