On Thursdays, the dogs go to day care. It’s lovely. No random bork-bork-borks to break my train of thought or ruin a take in the vocal booth. No impromptu canine Royal Rumbles thundering through the house. I love the dogs, but I also like it when they biff off for a day. It’s so quiet.
Also, there is a pleasant lack of a morning walk. In the spring and summer, I have no problem staggering about in a somnambulant haze with the dogs. Starting sometime in late April or early May, the atmosphere in this part of the country congeals into a sort of breathable gumbo, but that doesn’t fuss me in the least. However, as the days get colder (as they are now), I find the half-dead, water-kneed stroll less pleasant. On Thursdays, however, I am granted clemency.
The point is, unlike Arthur Dent, I have really gotten the hang of Thursdays. Which makes the events of last Thursday all the more disturbing.
Even though my alarm goes off at 5:15am, I do not reach anything near my full faculties before 8:00. This bleary, confused state occurs regardless of what time I wake up. When I used to get up at 8 am, I wasn’t really a functioning human before 11:00.
Nevertheless, it must be said that I was at the very least close to wakefulness just after 8am, when I rose from my laptop en route to the kitchen. I needed to refill my glass of water. I have always dehydrated easily, especially in the cooler months, and as I have gotten older, this process has accelerated.
The choice of time was deliberate. The dogs go into their crates at 8am, which means I won’t be licked to death or pounced upon by the dogs, and my partner will be up and about instead of hard at work, so we can easily check in at mid-morning. I arrived in the kitchen, but found myself alone. Odd, because she is so punctual.
I refilled my water glass, and looked around, searching for clues. Was she outside? No. Were the dogs outside? It did not appear so. Were the dogs in their crates? Had she already crated them and returned to her office? Nope, the dogs’ food dishes were still in the crates. This was getting surreal.
Finally, my partner arrived in the kitchen. As I recall, she had some news of a client or some such. Still no dogs, who should be on one of our heels by now. “Where are the dogs?” I cried.
She looked at me as if I had lobsters crawling out of my ears. “What are you talking about?” she said.
The world had begun to feel a bit like a suburban version of Kafka. “The dogs. Our dogs. Where are they?”
She seemed genuinely stunned. “Seriously?”
Finally it hit me. “Oh, it’s Thursday.”
And I blushed, y’all. I blushed, and my entire body tingled for a second with deep existential fear. I am a middle aged man, and my brain is probably already rotting. Right? I mean, that’s what happens, isn’t it?
I Have Seen This Before And Maybe Forgotten It
When I was in high school, my grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. My grandfather had died some time before and it was clear she could not live alone anymore.
I have four uncles on my father’s side. When my grandfather died, a severe case of Southern Indiana passive-aggression and emotional paralysis infected them and my father. An invisible game of musical chairs ensued, which my father lost. As a result, he ended up bearing 90% of the paperwork, administrative work, leg work and emotional work left behind by my grandfather’s death.
By the time Grandma was diagnosed, Dad had been managing Grandpa’s estate (which included all his assets, and Grandma’s affairs) for at least a year. When it became clear that Grandma couldn’t live on her own any more, all the responsibility landed on Dad.
I think he may have consulted my uncles, but whatever they said was not very helpful. For whatever reason, Dad decided to have Grandma live with us.
It Was Seriously A Four Room House
I remember absolutely loathing the arrangement. I have never been comfortable around people who are mentally challenged or disabled, and as a young person, that was not a thing I could process or rationalize. I saw Grandma’s presence mostly as an invasion of my space. I did not want her there. Sometimes I’m not the best person in the world.
Looking back on it now, it’s amazing that Dad thought there was any way that arrangement could work, and unbelievable that Mom didn’t absolutely forbid it. I grew up in a four-room house. My parents had one room, my brother and I shared another. There was a living room and a kitchen. The bathroom was the basement. And into this tiny, strained ecosystem, my father introduced an Alzheimer’s patient. It only lasted a month or two, and then finally my Dad had to accept that Grandma needed to be in a nursing home.
I’m reasonably sure she slept in the same room as my brother and I, but I’m pretty sure my brain has protectively deleted that information. It was not a happy time. As I have already hinted at, I had a serious selfish streak as a kid, and I did not have a great deal of control over my emotions and even less over my words. We did not get along.
The reason for my discomfort around people experiencing mental difficulty really is rooted in my own personal fears. As with all prejudices, it comes from gut-level insecurities. I have always defined myself in terms of my mind. If I am not intelligent, quick, or at least charming, I don’t feel like I am of much use in the world. My entire self-concept is wrapped up in my ability to think things through. I don’t like forceful reminders that my ability to think things through, which I have (foolishly) invested so much of my self-esteem into is not a fact of my existence, but a biological process.
Biological processes break down. It’s what they do. Of course, we do all we can to maintain them, but let’s be honest, that cannot go on forever. And it is very possible that my brain will break down before my body does.
Paranoia Makes An Ass Of Me
My partner is much more of a morning person than I am. Her ability to just…get up and be functional is so foreign to me that I cannot understand it, and I’m sure she doesn’t understand why I have to reel around like a vaudevillian comedy drunk for hours before I can have a conversation or speak with multisyllabic words. It’s one of the things that puzzles me about our relationship, because I thought for sure it would put her off.
When we were still living apart and were in the “constantly texting” phase of our early relationship, she got into the habit of sending me a text first thing in the morning that told me the weather for the day and how she was feeling or what she was thinking at the time. At some point she started writing them all down and occasionally giving me moleskin notebooks full of them. I don’t think she knows how much I leaf through them.
Anyway, today’s message was:
“Weather report, 827:
sunny and pretty nice.
<REDACTED> report, same:
dogs are at <day care>, you bananahead.”
Of course, my existential dread is all in my imagination, which has not yet begun to break down. My partner is correct: I am a bananahead.
GIF added by special request of my partner.
I have always worried about my mind degrading or no longer being under my control. Even when I was a child I feared being unaware of what was going on around me, long before I had to watch my grandmother’s memory evaporate so quickly she didn’t even know it was happening.
I’m a worrier. Part of it comes from being adopted. I don’t really know much about my family medical history, so anything is possible. I have Attention Deficit Disorder and chronic depression, so one thing I know for a fact is that I am not neurotypical and need to take psychoactive medications to mitigate the symptoms.
Realistically, I might have to deal with my worst fears someday. But that day is not today. Today, I’m having to deal with sinus trouble, which is also all in my head, but more manageable. And of course, sinus medications are a leading cause of “medicine head” which can have effects on perception and make you slower to get a grip on things like the day of the week or where the hell your dogs are.
So yeah. I’m a bananahead. And I need to try harder to remember that when my brain malfunctions, the effect is much more likely to be that my imagination adds things (like worry over non-existent brain rot) than things suddenly vanishing from my memory. But I'm pretty sure in a few days I'll forget that. Maybe I should just lay off the antihistamines.
Comments