Mom & Me Journals Histories: 1999 - 2001

    You were perceptive (or, perhaps, lucky) about two anxiety buttons of my mother's which, in this case, are related:

• The first, her anxiety about stairs. Actually, that one isn't just because her knees and hips don't like stairs, anymore. It's a peculiar thing I noticed a long time ago about her because it's something I "inherited". My favorite part of going up and down is the climb. I can't descend though, not even a little, without believing that I'm going to lose my balance and fall. It is so acute that when I watch someone negotiate a quick, sometimes running descent of stairs or an incline in a movie I am glued to the screen for two reasons: Waiting for them to fall, and trying to understand how to do what they're doing. I think that may be some of why I was so riveted by Samuel L. Jackson's character falling down the stairs in Unbreakable. It was doubly excruciating for me because I suspect I could do that without having need of his character's particular disability. Have I ever fallen down going down? Yes. The most recent example was horrible. When we hiked into the Grand Canyon (mind you, this was after a full six months of conditioning with MPBIL by climbing and descending various steep peaks here in the valley), during the steepest part of the descent (the Devil's Corkscrew; this is on the South Kaibab trail), with a 50+lb pack on my back (yes, we even worked out with loaded packs on our backs) I became so shaky that I fell forward flat on my face and skidded several feet before I came to a humiliating stop. Not only that, but the descent was so steep and I was so inclined and weighted down that I could not get up on my own.
• The second, her discomfort with my being somewhere other than where she is. A flight or two up would be somewhere else. My bedroom, in fact, has become somewhere else within the last year or so; that's why both of the computers are now in whatever living room we are living in at the time. Understanding this, I have told her that if she ever feels the need, for whatever reason, to be sleeping in the same room with me I am prepared to do that. Luckily, she still wants privacy when she sleeps.

    I know targeting both of these the next time she decides we should live on the corner of Marina and Carlton will do the trick.
    One of the perks of dealing with someone whose memory is selectively creative is that when I do something wrong, I always have a chance (and another, and another) to do it right. That comes in handy. It's also nice to realize that I don't have to take care of myself with a vengence. I can be subtle about it and it'll work just as well. Thanks again.

    Regarding the color yellow, it has never seemed cowardly to me, probably because it has always been my mother's favorite color and I have never known her to be a coward.