The Seasons of My Mother

by Marcia Gay Harden

  Dad once told me that when they got married, Mom had made him promise her three things: travel, children, and a fur coat. Well, by the time she was thirty she had five children, and travel never stopped, and the fur coat was a gift presented to her when she stepped off a plane, having flown from Greece to Texas and back after burying her mother. Travel, children, and a fur coat.

  I especially loved the travel. It shifted perceptions and came to influence how I ran my home or decorated a room. I fell in love with the concept of negative space, which I learned in Japan, and delighted in the lavender laid on our pillow cases in France. Mom was a great tourist. She loved the city bus tours, the duck tours, the walking tours, the castle tours. She read the plaques at the museum, and kept her guidebook in her purse so she could always point out the historical interests of the sites we visited. If Dad was our captain, she was our navigator.

  Mom took off her shoes and we followed suit at the great temples of Japan. From the windows of a train, we waved to straw-hatted workers hoeing in the verdant rice fields, and in shiny Tokyo we bumped into kimono-garbed grandmothers in the busy street markets. We saw the flea markets of Monastiraki in Athens and learned how to bargain. We saw tragic plays at the great stone theaters of Greece; the Herod Atticus at the Parthenon, and Epidaurus, and we visited the Peloponnese and learned of the Great Peloponnesian War. Mom poured retsina at Poseidon’s temple in Sounion, wetting her feet at the foot of the sea, and she cut the bread now soaked in butter that we had bought earlier in the day from the baker just down the hill. Clutching a tomato in one hand and a knife in the other, she cut chunks of feta cheese and smiled with satisfaction at the life she was sharing with her children, exposing them to mythology and language and the endless sea. We visited stunning Baroque churches and listened to Bach resounding from huge organs on Sunday recitals in Germany. We walked through death camps in Auschwitz, dumbfounded by the depravity of hatred. In France we had breakfast of croissants and strawberry jam and then climbed the steps of Montmartre Sacré-Cœur. Walking down the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe, Dad grumbled something about World War II and “the Goddamned French Frogs,” and “that sonofabitch Hitler,” and Mom said, “Now hush, Thad,” and we didn’t really know what it was all about, but Paris was certainly the prettiest city I had ever seen. In London we visited the Houses of Parliament, and giggled at the John Gielgud–like guard whom we asked to direct us to the restrooms.

  “Do you mean . . . the loo?” he inquired in haughty tones.

  “The what?” we chimed.

  “The bathrooms,” my mother whispered with dignity.

  “Oh. Are you bathing?” he asked.

  “The toilets,” she said firmly.

  When we came out of the bathroom, he asked us with his nose quite high in the air, “Are you from the colonies?”

  “Yes,” my mother answered. “All thirteen of them.”

  In Rome, we saw Michelangelo up close, the Pietà, the Vatican, the Colosseum, pasta, gelato, espresso, olive oil, and old Italian women with enormous bosoms dressed in black, hanging out of windows watching the street life go by. Mom loved the bustle, the learning, the education, the art and soul of Italy. She stared wide-eyed at the Modigliani paintings, the same black hair and black eyes looking back at her.

  Returning from Japan by ship, we stopped off in Hawaii, and visited the beaches and drank from freshly fallen coconuts with a straw. We drove the winding road to the Dole Plantation, and picked pineapples growing in spiky rows in the sun. We did the Pineapple Garden Maze, and we slurped on Pineapple ice cream afterward.

  Dad drove our station wagon across America, Mom folding the map into large squares so she could shine as his co-pilot, five kids crunched in the back playing “I see something . . . red!” We were excited about our destinations, excited about the motels we would stay in with the nickel dropped into a machine that made the bed vibrate. We snuck sips of mint juleps at the Kentucky Derby (we were actually there the year Secretariat won!). Driving on down to Texas through Kentucky, Mom discovered Claudia Sanders Dinner House in her guidebook. Claudia Sanders was the wife of Colonel Sanders, of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, and he had named this southern mansion restaurant in his wife’s name. Mom insisted we stop for delicious crunchy chicken and buttery corn on the cob. Driving west, she picked sand out of our peanut butter sandwiches at beach picnics along the coast of California, and she added M&Ms to our trail mix as we drove through grand sequoia trees. She was our star navigator, soaking up every minute with her guidebook, her curiosity, and her charm.

  Each new sight, each new location, pops a little brain cell and makes a memory. The memory grows and connects to something else, another brain cell, a new thought, a neural synapse, and so the brain grows full and wonderfully complicated with these circuits and byways, no two brains the same even with identical experiences, and no two memories exactly the same, even with the same mirror experiences. The point is, the memories of these experiences are supposed to keep us company as we grow older. We are supposed to be able to share them again and again, and in the retelling, science has proven that even though memory changes slightly each time we recall it, our brain cells actually reexperience the original emotion over again. The joy of Poseidon’s temple is re-felt as the story is told years later, or the memory and taste of Kentucky Fried Chicken actually stimulates specific brain cells when the story is retold. Memory becomes an adventurous companion, and is a GPS confirming our place on our life map. At some point, these stories become vessels that transcend time and space. They are handed down to our children, and our children’s children, and so become the atoms that bind our past, present, and future. Our stories are the needle on a compass pointing our children North to their place in the world.

  If Mom could remember, she would feel pride at what an amazing mother she is, and what a brilliant star navigator.

  Once I saw an exhibit about the brain at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Wires and tubes were hanging on the ceiling and protruding from the walls, making a kind of tunnel, and you had to walk under and through them; it was like walking through the webbed interior of the brain. There was a complicated chaos of wires, expanding out and growing in at the same time, emitting thought like a gaseous burst from a cell. You could see the thought travel along a neuron, then jump over the synapse to another neuron, where it seemed to replicate itself and continue on through a series of neurons and synapses, and then the gaseous thought got sucked back in again, across the same synapses, and returned to its original cell where it was then stored until needed again. I had never imagined I could see the physical makeup of a thought, it was revelatory. Like a neuron, we live our life sucking in information with each breath, assimilating it, and then expelling it in an exhalation of action.

  A breath: I was attending school in Germany for a year when I was eighteen, at the University of Maryland in Munich. Mom took the train from Greece across the Alps, and when she got to Munich, we set about to do a bit of touring. It was October, so naturally we attended Oktoberfest. We had beer and Wiener schnitzel at the beer halls listening to oom-pah-pah music, and of course we visited Baroque castles, greeted by Mozart concertos floating down the marble stairs, beautifully played by string quartets. Mom, in a blue skirt and matching blue cotton button-up shirt printed with small flowers on it, a sweater draped over her thin shoulders, sipped champagne and nodded her approval at the cleanliness, the organization, the beauty of Germany. It was 1977 and we were impressed with the “green” innovations of the already ecosmart country, in particular the heating systems in some of the cities. Apparently they used sewage to create fuel to heat their buildings! We were amazed, “so advanced,” we agreed. We didn’t have cell phones or Google to learn exactly how this innovative sewage heating was done, so we didn’t turn to our gadgets and bury our heads, but instead we ordered another round of drinks and discussed energy conservation and geothermal technology between sips of German Sekt. As Mom basked in the del
icate sound of violins, tilting her head toward the notes rising above the sparkling crystal chandelier, she smiled in her eyes, feeling safe when surrounded by such beauty. In bed in Munich that night, we planned our trip to Neuschwanstein Castle for the following day, and she fell asleep with that same smile in her eyes, cuddled up with me, crawling into my crawl space, both of us spooning together in flannel nighties.

  Years later, life has assimilated this Bavarian experience, and now I exhale it in moments with my own children. I fill the house with Brandenburg concertos and teach my eldest daughter, Eulala, about Wagner and Der Ring des Nibelungen, and she wants to visit Neuschwanstein. Just like me and my mom. My daughter decides to take a language course in Berlin at sixteen years of age; she loves the metal band Rammstein, and is already learning German. Of course I go visit her in Berlin, and of course at the end of the trip, we find ourselves on an overnight train, heading to Munich. I let her have a beer on the train; my mom would have done the same. Another train to Schwangau, and we walk all the way up to the castle, and yes! Let’s take the guided tour My mother always did! She said you learn so much more! Let’s do the same! So we do . . . and later at the beer garden we sip cold ales and talk of King Ludwig II, and laugh and laugh at his innovative elevator system that would bring up a table, fully laid out for a gourmet dinner, with a chair ready for him to occupy. We are amazed, “so advanced,” we agree. We are amused that the king ate this dinner alone, with the chair facing a full-length mirror. Behind him gleamed a spectacular view of stunning mountains out of a two-story window, but narcissistic King Ludwig ate facing that mirror. We discuss the composer Wagner and his relationship to the king. We discuss the great operas he wrote, and of course we do Google the Valkyries descending from the heavens in various operatic presentations of Der Ring, and we vow to see the cycle together someday. Walking back to the train, Eulala buys an elaborate beer stein as a memoir, and of course as a future practical necessity for her college years. Mmmmmhmmm. I buy her a device that can be clamped to the top of a beer bottle so that no one can add drugs to a young college girl’s drinks. An unfortunate practical necessity.

  Eulala and I will one day exhale our experience in the action of seeing this great opera, Der Ring des Nibelungen, and we will remember King Ludwig and his table, and German beer. Our viewing of the opera will be so much more magical because we have this seed of memory from our past. It will give the moment resonance and dimension. This is how our lives have richness, and experience, and depth, connecting past to present.

  It infuriates me that this is also how Alzheimer’s becomes a robber, a stealthy thief, forcing its victims to live only in the moment. For my mother there is only the present, with no connection to her past, without the rich tapestry of her life to tell her story. No dimension, just dementia. Memory dangles like an unraveled thread, while thought seeks to connect and focus the blurred tapestry’s image. I see her concentrate, I see her try to speak the right words, I see her try to connect the memory to words, and through it all, I see her eyes smile, but it seems to me, the smile is a little bit wounded these days. There is no medicine yet, no surgery yet to grasp the dangling thread of memory, to rethread the needle with thought, to weave it back into her tapestry, and connect thoughts to memory and life experience. Instead, as the patient and family wait impatiently, more threads unravel, more dangling thoughts, the tapestry of her life slowly disintegrates, the picture is blurred, and memory is lost. I think of the magnificent French Apocalypse Tapestry that depicts the story of the Apocalypse as told by Saint John the Divine, from the Book of Revelations. Only my mom’s is a a different kind of Apocalypse Tapestry, with only one horseman, a thief named Alzheimer’s, pulling up the threads to my mother’s story.

  In truth, my siblings and I despair as the tapestry unravels, and the images fade for my mother. We know she is 1 of 47 million people who suffer Alzheimer’s worldwide, 47 million disintegrating tapestries. She is one of the 5.5 million people who suffer Alzheimer’s in America. Red, White, and Blue tapestries, unraveling.

  We are focusing on her survival, and focusing on maintaining her dignity. We are organizing caregivers and are caring for her ourselves. We sadly downsize her home so we can afford all of this, not knowing what the future is, but we do know that as of yet, there is no cure, and Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease. With knots in our stomachs, we move forward, preparing for the unknown.

  We have begun the painful task of sorting through some of my mother’s belongings as we prepare to move her to a smaller home, my grandfather Tattau’s old home on the lake. We clear off shelves and empty cabinets, packing up delicate, hand-painted china hot chocolate pots, little earthen sculptures of Japanese fishermen, a soap carving of a temple on a hill surrounded by flowers. I come across a beautiful antique china beer stein that belonged to my great-grandfather Courtney. It has a silver top that you can open and close by a small hand clasp, and eight little gnomes carved into its side. They are reading, playing the accordion, frolicking under a large red mushroom, and immediately I think of Eulala, and Germany. My sisters agree that I may pass it down to Eulala, and that Christmas I present her with that handcrafted beer stein, which is over a hundred years old. Now our journey is fully connected—Neuschwanstein to my mom, Mozart, to Rammstein, great-grandparents to Eulala. I present Julitta with the wooden carving of Saint Francis of Assisi that Mom bought from the monastery when she visited Italy. It shows Saint Francis surrounded by birds and animals, just as Julitta always is. To Hudson I present the metal bust of the Greek warrior Mom bought while we were living in the little town of Mati—when my father commanded the naval base in Greece. Hudson loves mythology, and this seems the perfect gift for him. I make a mental note to connect the circles by taking Julitta to Assisi, Hudson to Athens. I like to think these travels matter—that these collected heirlooms matter, that we come to know ourselves a little better by our shared experiences, and we love each other a little bit more by the richness and beauty of our journey. I like to think that exponentially, the world grows closer by our knowledge and love of other lifestyles. This is what my mother taught me. This is what she told me would be true. She told me that exposure was the best teacher. Star navigator.

  Exposure. I take my kids to Hawaii on vacation. We are welcomed with leis to our favorite hotel in Waikiki, the Halekulani. We lay the colorful leis side by side on the white beds and take a picture with our iPhones and prepare to post them. This is our tradition, and I immediately Instagram the lovely picture—of course showing off a little, which I think is half the point of Instagram: “We are HERE! We are eating THIS! I look so good in my SELFIE!” In truth, I don’t really care about the likes so much. It’s the record of my life and travels and thoughts I am interested in, and Instagram seems a pretty good organizer, despite the narcissistic selfies taken from the highest angle possible so that I only have one chin.

  The kids are intrigued when I insist on exposure to something other than the sun, so we leave the pool one evening and go to a symphony. They are enthralled, and bored, just as I expected. That’s okay. We have Saint-Saëns, Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart.

  Later we learn of Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole from one of the maintenance workers at the hotel. The worker and a friend of his then serenade us, both of them with their own ukuleles. The window is open, the ocean gently sashaying up the sand in rhythm to the song, and their voices are sweet and clear. My kids sing along. The worker plays Kamakawiwo‘ole’s rendition of “Over the Rainbow,” and I find myself thinking of my mother and how much she would have loved to be in the room with us and the leis and the ocean and the music. As he hits the high notes of “That’s where you’ll find me,” I think of how lost Alzheimer’s has made its victims. Millions of old people, wishing for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, not remembering where they are, but wishing to be found. Hundreds of thousands of families, yearning to find their loved ones again, knowing just exactly where they are, but not able to reach them. The next day I buy all the
kids ukuleles and they practice by the pool, strumming “Over the Rainbow” in between swimming and slurping Popsicles. We later sit by the sea in the garden and watch the Hawaiian storytellers dance and sing their island songs, passing their stories down to natives and tourists alike. I take pictures, and hit SEND. We visit the Dole Plantation; we excitedly do the Pineapple Garden Maze and eat pineapple ice cream in the warm sun. I take pictures and hit SEND. We all surf, gliding with the boards toward the shore. I take pictures, and hit SEND.

  Back in Los Angeles, we see an opera. It’s unfortunately not very good, so I stick to playing the odd aria in the car, simply to expose my children to fine music. Jazz drifts through the home, only to be joined, when my eldest is home from college, by Metallica, Graham Nash, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, or Bob Marley. When my boy Hudson is here with his friends, show tunes resound through the kitchen, as well as the sounds of kids singing and tapping and dancing. My youngest girl Julitta listens to it all, absorbs it all, Green Day, Nirvana, Frozen, Janis Joplin. Harry Belafonte. Marty Robbins.

  For me, growing up in a mostly quiet home, music was a way the household had of holding hands. We were all brought together for a moment by the universal song of the home. We delighted when Mom put on a record, and Gary Puckett & the Union Gap bellowed “Young Girl, get outta my mind” or Harry Belafonte sang “Matilda,” or jazz, always jazz, Wes Montgomery “Bumpin’ on Sunset.” For my children, however, music is often a personal expression, a singular experience. They have earbuds and headphones, and with headphones on they occasionally wander around in what appears to be a silent room but is loud in their ears, swaying their heads and bobbing their shoulders, wiggling butts that once were in diapers, and my heart aches a little, but I understand: music isn’t always to be shared. But then later in the car, Eulala will say, “Mom, do you know this band?” And she’ll introduce me to some heavy metal, or punk bagpipes, or a forlorn folksinger, and it always seems to be—unexpectedly—the music of my heart at that particular moment. My boy will say, “Mom, can I play . . . ?,” and he will put on the latest trending musical—Hamilton or Falsettos or Dear Evan Hansen—again and again and again, and I begin to learn the words. My young girl will sense my mood, and put on classical or introduce me to an AC/DC song, for which I am sure I have absolutely no interest, but she cranks “Highway to Hell” anyway and we blast down the road with the music loud in our ears, and it seems perfect. They are exposing me to what they love, educating me as I am educating them.