Commercially Zoned

Lately I have been in the market for a cheese press.

Just to be clear, I do not want to buy a cheese press, nor do I want to own a cheese press.  I’m not exactly sure what a cheese press does or why someone would even want a cheese press, except for maybe the people at Tillamook, and they probably already have one.  Nevertheless, I have been shopping for cheese presses for several months.

I started this little project after ordering a pair of shoes online.  Afterwards, I went to check out my Facebook page and there on the right-hand column was an advertisement for the shoes I just bought.  Instead of dwelling on how creepy it was to have someone or something peering over my virtual shoulder while I surfed the web, I decided to make a little game for myself.  My goal is to have an advertisement pop up offering me a sale on something ridiculous, something absurd, something nobody in their right mind would ever want to own.  I chose a cheese press.  (I apologize to any closet cheese-making friends that I have.  Cheese-making is a wonderful hobby and I hope it brings joy and fulfillment to you and your family for generations to come).  I’ve done Google searches on “cheese press” and priced them on Amazon.  It was a banner day (December 20^th, 2013) when I got an advertisement for a cheese making kit on my Facebook page.  It’s not the same thing as a cheese press, but I’m making progress.

Although the cheese press ad still eludes me, I am a little disturbed by the advertisements that I do find on my Facebook page.  Obviously, something convinced them that I am in need of some sort of hormone supplement that will balloon my muscles to the size of bean-bag chairs.  Perhaps someone is secretly observing my physique through my laptop camera.  Nevertheless, it’s always so much worse when I see an ad for something I that I have been  browsing for.  It happened again this Christmas as I was shopping for a camera for Jenny.  There it was, a Canon Rebel, practically begging me to click on it.  I know the advertisers expected me to feel pleased that they were sensitive to my needs. Instead, the hairs on the back of my neck went up.  I felt like I was a character in a horror movie.

I don’t like the idea that advertisers are stalking me like a lioness creeping up behind a baby zebra.  I find the old-fashioned advertising annoying enough, like when I’m in my car listening to the radio.  There’s one that starts out with

“When opportunity knocks, you sit up and take notice.  When opportunity knocks again, you get on the phone and make the call!”

I can’t remember the rest of the commercial because I’m always thinking Really?  That’s what we do when someone knocks?

DISPATCHER:  911 emergency, how may I help you?

ME:  (whispering frantically) There’s someone knocking at my door.  I think it’s                                  opportunity.

DISPATCHER:  Have they knocked more than once?

ME:  Yes.  That’s why I got on the phone and made the call.

DISPATCHER:  Stay calm.  What did you do the first time they knocked?

ME:  I sat up and took notice.

DISPATCHER:  We’ll send somebody out right away.

But some commercials go beyond annoying, pushing the envelope to the point where I feel like ripping my ears off.    If you have listened to radio at all, you probably have heard some.  I am about to discuss one of them, so to those of you who are radio listeners, please heed the following:

WARNING

I AM ABOUT TO PROVIDE THE LYRICS TO THE MOST ANNOYING COMMERCIAL JINGLE IN THE WORLD.  THIS SONG HAS BEEN KNOWN TO RAISE THE SUICIDE RATE OF LABORATORY RATS AND IS CONSIDERED TO BE “WEAPONS GRADE” BY THE U.S. MILITARY.  JUST READING THE LYRICS WILL CAUSE IT TO EMBED ITSELF IN YOUR BRAIN AND YOU WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO ATTEMPT TO DRIVE IT AWAY BY LISTENING TO ANOTHER SONG BUT THIS WILL NOT WORK UNLESS THE NEW SONG IS EQUALLY ANNOYING, LIKE “MANIC MONDAY” BY THE BANGLES.  WE ADVISE YOU TO STOP READING THIS BLOG IMMEDIATELY AND NAVIGATE TO THIS VIDEO OF A BABY ATTEMPTING TO WALK ON ICE FOR THE FIRST TIME:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Eg5-4Pn444

THANK YOU.

There’s this one commercial for a charity organization called KARS-4-KIDS.  It starts with a high-hat cymbal being played with a country swing….tsss-t-t-tsss-t-t-…followed by a guitar.  Then a child’s voice begins to bleat out the melody:

One-eight-seven-seven Kars-4-Kids!

K-A-R-S Kars-4-Kids!

One-eight-seven-seven Kars-4-Kids!

Do-NATE your car today!

Then a man’s voice sings the same thing.  Then the man and the child begin to sing together.  Perhaps other things happen later in the commercial, like the man and the child singing alternate words in the song, or singing the song in Spanish.  I don’t know, because I’ve never made it to the end of the commercial.  I always turn the radio off before then.

It’s gotten to the point where I can have the radio silenced by the second tsss on the high-hat.  My hand darts off the steering wheel almost of its own accord with the quickness and agility of a striking cobra.  I like to think that this represents a tiny evolutionary advancement that will ensure the survival of my offspring long into the future, much like fish who developed lungs and legs so they could live on land and escape whatever toxicity that lurked in the water, quite likely some prehistoric version of a Kars-4-Kids commercial.

I understand that advertising brings in revenue, and that the amount that companies pay corresponds to how many people are listening or watching or browsing.  So I wonder how the program managers at radio stations would feel to know that when certain radio commercials come on I actually turn off the radio.  Perhaps if I told them that, they would stop playing those commercials.  Of course, they would then want to find out what kind of things I might actually buy.

If they ask, I plan to tell them I’m shopping for a cheese press.

(Update:  Today, January 27, 2014, the day I finished this blog, I found a cheese-press ad on my Facebook page.  My life is complete.)

Never Fails

My mom hated the holidays and loved them. 

She hated the stress.  If Mom had been a Super Hero, her Super Power would have been “worry.”  There was no problem so big that she could not train her anxiety onto it with laser-like intensity, and fret it into submission.  Of course, nothing she worried about ever happened, which only proved how effective her worry was.  She didn’t like to worry, or even choose to worry.  In some ways, she had no control over it, in the same way that Bruce Banner has no control over the anger which transforms him into the Hulk. 

So, even though every year she promised that “this holiday would be different” and that she was going to relax and “give everything to the Lord,” she would still, never fail, worry about everything…would people be happy with their presents?  Would the food taste good?  Would the decorations be up in time?  Would all the Christmas cookies get baked?

But she loved the holidays too.  One of the things she loved most was having us all together.  It doesn’t happen often anymore, now that my sister Diane lives in Phoenix with her husband Dale, and my brother Brian and his wife Maria have settled down in Orlando with their dental practice.   So during the holidays, Mom treasured having us all under the same roof again, sitting around a dining room table that had been expanded thanks to an entire sheet of plywood.  She loved cuddling or playing board games or making puzzles with her eight grandchildren.  She loved having Diane make her famous frosted sugar cookies.  She loved reminiscing over the scrapbooks that Jenny creates.  She loved having my brother Todd and his wife Tami bring in a big pot of soup so she wouldn’t have to cook, or better yet, suggest that we order out for Chinese food from her favorite restaurant.  Her eyes would light up and she would grin.  “Gooooood i-DEE-ah!” she would say in a silly voice that mimicked a character in some movie she had enjoyed but I hadn’t seen.   

And more than anything, she loved the time after the evening meal was done and the dishes were cleared away and we played a Rummy-style card game we call “Tick.”   As we dealt hand after hand we would recall funny stories and laugh.  She won more than any of us.

This last year, 2013, we had fifteen of us at the house for one of our celebrations (due to complicated schedules we celebrated two Christmases.)  Fifteen of us at the house, but we only set the table for fourteen.  Mom can’t sit at the table anymore.  She takes her meals in her recliner, my dad holding a cup to her lips and coaxing her to drink.  It had been a good day for her.  She had taken in all of her breakfast smoothie and most of her lunch one. 

When someone you love has Alzheimer’s disease, you are constantly adjusting your definition of a “good day.”

It used to be a good day when she could get through an entire game of Tick, even though she never won anymore.  Then it was a good day if I could convince her that, yes, this was the house she had lived in for the past fifty years and not a new one.  Then, a good day meant that we had gone on a walk or taken a drive together as she clung to my hand.  Eventually, a good day meant that she had remembered my name, and then it meant that she had strung some words together in a coherent sentence.  About a year ago, it was a good day when I would kiss her wrinkled cheek, then press my cheek against her lips and receive a kiss in return.  A few months ago, a good day meant I was able to meet her gaze and get her to smile, recognizing that there was a friendly face in front of her, even if she had no idea who that face belonged to. 

We don’t have any of those kinds of “good days” anymore.

We sat at the table, waiting to start the meal.  The food smelled delicious, and the dining room was crackling with conversation and laughter and memories.  My dad’s chair was still vacant, which meant that he was tending her, and we wouldn’t start without him.  I rose from my seat and walked down the dark hallway to see if I could offer some assistance…not because he needed it, but because it might allow us to start the meal sooner.  Other than someone to sit with her while he runs an errand every few days, Dad doesn’t need any help.  We’ve talked about it several times, but he has always insisted on taking care of her his way.  An engineer’s way.  So he keeps his schedules and meticulously records her intake and output.  He’s built ramps so he can wheel her to any part of the house.  He carefully checks for bedsores.  He records her weight.  Anyone else—anyone less heroic—would have had her in a home by now.

I knock lightly on the door to the bedroom.  “We’re almost ready!” he calls.   I push the door open.  She sits perched on the edge of her hospital bed, staring blankly, her arms curled up against her chest.  He’s put socks on her hands to keep her warm.  Mittens are too hard to get on and off.  “I just need to get her into her wheelchair,” says Dad.  He’s wearing a special weight belt he designed and built to keep his back in alignment as he does any heavy lifting.   He got the idea while taking care of Mom.

He bends down and embraces her, getting ready to begin the maneuver that will get her from the bed to the wheelchair.  But before he lifts her, he pauses, his arms wrapped around her as her head rests against his shoulder.  “This is when I get my hug,” he says.  I don’t say anything.

“It always reminds me of the first time I hugged her,” he continues, rubbing her hunched back.  “We were in Milwaukee, helping out with some youth group dinner.  Everyone had left the hall, but she stayed behind to clean up and I offered to help.  After we were done she thanked me by giving me a hug.”

Then he lifts her to her feet, smoothly pivots her around and gently places her in the chair. “I was too tall for her, so she stood on the tips of my steel-toed shoes.  Of course, I was seeing another girl at the time…”

He removes his weight belt.  “Then there was another time a couple weeks later when we had a Halloween party, and some guy in a hobo costume kept bumping into me.  After about the third time I’m thinking ‘who the heck is this guy?’ and I look down…and it’s her!”  He chuckles.  “She had on her dad’s old clothes and one of his stogies in her mouth.”  He starts wheeling her toward the door.

I had never heard those stories before.  As she rolls past me, I am filled with a strange sense of awe.  Even now, as I write this, I still feel it, as I think about how those silly flirtations and that stolen hug grew into a family crowded around a massive holiday table.

I hate Alzheimer’s.  I hate the way it relentlessly sucks away life and personality and dignity. 

But in the midst of it, I am also grateful.  I am grateful for these glimpses within our Valley of the Shadow that allow me to see that the ancient words are true:

Love never fails. 

The three of us move from the dim, quiet bedroom, down the dark hallway toward a dining room filled with noise and light and laughter.  Love never fails.  This is no wishful greeting-card sentiment, but a solid rock on which someone can build—and has built—a life, a marriage, a family.  In these brief moments of darkness and drought, it shines all the brighter and flows all the sweeter. 

Love never fails.  It inexorably expands and advances in depth and breadth…

…gently, joyfully, powerfully, defiantly, triumphantly unstoppable.

MLK

I wish there was no such thing as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

For that matter, I wish there was no Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial in Washington DC, and I wish there were no Martin Luther King, Jr.  Boulevards or Avenues or Streets throughout America.

Don’t get me wrong.  I believe it is appropriate to honor Dr. King in all those ways, and more.  I can think of no other American from the late 20^th Century more deserving.  I would not be surprised if someday his likeness appeared on our national currency. 

The problem is that we as a nation, or perhaps more accurately, as a human race, tend to appreciate our heroes only after they have been martyred.  So, in spite of all his accomplishments during his brief life, I wonder what more he would have done if he could have been with us another forty-five years. 

What would he have said in the wake of the Rodney King trial, verdict, and riots?  How would he have responded to Trayvon Martin’s slaying?  What would he be saying about the disproportionate number of African Americans sitting in our prisons?

We can only imagine.

I like to think, though, that we would have listened.  I like to think that we would have been better because we had listened.  And while I think he would have celebrated the progress that has been made, I’m certain he would have continued to challenge and confront the bigotry and racism that can lurk in even the purest of hearts.

So happy birthday, Dr. King.  I wish we didn’t have this holiday to remember you.

I wish you were here with us instead.

Lost Goodbye

September 9, 2010

I lost my mom to Alzheimer's.

That sounds melodramatic, since as I type this, she is sleeping peacefully in a recliner not ten feet from me, occasionally stirring and muttering some gibberish.  She lives still, eating her breakfast, sleeping in her chair, walking with slow, shuffling steps.  But most of what made her who she was is gone now.

I've heard Alzheimer's disease referred to as "The Long Goodbye."  I don't think this is true. There are no final goodbyes with Alzheimer's.  When the disease is first diagnosed, saying goodbye seems ridiculous.  After all, she's still there, right in front of me, almost the same as she always was.  Perhaps she can't find her way home from Bible Study any more, or repeatedly lays the plates on the table no matter how many times you remind her that we are not ready to do that, but she's still Mom.  She adds to conversations and plays cards and swims with her grandkids.  Why would I say goodbye forever to someone whom I will see the next day, and the next week, and the week after that?

As the disease progresses and she needs to be reminded of her grandchildren's names and starts believing that there are several men (all of them named Larry, like my father) living at her house, she remains interested in the lives of friends and family.  Yet as I patiently explain to her (for the fourth time in an hour) that she can't go see her granddaughter's play tonight because it won't open for another two weeks, and even though she pouts like a small child over this, goodbye still seems very far away.

And even as she forgets the names of her sons and daughter, her face still lights up when I greet her as I come through the front door, so that for a moment I can pretend that she is whole and well.  "Well hello!" she cries, her eyes brightening with the joy that comes from seeing someone dearly loved.  The moment passes quickly as confusion clouds her eyes.  Sentences are left half-finished, the thoughts behind them abandon her like a mischievous ghost.

Leaving the house is hard.  She doesn't want me to go. 

"When will you come back?" she asks, almost in tears. 

"Soon," I say. 

"When's that?" she asks. 

"A couple days," I reply. 

"A couple days," she repeats, holding her fingers to her mouth, intertwined, prayer-like.  "A couple days," she says again. "OK." 

Perhaps this is the time for a last goodbye, but goodbye's are hard enough as they are. 

I see her several times a week now.  There are no more gasps of delight as I walk through the door.  No more spark in the eyes.  A few months ago, on good days, she would sometimes ask, puzzlement creasing her brow "Who are you?"  She doesn't even ask anymore.  And when I leave, after giving her a hug and a kiss on the head, she might simply say "Thank you," but more often than not she just gives me a bemused look.  She doesn't say goodbye. 

The opportunity for goodbye has long passed, evaporating before our eyes, without us even realizing that it, like my Mom, was fading away.

Author's note:  Thank you for reading to the end of this post.  Mom is still with us.  I wrote this three years ago and finally worked up the courage to share it.