A Million Other Things

I remember the first time it happened, the confusion that set into my mother’s mind like a relentless fog. When I look back all these years later, I try and pinpoint if that truly was the first time, the first incident, like I can’t go on if I can’t put my finger on that first pulse of dementia. It doesn’t really matter. It was the morning my first column was to be published in the newspaper, February 22, 2018. I recall I was in my bedroom, using my Swiffer mop on the ancient wood floors. My phone rang. I walked across the room and answered. It was my mother telling me my father had collapsed in their dining room floor. He wasn’t answering her. She didn’t know what to do, so she called me. “Mom, did you call 911?” She said, “Oh, is that what you think I should do? Can you do it for me?” After much panic, and the nightmare that never leaves my brain where she began calling his name and asking him to wake up, she says she is calling 911. As I race to the hospital closest to them, hoping to beat the ambulance, I wondered aloud that her response was certainly odd. He would die that day. Left to her own devices without a partner to pick up the slack of masking her scary new reality, the confusion would be all too apparent, all too soon. This begs the question – when do we worry?

My adult kiddos and I have taken on card games like white on rice, as my mom would say if she were still here to say it. We play Pounce, which is, I have learned, a game called a million other things by a million other people. It’s a crazy-paced game where you have your own personal solitaire thing going on while trying to play same suit cards in order in a large common center area. I win. I win a lot. My 35-year-old son looked at me one evening and said, “You know mom, it’s so nice to see how sharp your mind is, that your mental clarity is so focused.” I chose to take that as a compliment, but I won’t lie. It sent me scrambling down a rabbit hole. Where is the line between not caring about your abilities and pretending like you don’t care about your abilities because you can’t rise to a certain level? I don’t have that answer, because generationally, we mature into beings that, frankly, don’t give a rip.

I remember my grandmother, back in the 80s. ATMs hit the scene. Everyone started getting debit cards. “You can get cash from the machine! You don’t have to wait in line at the drive through window of the bank.” “Not I,” said Lucille. It wasn’t that she couldn’t use an ATM. She just decided that her give a poop was broken in regard to paradigm shifts in her day-today activity.

Thinking about that caused me to think about the FOMO of technology over the years. I’m generally the last person to jump on a bandwagon, like the wagon is leaving town and I still haven’t decided if it’s worthy of the energy jumping requires. I’m just stubborn. Take DoorDash, for instance. I’ve never used it. I was in an emergency babysitting situation recently, where I was needing to feed children and didn’t have the car seat it required to go and fetch pizza. The place didn’t deliver independently. I was trying to panic load the DoorDash app, but I didn’t have the WIFI password. Thankfully, my husband stopped by to check on me and used his app to order the pizza so the children wouldn’t starve. It’s not that I can’t load an app. It’s not that I can’t figure out how to order things. I just don’t see the need. Reliance can equal dependence. See, I’m stubborn.

The difference is, 30 years ago me would crawl in a corner and wither before she would allow anyone to know there was something she didn’t understand. Fifty-seven and two-thirds Dina simply doesn’t care what you think. Here are some of the things I have tried to do and could not complete because I lack interest in solving technology problems: stream a video on a smart TV that isn’t very smart at all, turn off pesky notifications from entering my wireless ear/air/bud/pod thingamabobbers, make the interwebs work, send any text to any person while standing inside the Walmarts. There are plenty more. I am glad that I am still sharp. I feel blessed that I can discern between what I cannot understand and what I simply don’t care to understand. I feel slightly angst ridden that I now need to examine into which camp my disinterest falls. I am fine with the knowledge that there are things that are not within my stuck-in-the-80s brain that I will wrestle with for the remainder of my days. If you need DoorDash, don’t call me. But, I have sourdough bread baking in the oven. I can write in cursive. I know how to make change. I can still transpose sheet music if I really, really try. I can halve or double a recipe like it’s nothing. I can beat you like a drum at Pounce. I can do a million other things.