Love's Myopic View.

me and my daddy, eighth grade graduation 1984

"It's like forgetting 
the words to your favorite song.

You can't believe it 

You were always singing along.

It was so easy and the words so sweet.

You can't remember

you try to feel the beat."

~ Regina Spektor

________________________________________
Daddy, I see you in a three piece suit. With a brown suitcase gripped tightly in your right hand and an afro so perfectly round that it defies the laws of afro-nature. I also see you with a bright gold headband around that same natural that, on weekends, you allowed to be distorted by terry cloth and elastic. Your goatee is immaculate, your shorts nineteen-seventies short and your socks Kareem Abdul Jabbar high. There are other times that I see you squatting behind twelve year-old Little League catchers with a that funny little umpire cap and a mask covering your face. Calling out in this throaty and animated voice phrases like, "Yerrrrrrrrrrr outta there!"

me and my daddy, Emory SOM graduation 2012

Later I see you with male-patterned cowlicks in your afro. But still I see you as a strong, athletic thirty-something father in a suit on weekdays and at Getty's Baseball Field on Saturdays.

mommy on my wedding day, 2004

Mommy, I see you as an officer in the PTA at my elementary school and with your brow furrowed over a Singer sewing machine before the first day of school. I see your hand on a steering wheel and hear you snapping Wrigley's spearmint gum in between KABC TalkRadio shows. I see your hair dyed some unnatural shade of reddish-blonde with your dark roots emerging --yet owning the look like the Beyonce of your time--eyebrows arched almost to non-existence. After that, I see you with your coif shorn into a natural. And later with some sassy version of the "Anita Baker" haircut.

retro-mommy with newborn, preemie JoLai (in her twenties, not thirties)

But still in all of those versions, I see you as a thirty-something. 

And yes. On most days for me, Grandma Ernestine is fifty-five with speckles of salt in her hair. Granddaddy Cottrell is nodding off in an easy chair but smiling and loving when he isn't. Mudear is shelling peas on her porch or watching her "stories" or off on a cruise ship in her most dapper attire. Which includes a mink coat. T'Renee is standing in the House of Style Beauty Shop or, depending on the situation, in her kitchen pressing everybody's hair with a hot metal comb and Blue Magic hair grease while Auntie Mattie is smoking cigarettes after closing up shop for the day at Winchell's Donuts.

And yes, I know that Granddaddy Cottrell, Mudear, T'Renee and Auntie Mattie have all gone home. And I know that my Grandmama Ernestine is a rock's throw away from her ninetieth birthday and no where near the fifty-five years old that I constantly see when speaking to her on the telephone. But still. This is how I continue to see her. And them.

Just as I see you--my parents. Through the lens of a ten year old child.

I believe that no matter how old we get, we all do that with the people we love. Even if our childhoods were imperfect, we still freeze-dry people in whatever constitutes the simplest of times. More often than we even care to admit.

I call it love's myopic view. It's this nearsightedness or farsightedness or whatever you want to call it that somehow happens without us even thinking about it.

I know this is true. It's what, I think, often keeps people holding hands well into their sixth decade of marriage and through life-altering illnesses. It's what brings a daughter or son to change the diaper of a parent without even flinching.

Love's myopic view.

But you know? I believe that very thing is what makes it so difficult when matriarchs and patriarchs begin to age and show signs of being mere mortals. Mere mortals. Because to our ten year-old selves, they were never mere mortals. Even if they weren't perfect, they were still the closest things to superheroes in our lives.

And perhaps this is what that view beholds while changing the adult Pamper of a once healthy dear one once they've reached a point of being able to manage bodily excrement for themselves.

Perhaps.

But every now and then, you get a jolt out of that time-trippy myopia. You go to see an aunt or uncle or parent or grandparent and suddenly see them with glasses that are clear and not rose-colored. You notice the humped back of collapsing vertebral bones and those parchment paper neck skin folds. And you look and you think, "Who is that?"

I know I have. Especially when a lot of time has passed.

I know I'm fortunate to see my parents regularly. And despite my earlier statement, I actually realize that my mother is indeed sixty-five and that my father is sixty-eight. I know that Tounces (mom) has mostly silver and white hair instead of Dark 'n' Lovely auburn and that my daddy's once electric 'fro is a buzzed down white crop.

I know that.

But on the inside? It's totally different. My heart sees them as thirty-somethings. Totally.

Yeah.

That reminds me.

I have a fairly new friend whom I now hold dear. We actually met because of our blogs but now talk far more by phone and text than by our blogs. Which is both interesting and heartwarming now that I think about it. It's also besides the point, so I'll reroute from that and get back to my point.

One of her parents is sick. Her parent has been fighting a series of very serious illnesses. So far, the words "fighter" and "overcomer" have been understatements. The medical history defies much of what I know scientifically; her parent has lived to see the other side of some pretty hard diagnoses.

Today we talked on the phone about the most recent of these medical setbacks. She wanted to know what I thought. And I consider her a friend--I truly do--and I know she was asking me because she considers me one, too. So I told her that I was concerned. That this sounded serious to me and that, if she was ready, here are a few questions she might want to ask the doctors. And I rattled those questions right off.

Then I froze.

Because I could hear it in her voice. I could hear that struggle between her image of a strong and virile afro-wearing parent rolling around on the lawn at age thirty-five and this reality that her doctor-friend was speaking over an iPhone. It made me imagine that this was my own parent. How would I even get my head around that?

I can't.

When Poopdeck had a massive heart attack, he survived. Just like the thirty-something I imagined him to be, he lived to power walk at the park every single morning and spend summers with his grandsons. So even when he tells me of any ailment, I have to shake myself hard enough to listen and acknowledge it with some pragmatism. And not see it as something for Excedrin or Alka Seltzer only.

Her voice was stoic. She is a professional and an extraordinarily smart human being so she got the facts I was telling her. But no matter how many degrees you have, it's hard to shake that ten year-old image of your parent. No matter what somebody is telling you.

I worried after we spoke today. I reflected and had this ah hah moment after we'd talked. I felt that I'd been insensitive to that ten year-old time warp and gave the facts too direct, too harsh.  She never said or did anything to suggest that, but it's how I felt.

Which reminds me.

When I was in residency my Mudear's baby sister lived not even five miles away from my apartment. My daddy made sure that I got to know his mother's sister and I'm glad he did. Auntie Mac was the only person I knew in Cleveland when I got there and even though she was in her sixties and I was in my twenties, we spent a lot of time together. We grew close and developed a very special relationship over coffee and chats. Even though she looked a lot like my Mudear, her personality was uniquely her own.

I loved her.

From the moment we got to know each other she'd already been dealing with health problems. So my lens was not a ten year old one at all. It was that of an intern and a newly minted physician. I saw her as a mortal, albeit a mortal I loved. Her health failed more and more. In my second year of residency, she peacefully slipped away in home hospice.

I was sad mostly because I would miss her. I would miss taking her three dollars and running to the corner to "play her numbers" or even her getting into the passenger seat of my car while holding an overfull cup of Folgers that always, always spilled all over my cloth interior.

But I knew she was mortal. Even if I would miss her dearly, I saw her with eyes that were okay to let her go.

me and my Mudear (in my Auntie Mattie's kitchen)

When my Mudear came to Cleveland for her sister's homegoing celebration, she sat right beside me on that pew. Like a little girl she fell into a heap on my lap and cried hard and deep. I patted her platinum curls just as anyone would their own child because that was the right thing to do. But what I said in that moment was less so. I remember saying, "It's okay, Mudear. Mac is at peace now. She's at peace."

And don't you know that my Mudear didn't even lift her head? All she said through her muffled sobs was this:

"She's my baby sister. My baby sister."

And she wept and wept until her body sputtered like a car out of gas. While I rubbed her head and closed my mouth.

It didn't matter that Mac's body had been decimated by organ failure and pain. It didn't matter one single bit. This was her baby sister. That was her myopic view of that day--through the lens of a big sister. And when you see it that way, you know that there's nothing natural about being at your baby sister's funeral. At all.

Especially if you still hold her in your heart at a certain point in time. Now I know in my heart that my Mudear was mourning the loss of that version of her baby sister the most. The one that got on her nerves and asked to borrow her things. Not the one with jaundiced eyes and an edematous body.

And you know? I don't even know where I'm going with all of this. And I know that I'm rambling and I'm all over the place. But really I'm just thinking about all of this and trying to flesh it out. That's all.

Yeah.

Talking to my friend made me reflect on my Auntie Mac and how it felt to console my grandmother when she died. It made me think about what she must have been feeling and how this translates to my friend and the health of her parent and how she might be feeling.

And honestly? I just want to be sensitive to the dichotomy between the cherished images of our loved ones that we have seared into our hearts --  and the ruthless picture painted by reality. Because there is a dichotomy there. There so is.

I guess the point is that I'll try to remember this when I'm talking to my patients. I'll choose my words more carefully--and tell the truth, yes--but do so while knowing that this dichotomy exists and must be considered if I truly strive to be empathic.

Hmmm.

I just thought of something. Not only do we see our parents and loved ones through love's myopic view--we see ourselves the same way, too. We're shocked when we pass a mirror and see grey hairs here and also there and crows feet bursting from our eyes in photographs. Unnerved when we feel hot flashes and back pains or bewildered when somebody prescribes us with blood pressure medication. It doesn't match up with our myopic self image, does it? I'm thinking that maybe--just maybe-- we, too, see ourselves at our most fertile and virile. No matter what reality and calendars are talking about.

Hmmm.

Maybe I'll put that thought on a mental post-it note for later.

So yeah. That's what I'm thinking about tonight. And maybe none of it even makes sense. Or all of it makes perfect sense. Hell, I don't know.

Either way, that's all I've got for now.

Oh, and a few more of these lyrics:

"You spend half of your life 
trying to fall behind.

You're using your headphones 
to drown out your mind.

It was so easy 
and the words so sweet.

You can't remember

You try to move your feet...."

Sleep well. And thanks for listening.

***
Happy Tuesday.


Now playing on my mental iPod. . . .I can't believe I'd never heard of her until I heard her interviewed on NPR's "All Things Considered."  The sweet and haunting voice of Regina Spektor. . . hear that whole song here: