CLASSIC YACHT: NEW EDITION

Jacksonville, FL

My latest column in Classic Yacht magazine has hit the web -- just as Chip and I have landed in Florida. After weeks of helping our parents, in Delaware, New Jersey (Chip) and New Mexico (me), we are taking some R&R before returning to Cara Mia.

Time to gear up for another season.

Good news: There will be sailing blogs soon!

LIBERATION COMES IN MANY COLORS

Roswell, NM

"I couldn't be in a better place," Mom tells me about her new room in assisted living.

Today, on her 81st birthday, she looks better than she has in several years. She seems incredibly happy, even her memory has had a bounce, her sense of humor in full bloom.

I have worried that she's in denial, that she's suppressing her feelings or trying to make it easier for us. I have contrived dozens of ways to check her emotional pulse.

After explaining to her that we were clearing out some things in her old house, she asked me what on earth we were doing with all her stuff.

"Do you really want to know, Mom?" I asked.

"No, not really," she said. "Feel free to just throw it all away."

At that moment, I thought about apple trees and their fruit falling and finally understood why Mom is thriving.

When Chip and I left our home port in Manteo, we left behind everything we owned, house, furniture, business, photos, books and cars. We sold or donated the physical objects, but symbolically I had taken all the old chapters of my life, put them in folders and filed them in an imaginary file cabinet left behind in North Carolina.

Physically and psychologically I left my old life behind and sailed away, light as the breeze in our sails. In retrospect, the leaving was as exhilarating as the new life we were entering.

Mom too has embraced her liberation from her old life. She no longer takes care of everything and everyone, cooking, cleaning, buying groceries, doing laundry, paying bills. She is now on the receiving end of all the care she has doled out all these years.

The past is filed away in its proper place, and Mom has sailed away, light as the breeze, pragmatically wistful about her independence but exhilarated in her liberation.

A SAILOR IN THE DESERT: BITTERSWEET

Roswell, NM

"You know, Lynn next door? She and I have lived in the same neighborhood three different times in our lives. Now we're right next door to each other here," Mom says of her neighbor in assisted living.

Every day, Mom tells me that story about Lynn next door. Every day we laugh just the same.

Every morning Lynn and Mom discover anew that they have the exact same shoes.

Mom, at 81, is one of the youngest of the 15 residents at her facility. She was diagnosed last year with Lewy Body Dementia, a form of dementia with characteristics of both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. So far, Mom's symptoms have been mild. She has some short-term memory loss and her hands shake, especially if she's tired or upset.

Lunchtime parking.

Last year, staying with Mom in her townhouse, I watched every morning as she relearned where everything was in her own kitchen. (Unfortunately, at the end of the day, she would put all the dishes away in new places, allowing me to play along as well.)

With Mom living alone, it was hard to find any sweetness to counterbalance the sad reality of memory loss. We worried constantly that she would try to cook and forget the stove was on, that she would go for a walk and lose her way home, or fall and break her hip, which is exactly what happened in June.

Now with Mom safe here in assisted living with others to cook, do laundry and administer meds, I see dementia with different eyes. Mom, who used to fret about the past and worry about the future, now lives fully in the moment, the weight of the last one gone, forgotten. She has no concerns about a future that doesn't exist, because she can't remember to envision it and then worry about it.

For now, memory loss is a sweet gift wrapped in bitter paper. For now, I'll toss aside the paper and treasure the gift. And, if possible, follow Mom's lead and just let the future be.

And tomorrow, we'll laugh about the news that Mom and Lynn, yet again, live next door to each other.

The visiting minstrel at Mom's home. He was annoyed at me, 

because he thought I meant to take a photo and never did.

GONE MISSING WITH MOM

Roswell, NM

*NOTE TO MY READERS: I'm in Roswell, New Mexico, my hometown, visiting with my mother for three weeks. She fell and broke her hip the day before Chip and I flew to Paris in June. She spent several weeks in rehab and now lives, quite happily, in an assisted living home just down the street from my sister. This was written the first day I visited her.

@@@

"Oh Sixty-Seven," I called out loudly.

"BINGO!" Arlene shouted, her eyes alight with the thrill of victory.

Ten of us sat around a large family dining table at the assisted-living home where Mom lives now in our hometown, Roswell, New Mexico. Today was my first day to visit since Mom moved in two weeks ago, and I had volunteered to lead the afternoon activity.

"Great job, Arlene," I told one of Mom's new companions, genuinely sharing her joy. "But let's keep going. We're playing Blackout, so we want to cover the whole card." Arlene nodded happily.

"I 32," I called.

"BINGO!" Arlene shouted, and we all clapped for her and her new Bingo or maybe the previous one.

It didn't matter. Here, where the fire of dementia burns white hot, we were all in the present moment, deleriously happy with victory, whether it was a new one or an old one was irrelevant.

That fire consuming their memories burns the newest, freshest memories first, like the memory of what was said one sentence ago, but leaving intact old, old remembrances from childhood, like what the letter 'B' looks like and an 'I' and a '32.'

At lunch Arlene had told me, "I have two children, but they never come to visit me."

I was plummeting into the tragic sadness of this news when I remembered that Mom told me her sister had never visited this new home. I knew this wasn't true, that the memory of Hazel's visits had been consumed by the fire. Well, to clarify, Mom's statement wasn't factual, but, for Mom, it was and is utter truth.

And then I came back around to join Arlene in her utter truth that, even if the seat beside her is still warm from her daughter's visit, this moment's truth is that her children never come to visit.

"I'll come visit you, Arlene," I said.

"I like you," she said smiling brightly, and moved, carefree, on to her next moment, taking innocent pleasure in a small bowl of Neopolitan ice cream, completely liberated of all that had gone before. I staggered into my next moment dragging the weight of the last one and the heavy burden of liking Arlene too, even though I was now alone, no longer liked by Arlene, consumed by the fire.

Later that day at the lunch-table-turned-Bingo parlor, the youngest resident sat to my right. Nadine is tiny and spry, impeccably dressed with an alert demeanor that made me think surely she was a visitor. She enthusiastically worked two cards and helped 97-year-old Gracie next to her.

"I never win at Bingo," Nadine declared.

Without thinking, I blurted, "But Nadine, you just won two games in a row!"

"Oh, really?" she said, shock and then joy filling her face. "Oh, good!"

We soldiered on. I turned the crank on the cranky metal lottery wheel, and Bingo balls dropped sometimes into the metal slide as they were supposed to and sometimes went flying across the table and onto the floor.

"B Six," I called as a loud, persistent beeper went off, indicating that one of the seven residents not playing Bingo had pushed the button that each of them have hanging around their necks on brighly colored ribbons.

"BINGO," Arlene called out in pure delight, and we all clapped.

"That's so awesome, Arlene, but we're playing Blackout, so let's keep going."

I was living so utterly in the moment, concentrating on the most important and fulfilling job I'd ever had, so free of my sardonic self, that I completely missed the tragic irony of playing Blackout with eight women caught in an ultimate game of Blackout.

"What was the last number?" Cora asked me in her gravelly, expressionless voice.

Our eyes met. "I have no idea," I said.

Cora was fine with that.

At the end of the Blackout round, there were only six balls left in my metal cage, so I took them out and placed them in the master Bingo tray to see if we were playing with a full set. As I feared, we were not. One ball was missing. G 50. G 50 had gone missing.

With much fanfare, all the extra-large, Easy-Read cards were cleared of their poker chips. I scooped up all the balls but G 50 and put them back in the cage. Everyone who could remember reminded everyone who couldn't to put a chip on the FREE spot in the middle of the cards.

"G 50" I called out in a heartfelt effort to make up for all that had gone missing.