Still looking out for the shrubbery

A Russian friend was among the people I texted yesterday. She was the only one who wasn't shocked; her response was more of an eye-roll. I guess there were two Russian friends, the second being Nina, but she knows mom well so she wasn't shocked at all. As always, she was loving and supportive.

A recurring question/comment was that mom didn't mean it, that it was the Alzheimer's talking. But, while there's much that I attribute to the Alzheimer's, the abortion comment was deliberately said (which is not to say that she meant it). In other words, she didn't mean it--she didn't mean that she would have aborted me had she known how I'd turn out so she could try again for someone better--but she nevertheless said it on purpose, in full cognizance.

Here's how it works: mom craves a reaction out of me, and I'm very, very good at ignoring the things she says, so she'll get more and more inflammatory in an attempt to get to me. That's largely what happened a few years ago, when we ended up not speaking for many months. Her words are calculated to be hurtful. This is not to say that she calculates correctly: she intends to get through to me by tearing me down, but she merely distances me from her.

She'd just started to show symptoms in 2012 (in fact, her diagnosis was one of the most painful milestones of that very difficult summer, and the only one that I haven't come to look upon fondly--more on that in a minute). It's hard to say when the disease first started doing its harm, for the same reason that I was skeptical about it for so long: much of mom's symptomatic behavior was continuous with her "normal" behavior. That goes both for the cognitive decline and general nastiness; the cognitive decline became obvious the following summer. And dad and I are still struggling to figure out what's best (i.e., safest) for mom.

The general nastiness is what's hard to separate from the rest of that summer as part of what I overcame. It started with a nasty breakup, peppered with the odd logistical nightmare (eg. my car breaking down on Constitution Avenue, etc.). What I remember most was how thoroughly my friends rallied, in every way. Mom, on the other hand, took the opportunity early on to point out that I radiated no warmth and could stand to be more kitten-like. It should've hurt, but it didn't, because I was so full of friendship and support from everyone else. I even found friendship and support, and other kinds of shrubbery, in Budapest and Prague, both in unexpected places and some expected ones, because, of course, Nina (and her friends). I think of all that shrubbery every time I hear "The Easy Way;" it primes me to keep an eye out for shrubberies when the shit-fairy gets loud.

It's unfortunate that the shit-fairy is so often presented by mom, but it doesn't hurt me. It makes it harder to think fondly of her and maintain affection for her, and I'm determined to do all that. It makes it harder to give her the legitimate attention she needs, and to be patient when she repeats herself. Which is not nothing; I'd like to love and support my mother. But it's also something that her antics don't hurt me.