Transitions

Transitions

    Things have been a bit hectic with the arrival of summer, a departing of the spring weather leading to an abrupt jump into the summer's heat (and in other parts of the world, an overdose of rain).  All of this meant the pleasures of getting flowers planted and out on the deck, pulling the cacti out of hibernation, turning the sprinklers on (not my favorite thing, that of dealing with outside water and the problems it reveals as shutoff valves and water main cutoffs give way to age and hard water deposits) and of course, my mother's move to a wheelchair.  She now uses it about 50% of the time, finding that her legs are indeed growing more tired and weak and numb, struggling to avoid getting into the lazy gap of giving in, so to speak, and yet discovering that the transition has been easier than expected.

    All of this pales to a major transition, that of getting a call in the middle of the night (or anytime, actually), one unexpected, one with devastating news.  Someone has died or has been in an accident, or finding yourself in that situation.  This comes up mainly because of my first foray of the year into a fiction book (okay, so I ranted and ranted about not caring for fiction, but I do try now and then), this book being recently translated from its French origins where it has won its author (once again) many awards, The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal.  Here is how she describes that phone call, that meeting with the doctor, that being told that her son is alive but brain dead, that dealing with emotions you wished and hoped you would never have to dig up, the mother Marianne, the doctor Revol, the son Simon, the positioning back and forth with a subject so delicate it's like one holds a grenade without a pin and the other searching for a way to not have them both destroyed: Would you like a coffee?  Surprised, Marianne nods.  Revol stands up and, turning the other way, picks up the pot from the coffee machine, which she hadn't seen, and --silently, with broad, sweeping gestures-- pours the coffee into two white plastic cups.  Steam rises from them.  He is playing for time, searching for the right words; she knows this but does not object, although she feels a paradoxical tension, because time is dripping away, like coffee into the pot, while she is fully aware of the urgency of the situation, its seriousness, its closeness.  Now Marianne closes her eyes and drinks, concentrating on the burning liquid in her mouth, dreading the first word of the first sentence --the doctor's jaw tensing, his lips opening, stretching, teeth appearing, the end of the tongue flickering into sight occasionally-- that tragedy-soaked sentence that she knows is about to be spoken.  Everything in her withdraws, stiffens, her spine pressing against the back of the (wobbly) chair, her head driven back: she would like to get out of here, run to the door and escape, or disappear through a trapdoor opening suddenly beneath her feet, so she can enter a black hole of forgetfulness, so no one in this building can find her, so she need never know anything other than the fact that Simon's heart is still beating; she would like to flee this cramped room, this sordid light, and run away from the news.  Because no, she is not brave.  She is slippery as a snake, would do anything to make him reassure her, say her fears are unfounded, tell her a story --a suspenseful story, sure-- but a story with a happy ending.  She's a disgusting coward, but she does not back down from her stance: each second that passes is a hard-won treasure; each second slows her approaching fate, and, observing her writhing hands, her legs knotted under the chair, those closed eyelids, swollen, darkened by the previous night's makeup --a streak of kohl that she applies with her fingertip, in a single movement-- seeing those murky-jade, watery-irises, the trembling of those splayed lashes, Revol knows she has understood, that she knows, and so with infinite gentleness he allows the time before his first word to stretch out, picks up the Venetian paperweight and rolls it in the palm of his hand, the glass ball sparkling under the cold fluorescent light, flashing colors over the walls and the ceiling, lines of light like veins, moving across Marianne's face, teasing her eyes open.  And this, for Revol, is the signal that he can begin speaking.

    It's a long excerpt, but it gives you an idea of the many emotions and the many people there are to any story, even within our own heads.  As Dr. David Eagleman, creator of the PBS series The Brain (discussed in an earlier post) told Scientific American Mind during an interview: ...it becomes clear that you, as an individual, are not single-minded.  Instead you are built of competing neural networks, all of which have their own drives and all which want to be in control.  This is why we're interesting and complicated.  We can argue with ourselves, we can get mad at ourselves, we can make contracts with ourselves.  Who exactly is talking with whom?  It's all you, but it's different parts of you.

    I am watching this with my mother (and with myself), her rage and her determination to "...not go gently into that good night."  She eats, she studies and unsteadily signs her deposit checks, she gets embarrassed when she holds her bladder for as long as she can and it is often not enough, she accepts my sometimes blunt presentation of her changing health.  She is transitioning but also looking for that trapdoor so that she can escape and return to a better time.  Where did that magician disappear to and why is he keeping me here waiting, she seems to ask?  But then she taps her legs, each now firmly resting in her wheelchair, something she didn't want but now requests a bit more often than she'd like.  In many ways, we are all my mother.  Some days seem to go against us and some days seem to simply vanish...it's 4 o'clock already?  What happened?

    As Dr. Eagleman said, "Who exactly is talking to whom?"  And which voice do you listen to?  The options are there for us, perhaps even to those of us in a coma.  Perhaps they are hearing the voices more clearly, or an entirely new set of voices, those once drowned out by having to turn sprinklers on and complaining about the hot sun.  What's on the tellie?  Better check, it' almost evening and almost time for bed...ah but the days go by quickly.  We're transitioning...