Home for the Holidays

Like most Americans, I begin to panic about Thanksgiving right about now. Given my druthers, we’d spend it in snowy Lake Tahoe or exquisite San Francisco with my dearest friends or my brother and his partner at a lively table of beautiful people sipping expensive pinot and nibbling on culinary delights.

But, about every four years the bottle spins in our direction and we get Thanksgiving duty. When I was a new bride that meant my late father -in -law would pre-order and bring the holiday home in a box. I took the role of reading the instructions and sticking the half-baked components in the oven. Then, the four of us would assemble in the depressing dining-cum-computer-room and get ready to pass around the foil containers.

But invariably, just around the time when the quarter turkey breast was done, my mother-in-law Jack would decide we needed to call up and invite over the next door neighbor (who was clearly visiting his own family) or that she’d have to go around the block to the Apple Pan to get a pie. These were the days before a person could numb themselves by escaping into their Blackberry, so those were long nights.

After my father-in-law died and Jack lived alone in this house, the situation became even more drear. With just three of us to feed, Jack agreed to allow me to prepare a traditional dinner--to take it off her plate. At my in-laws house one could never count on finding a wooden spoon or decent knife or even the oven working, so I actually cooked the turkey in my home in northern California and drove to Los Angeles with it, along with all the other dishes that normal people eat on this special day.

When we arrived on Turkey Day hoping to get everything into the oven and on the table, we were greeted by the bustle of Sandy in the kitchen. With sweat pouring down her face, she proudly proclaimed that “Ms Adams” (what Jack insists all the help call her even though that is not her name) had hired her and that she spent the entire morning preparing three enormous vats of spaghetti and swedish meatballs and four baking sheet sized peach cobblers for our dinner. I was dumbfounded by the amount of food that covered every surface and would not be consumed. And, I was disheartened by the redundancy of the dinner that had travelled four hundred miles.

This was still before the advent of smartphones so I can only imagine that I retreated into glasses of wine. So, that’s why I didn’t exactly hear how Jack came around to the idea that afternoon of inviting over a “very nice couple.” I vaguely recall Jack saying they had some association to UCLA, and I was thinking how much worse can this day be. And wouldn’t you know it, they had no other plans and would be around in about an hour.

One look at the young woman with her unkempt bohemian clothing and her stringy hair gave me pause. She and the equally peculiar young man, who was a new arrival to this country declined a glass of wine in favor of water as we got ready to serve dinner. Psst, into the kitchen I motioned to my husband. I was getting a strong non-meat eating vibe here. So, as Jack entertained the couple, husband and I frantically worked the meatballs out of the spaghetti.

When we began dinner, I held my breath as Ms. Bohemia announced that she was vegan and she eschewed everything else in favor of the denuded spaghetti. The woman was very engaged in telling us about her graduate studies and her childhood on a small island in the Northwest even as we watched her pulling out minute particles of meat out of Sandy’s sauce and setting them politely to the side of her plate. It wasn’t the veganism. I myself like to go vegan every once in awhile. But, they were queer in a freeloading kind of way I just can’t put into words four years later.

My mother-in-law, hard of hearing bobbed her head and smiled at the apparent success of her dinner party, and I held in my grief of spending the holiday with these oddballs. The woman was very self absorbed and chatty, but I couldn’t wrap my head around how they had befriended Jack. So when the woman excused herself I turned to the man and asked. Since English wasn’t his first language, there was a pregnant pause and then he answered “Craiglist.”

This year, my husband’s brother whom I love and my niece are traveling from way up North to join us for the holiday. He informed my husband that he is doing the cooking, but I’ll do my best to run interference. My fear is that Jack, who is currently very angry at Sandy for a transgression committed while we were recently out of the country, will enlist her to prepare dozens of dishes no one wants to eat on Turkey day.

No amount of negotiation can steer that old lady from her crazy plans, so it goes.

Jeez, Louise

About six months back, during one of her occasional visits, I noticed my sister-in-law working up a sweat running errands for Jack while sporting a gray Beverly Hills Police Department T-shirt. My gray Beverly Hills Police Department T-shirt which had gone missing months before.  I held back on ripping it off her frame because even though she lives and works seven hundred miles away in Northern California, I latched onto the smallest hope that she'd bought one identical to mine at her local art fair.  When I found it after she left to catch her plane, discarded in the washing machine with her dirty sheets and towels, I reclaimed it, but had no resolution on how it all came to be.


Six weeks ago, after a going through a particularly crappy period of time when most of the electrical outlets in the house stopped working, flipping light switches produced no illumination, our remaining, pathetic laptop died, I woke up to find a cockroach or giant water bug on the bathroom floor, my dog developed severe arthritis, and I was in the middle of high stakes jury trial, I saw my mother-in-law wearing my Leadership [name of city here] T-shirt.  There is zero doubt that Jack is not a graduate of Leadership [name of city here.] It is just a cotton T-shirt, but my five classmates and I created one each year with a real designer to commerate our citywide clean up efforts from 2004-2009. Life is probably too short for bothering, but it makes me nostalgic for my former self, and into the seagulls in "Finding Nemo" ("Moine, moine, moine, moine.")


I cannot fairly judge whether I "snapped." I waited until after 10 p.m., stalked Jack's caretaker's arrival, barged into Jack's room and got the caretaker to retrieve my "Leadership" shirt.


Only two leaders or real heros emerged here.  The caretaker Ms. Cee, who has worked seven evenings a week--without a night off-- to clean and put Jack to bed for over a year.  I hear her at night making pleasant conversation with Jack, and if she had any opinions about my T-shirt hostage negotiation techniques, she didn't betray them.  She also gets credit for telling me one evening that she had learned while peeling Jack out of some particularly grimy, and blood-specked T-shirt (the one I got as a keepsake when I went to visit the PanSat laboratory) that she had fallen out of her wheelchair (on a weekend day when I was at home) during a stroll around the block and that neighbors and eventually firefighters arrived to get her upright and back on the road.  A fact she hadn't shared with me that evening, or later when husband came home, or ever actually.


Clearly, husband also deserves kudos for killing the bugs, pulling out the mildewed hallway carpet that was making me sneeze, dogging the electrician to fix the darn decrepit wiring so we had lights (my greatest fear was that I would find myself in closing arguments wearing a blue suit jacket with a black skirt) shlepping our hound to the vet, taking off from work to accompany his mother downtown by taxi to see me in trial, and plying me with whatever I needed to keep it together.


Justice seems as prevalent a notion as my jinxed laundry.  We won the trial, so thank God, justice was done.  Jack has been blacklisted from walking dogs from the shelter, what an injustice she exclaims.  It seems that Jack took a fancy to a dog named Dylan.  We surmise that she saw the courtship as a prelude to making this hovel his new home.  Jack was considered a good enough caretaker for Stinky, her late pathetic and decrepit dog, but now she is talking to the hand.  


What is actually happening is never abundantly clear.  She mumbled something about it being about her association with the shelter's former volunteer and blacksheep Mark (who I kick out of our backyard when I find him lurking there and whom I refuse to acknowledge at the front door when her deafness prevents her from hearing his persistent knocks) and somehow it was wormed out of her that the shelter was now requiring her to fill out an application to walk a dog.  


She stewed over that one, but I guess she made it eventually through the roadblocks to reach her goal of shelter volunteerism.  Then, a week ago I saw her acting wierdly in the backyard, dabbing her eyes and peering out the back gate.  In a hurry to get somewhere I called husband at work and urged him to call to see what's up.  "Nothing," he reported after phoning.  Yeah, well we learned later that was the afternoon she got Dylan's leash impossibly tangled in the wheelchair wheels in the presence of the shelter volunteer czarina.  Through more sleuthing husband also learned of a previous dog walking misdemeanor involving Dylan when she completely lost her grasp of the leash.  "For only three feet" Jack indignantly complained today.


I am going partly insane over losing control of my clothes, an intimate part of life.  We eventually figured out the clothes creep occurs when Ms. Cee, the nice lady here, reaches into our laundry basket to fill out my mother-in-law's wash load. This morning I opened the clothes dryer and found one of my cute pink furry socks slit at the ankle presumably to accommodate Jack's swollen foot. The other sock, who knows? Ugh.  What do I do, write a note in caps pleading with Ms. Cee not to wash our laundry? Explain to her the concept of cooties?


Meanwhile, Jack has lost touch with the reality of her own physical inabilities, or has reached the point where others are no longer fooled by her enthusiasm and stubborn nature. I don't blame the shelter for cutting her off for the sake of the dogs.  That kind of rebuke in my opinion, makes Jack do dumb things.  In a perfect world she would call me or my husband when she falls out of her wheelchair, but there we are.  In a jumble.

Morning

The grim reaper must have been clearing his backlog.  But, at the time I would peer into Chandler's face and search for something that would give me a hint of the timeline ahead.  On the first weekend I did little else besides lie next to my orange kitty.  Husband, between the other chores sat with me listening to our cat's soft breathing.  On Saturday night I slipped out of bed and brought my pillow next to Chandler who lifted his groggy head and massaged me for a few moments with his front paws.

On Sunday night Husband joined me and we slept toe to toe on the L-sectional sofa with Chandler between us.  I never said anything out loud about it to Husband, but it was critical to me to be there when he slipped into his final place.  I woke up a millon times when I thought I heard labored breathing.  Many times, as it turned out over the next several days, I shook Husband awake to say goodbye.

Reality

When the work week started I rushed home in the evenings and usually found Chandle under the desk.   Weeks later I flipped out when I discovered that Jack, without authorization from me had advertised on Craigslist to hire someone to crawl under the desk, pry Chandler out and take him outside for fresh air. But, I was oblivious to her schemes.

With the pending threat of an animal control officer coming to haul Stinky away, I gently suggest to Chan that he just go ahead and go to sleep.  My pleas involved promises to find him on the other side, or if he came back as another kitty to bring him back home. Every morning I woke up and he raised his head when he heard the coffee grinding.

Husband and I had two consecutive evening appointments that week. We agonized over the conflict, but when we came home Chan raised his head from the couch.

Husband thoughtfully dug the grave, and went to the Japanese gardener and brought home two maples to plant over Chan.  We all held on until the weekend and repeated the vigil.  Almost simultaneously, Mrs. W., Jack's ninety year-old friend and neighbor of forty years slid into poor health.  Jack visited the neighbor daily and so husband and I fell out of the habit of eating dinner with her.  Jack seemed to be coping with all the sickness, and was a good friend to Mrs. W.

On Monday morning, I couldn't bear to leave Chandler on the couch while we were at work.  Husband was equally fearful, but he imagined if Chandler died the other animals might panic or harm the body.  It was realistic to anticipate the worse.  So, husband and I decided that we would put Chandler into our still, cool bedroom during the day behind our locked bedroom door.

I dreaded how Jack might react.  I begged husband to just slip out the door with me since Jack was still in her bedroom.  But, he shook his head and said he would tell her and she would just have to accept the decision. I had an inadequate amount of time to prepare for Jack's shreiking: "No, no, let him stay out".  Then, as she met husband's firm resistence she started to wail: "No, no that is cruel.  All yellow cat ever wanted was his freedom." She sobbed: "when Papa was sick we didn't lock him into his room. No, please let me stay with him."

I wept over the horrible way my cat's life was ending.  I picked him up and took the little weightless package of orange kitty and brightly covered towels  to the desk as Husband and his mother attempted to out shout each other.  I crawled under the desk and placed Chandler as far back from harm as I could as Husband shouted to his mother that she was incapable of controlling the situation if Chandler died.

Husband found us and convinced me to take Chandler back to our room, just moments before Jack came wheeling back in a rage, repeating injustices she imagined which seemed to apply more to herself than the cat. That's when it really got ugly between them.  It ended the way those conflicts do, with slammed objects, anger, awful words, and whimpers.

In the evening I was terrified to open the locked door.  But, wouldn't you know it, when I did, it was cool and serene and Chan lifted his sweet head to greet me.  I brought him out and showed Jack that he was okay, and suggested she might want to say goodbye.  She stroked his head with her gnarled fingers and turned away.

The next two nights, I placed my swaddled kitty by my pillow,  I continued reasoning with him, nudging him to gently slip into a peaceful slumber, as I stroked his fragile little shell.  Silly me.  Chandler's death was violent, loud and protracted. So unlike my playful orange kitty.  I am grateful that it happened at 3:00 a.m. while Jack slept, on my watch after all.

We buried Chandler with the Japanese maples.  When the sun rose, it was the most glorious morning.

Mrs. W. died three weeks later.  Stinky died too.

Passages

Besides my husband, my mother-in-law and I have little commonality.  Nevertheless, while we hardly share the same parental approach, Jack and I both are devoted to our furry beasts.[1]  Living together means I encounter open cans of cat food in the linen drawer and Stinky’s accidents in the hallway just outside our bedroom, and she circumvents my rules about “treats” for my animals by delivering them behind my back.
 

Most days we tolerate the situation.  The five animals, two of them hers and three of ours of course, were oblivious to our gripes and settled happily into their routines and territories.  We are blessed that few conflicts arose between them.

My favorite cat, Chandler adapted very well to this place once we accepted that leaving him unrestrained around the house meant that he could graze at Jack’s cat’s food all day, and escape into the backyard on occasion.  Jack expressed her fondness for Chandler, by giving me a daily recap of his escapades, irking me by referring to him as “Yellow Cat,” even though his pelt was more vibrantly orange than a pumpkin.

Jack and I both noticed around the same time that Chandler seemed to be under the weather, but he bounced back and life went on in its warped way here at this house. Except that late one night past nine o’clock I saw an alarming bloody discharge from his nostril, and became concerned about his lack of energy. Husband and I made the decision to go to the emergency veterinarian and pay through the nose for tony Westside animal healthcare. After receiving hundreds of really serious dollars for blood tests and x-rays, the sleepy doctor had no definitive answers. When the antibiotics and other treatments failed to produce any noticeable difference, a few days later I took Chandler back to another veterinarian at that same practice, this time concerned about his swollen left eye, and greater degree of lethargy. 

In response, the vet gave him a large dose of prednisone, and Chandler came home as good as new, even though there still was no diagnosis. With a lump in my throat I say that I so regret that I didn’t appreciate those couple of days when he was his irascible self. Sadly, he declined really quickly losing interest in food, and shunning all human contact by hiding far underneath low furniture. Jack tried to prod him into eating. I know because I came home to find Tupperware lids with uneaten cat food shoved as far as she could manage towards him.

I surmised that Chandler’s life was coming to end. Coping was so very hard for me and my husband, but it became unbearable with Jack’s continual questions about what we were doing to fix our cat.  While we were at work, Jack continued to hover over him, attempting to tempt him to eat or drink, unwilling to accept defeat.  

Naturally, during that week were not left alone with our sadness. Someone else reported Jack to the authorities for animal abuse with respect to Stinky, and an animal control officer arrived at the doorstep to do a fourth investigation about his lack of fur.  I panicked at the thought of a raid, but Jack managed to get a letter from Stinky’s treating doctor attesting to his auto immune disorder, and absolving Jack of negligence.

Jack triumphantly displayed the letter from the good Dr. F., and announced how she would carry multiple copies to hand out to the well-meaning busybodies.  Yes, for Stinky, the crisis was averted.

The next evening after work Jack cornered me as I sat holding Chandler. “Take him to Dr. F. to see if he can make him better,” she pleaded, “I’ll pay.”  Overwhelmed, I broke away from her strong will, and retreated into my sorrow.  But, in the morning I was faced with my uncertainty and guilt about not grasping every lifeline for my precious Chandler and I made an appointment with Dr. F.  

By this point, Chandler was diminished in size and his eye was bulging.  The good doctor studied him and asked about the earlier doctors’ tests and conclusions. Well, we could do an MRI and cat scan he offered.  No more tests, I wanted the bottom line. Without the tests, Dr. F.’s best educated guess was lymphoma, and that Chandler was dying, most likely from a tumor behind his eye.  I asked for palliative treatment and I was sent home with more prednisone and an I.V. to administer fluids.

Amazingly, Chandler rallied. The next morning when my husband made breakfast for the other animals, Chandler weakly lifted his head and wobbled over to his food bowl.  Twice a day, husband administered the pills and somehow I found the strength to give him the IV. Jack was overjoyed. 

But, Chandler wasn’t really well. He started to bump into things from the blindness in his left eye. He completely stopped drinking water, so we hydrated him with an eyedropper. Gradually he became weaker and frailer and then lost interest in his food. For over three more weeks we tried to care for him, but were left helpless as he faded away more each day.

When he couldn’t walk any more we left him bundled on the couch in blankets and Jack found comfort in looking over him, and stroking him with her gnarled fingers.  Husband and I grimly faced the inevitable day ahead and discussed where we’d bury him. Husband prepared the place and we waited.

---

[1] Stinky is predominantly without fur, but you catch my drift.

Inside Our Fridge

Brief

As a person reared in Los Angeles, I naturally duck and cover when life gets shaky.  And, so I have for all this quarter year 2012 avoided exposing my angst, lest my soul gets choked with my debris. I have not generated anything newsworthy to report about my life with Jack. Pity parties are so pathetic, and don’t lead to solutions.  The result is a life pretty raw and unresolved.

Distance and Reach

I took husband’s cousin’s exasperated call.  She, an esteemed professor who lives in Virginia was in Los Angeles for professional reasons, but made time to take her African-born husband and young son across town to lunch with Jack. Following the date, she asked my mother-in-law for driving directions from the Westside to the Wilshire Grand hotel in downtown LA. Go figure.  She spent hours with Jack. It is pretty obvious that Jack is in a wheelchair.  Her advice was S#(@!  So, after the cousin ended up in a ghetto she called our cell phone.  Because husband was driving at the time, I, the passenger picked up and coached her back to Wilshire. I am quite sure I will never be recognized for my contributions. She got her family to the hotel without incident. My point, why would you count on Jack for directions? 

Okay, she may inspire confidence because nothing seems to deter her from getting from point A to point B.  Just by way of example, she had the notion that she wanted husband to celebrate his birthday at brunch at the Magic Castle.  After a few calls she realized that an invitation from a member was required for us to get a reservation.  She tried to score a connection through her sole entertainment-business buddy, Marge, a neighbor who appears in headache commercials.  When Jack, deflated, reported the dead-end I tried to come up with alternatives. A day or two later, however, husband mysteriously received a calling card from a Magic Castle member.  A little digging revealed that Jack advertised in Craigslist for the invitation.

Similarly, few things come between the old lady and a snack.  If the object she desires is on a high shelf or in the back of the refrigerator she jimmies it out with my late father-in-law’s cane. Though she cannot shop in supermarkets, the market gladly comes to her bearing a tower of food bins delivered directly into the kitchen. If it’s an apple pie from McDonald’s she is craving she’ll pay someone to score it for her.

Once, when I was newly married to my husband and my father-in-law was still alive, Jack became furious with the slow service at a neighborhood Chinese food restaurant. But, when it became clear that she meant to wheel into the kitchen to yell at the staff, my husband--who is quite strong--grasped a wheel and kept her at the table.  From a family dynamic perspective, it is interesting to me that my late father-in-law did not attempt to prevent her from making that scene, and my husband, who is a pacifist, did. 

As a daughter-in-law, I have always chafed against that strong disposition. For example, for years I have begged her not to feed my animals because she feeds them toxic treats to excess. But, her will to feed them overshadows my reasonable request.  Fortunately, we have few outright conflicts these days.  A recent one however is quite silly as I put it to paper.  She, husband and I were in the kitchen, as husband and I were pulling dinner together from her recent, crazy supermarket delivery. She suddenly gassed the lever to the wheelchair, backed up without any thought and pinned me against the open door of the refrigerator.  I screamed and yelled for her to stop her recklessness.  Her retort was something snide.  My poor husband.  As I stormed off, he explained to her I was under a lot of pressure at work. Yeah.