Transparency

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I hate this blog. I hate my voice. I hate my own words. I do not like the sort of writer I've become.

Over the past couple of years, my life has become increasingly focused on caregiving for my elderly mother. This focus has reached a rather acute point, as my days -- all seven of them each and every week -- place me at my mother's home caring for her nearly every need. I am a nurse, really. I've gone far beyond what I thought myself capable. I am hip-deep in disposable vinyl gloves, incontinence briefs, commode cleaning, barrier cream and personal-with-my-eyes-closed-hygiene. It is what I do. Everything else is just an aside.

This blog, being a part of everything else, is therefore one of those asides. In fact, I just fling off thoughts here with a few finger strokes. For a long time now I have not entered a string of sentences with anything approaching concentration. It's all more like playing a parlor game during a holiday party with family than anything else: you pay attention, but just enough to avoid seeming a party-pooping fool and just long enough to conceal the fact you'd like to go home. Keep to the surfaces, play the game, talk about the weather, ask about the kids, quickly assemble an opinion and hastily speak it toward the cacophony of interruptions. And then seek more wine.

My mother groans constantly.

I do have help -- finally. I've a nurse who visits at least once a week, and a physical therapist and a home health aide who show up twice a week. And I have found an adult care center for my mother that keeps her safe and occupied for 6 hours each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. While this day care service is a godsend, it is a bit like going into some sort of weird reverse gear; it seems not all that long ago I was bringing my son to day care, carrying his little bag, finding his little cubby. Now I do it for my mother. The only striking difference is that my son wasn't swearing at me.

And his diapers were a lot smaller.

I don't know. I hate to blame my mediocrity on my mother or my circumstances. Sometimes I wonder if blogging, and simply using the internet in general, have actually made me stupid. And if not stupid, well, clearly I have become stupider since immersing myself in the online world. Seriously, I simply feel dumb. Flat out, straight out, unadulteratedly and precipitously dumb. In fact, a confession: I am so dumb that when I approach any stop sign, I've been suddenly given to trying to stop the sign. Why shouldn't I? It says "STOP." And I do this even when I discover, after expending my vast muscular reserves, that stop signs are not actually moving all that fast.

But I digress. The fact is that blogging is to literacy what Madonna is to deep thought. Actually, blogging is not quite that bad. But MY blogging is. Or so it feels.

Tonight I have a few free minutes to tap out a few words, though I feel like a weak fighter tapping out of an UFC match. Oh well. I've become what I am. I can't do much about it, except, perhaps, throw in the towel. It's just so hard to catch my breath, to bring some new strength and vigor to the fight. I can play the rope-a-dope, I can bob and weave and pray for a break. But why bother? I am in the midst of real life, the real stuff. You know what I mean.

What can I change about the facts of life? This is biology, baby.

I've got the hand sanitizer to prove it.

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