Chapter 44: Twilight Zone

Today, my son completed his piano lesson just fine, but clearly something went very wrong during my daughter’s.  In the middle of her lesson, she ran up the stairs screaming that she hated piano and didn’t want to talk to Nana and then holed up inside her bedroom.  I thought that was a little dramatic, but we’ve been starting to see signs of adolescence emerge with her, so I guess I just need to buckle in and learn to survive the next God-knows-how-many years.  Naturally, my next move was to go to mom to ask her what happened – and that’s when I stepped into the Twilight Zone.  Mom was visibly angry and said she didn’t want to talk to my daughter ever again.  As in, she flat out refused to come upstairs and even start a conversation with my daughter.  For the next 30 minutes, I awkwardly and not very successfully tried to serve as peacemaker between the two of them – which was not easy, since they were both having tantrums and insisted they wouldn’t speak to the other.  My daughter is still just a kid so whatever, I’ll deal with that later.  But mom – wtf?  It was like she was acting like a child as well and could not hear any sense from me.  And the weirdest part of it all is that caught in the middle of this, *I* am serving as the calm and cool-headed voice of reason.  Which, for anyone who knows me, is not exactly one of my strong suits.  If I wasn’t so stressed out, I’m sure I would find this comical.

Finally, in an attempt to distract everyone, I told my daughter to go read a book in her room and asked my mom if she would help me to make a batch of chapatis.  That started fine enough but about every 30 seconds, mom would ask if I had remembered to add salt to the dough.  Before we got to the frying stage, she must have asked me that one question at least twenty times.  And she truly did not recall any previous time she had asked me.  So strange.  And more than a little bit scary.

As we cooked, I continued to wonder if mom is suffering from depression – I’ve asked dad about this before.  She knows that something is not quite right with her and I can’t imagine how confusing and awful that must feel.  A few days ago, I made some inquiries to some psychologists who say they have experience with geriatric depression and whose practices are close to mom and dad’s house.  Dad said he’s willing to pay anything, he just wants mom to have some help.  I’m going to see if we can get an appointment soon.  But the real question – will mom go?  So far, she has been quite amenable to many “lifestyle change suggestions, especially if they come from dad.  So, he has agreed to be my messenger on several fronts, which has been helpful.

In the meantime, we’ve received word that our application to place mom in a weekly Elder Care program has been approved.  She’s going to start next month.  And because the location she’s attending is so close to my house, I’ve committed to picking mom up in the afternoon and bringing her back to my place so dad doesn’t need to worry about her until he’s done at the gym.  That will give him a break for nearly eight hours every Friday.  Neither of us have quite told mom about this yet – we don’t want to stress her out and in fairness, she is not likely to remember anyway.  We’ll see how she reacts on the first day – fingers are crossed!