Home aides and heroines

I have huge admiration for the underdogs of America. The underdogs I've met include such unsung towers of strength as women who undergo breast-cancer surgery and chemotherapy and radiation at filthy substandard public hospitals and struggle to feed their kids and fund their treatment on public assistance when they'd just like to lie down and die, illegal immigrants who for pittances clean the homes of the wealthy who never consider that when they get their raises and end-of-year bonuses they might consider providing the same to their household help—and the Philippina home aides who uncomplainingly care for my parents.

I simply do not know how they do it. My parents' home aides, L and R, surely do not consider themselves underdogs, for one thing. R has diabetes and and scrambled innards from a busboard injury a couple years ago, yet five mornings a week at dawn she doggedly (underdoggedly!) trudges up the steep hill to my parents' house, sweetly requests their breakfast preferences and patiently waits as they bicker over whose choice it is, then whips up waffles or eggs or whatever they decide on. While the 'rents are eating, she jumps into lunch and dinner prep, bedmaking, laundry, stopping only to bring them their coffee, the salt, whatever they desire. She raised five kids on her own, ran a family farm and started a catering service back in the Philippines. Here, she takes pride in the loving care she gives the elderly. L, the relief aide, who comes just two days a week (her two days off from providing 24-hour care for a 96-year-old with Alzheimer's), is not much of a cook, but she's a cleaner and a charmer. She used to be a dental assistant before she "retired," and clearly knows how to touch others in a loving, caring way. My mother nearly swoons in anticipation of having L give her a shower.

I love my parents and appreciate their sterling qualities and the uprightness with which they have conducted their lives, but after two weeks of serving them, I feel desperation. That may be in part because they're my parents and not my clients, but it's also because I simply do not have the strength of character possessed by their home aides. I cannot wait on other people, cannot put their needs first, cannot slow my own pace to accommodate theirs. Thank god the home aides can! I worship their kindness and fortitude and pray that they stay on.

I want to play

When I was in San Francisco, I visited a young friend who had moved there from New York. And she introduced me to a wonderful writing game called collaborative fiction. It's a great sprawling gazillion-dimensional world, where a mediator designs a basic plot, and then a dozen players put it into action, creating characters, writing scripts and action sequences, making it all happen. It can take days—or years. It's like the Sims, only with words—lots and lots of them, and well written—in addition to avatars.

For the first few days after she showed me how it worked, I was hungry to play it too—either join her game (she could use me for verisimilitude, since her current game is populated exclusively by 20-somethings!) or enlist writer friends and set up my own game. I've finally resigned myself to the fact that this is yet one more thing that's for the kids, not for me.

Kids have all the fun, it sometimes seems: texting, Twittering, iPhoning, iChatting—and now this. I mean, I could do all these things too, but who would I do them with? When I told my friend B that I secretly craved an iPhone, she looked at me as if I had lost my mind. "What would you do with it?" she asked. Everything! I thought.

Farewell

I knew AW for only a brief time. We shared a shift as volunteers on a breast-cancer hotline until a few weeks ago, when her metastatic disease flared up and she moved away to be closer to one of her adult children. A few days ago, I tried to call her and couldn't reach her. Yesterday I learned she had died at the age of 86, many years after her initial diagnosis. Even in the short time I knew her—less than a year—AW taught me some valuable lessons by example:

1. Carry on with your commitments, no matter what, even if your legs are so swollen and inflamed with lymphedema you can barely shuffle in your walker, because "what am I going to do, sit around at home and feel sorry for myself"?

2. Read like a madwoman. Borrow books. Lend books.

3. No matter how often people inquire about your obvious discomfort, change the subject to ... fiction. Disease is boring. Fiction is interesting. "I just finished this. Want to read it?"

4. Take the lead in staying in touch with old friends. Call them, sympathize with them about their troubles. Do not dwell on yours.

5. Reach out to the newbies. Resist feeling threatened by their (relative) youth and their, say, computer skills. Take advantage of those skills. Let them log your calls for you. And let them listen in on your calls and learn life lessons from you.

The check is in the mail—and the hell with it

Although my mom has lost much of her eye for detail—the fine points of writing out big numbers on a check, say—she retains a good sense of the big picture. When I worried aloud about whether the home-aide agency would accept a check where the figure and the spelled-out number didn't match, she was nonchalant. "They need me more than I need them," she said. And she's right.

Mad with power

My kids have never listened to me. My warnings and wheedlings have fallen on deaf ears. I've never been good at carrying through on threats of punishment, so, really, they had little to fear in defying my wishes. I once (once!) spanked my daughter, and I was the one who ended up in tears.

But there is one arena in which I hold them hostage: my ability to embarrass them in front of their friends. I can invoke terror simply by withholding a promise to "be nice." I'm always nice. Really. But they're never sure I won't go rogue and utter the one sentence that will prove excruciating to them. Actually, there are lots of sentences that can make them writhe, and therein lies the problem. I have so many to choose from! And then there are my clothes: my frumpy shoes, my penchant for hippie splendor and, paradoxically, my mousey drabness.

Oh, and their father! He's less embarrassing to look at. But his sexplicit language makes us all squirm. What a perv!

Now this ability to inflict mortification is only occasional, since most of their friends are already known to us and familiar to our peculiar ways. So it's only when a new friend arrives on the scene that I come into my full power. There is an opportunity on the horizon. I am a genuinely well-meaning person, so I'd like to use this power for good. But how?

Curb for cancer

Everyone's got a gratitude list this time of year. And here's mine: Curb Your Enthusiasm. Curb got me through chemo four years ago, and I'm still chortling—though a little sadly after watching Episode 10 of Season 7. I've got the hiatus to get through before I can roar afresh. Pretty, pretty, pretty good.

Another wild carousel ride

My Yahoo! horoscope yesterday said I was due for a good time and could look forward to an evening with loved ones playing Pictionary. I believed it. After all, I was heading home to my "real" family. I got up at 3:30 a.m. in San Francisco with visions of happy times ahead. I kissed the 'rents goodbye and hauled my big-ass suitcase to the curb. It was filled with empanadas that had been prepared a few at a time by the endeavorous Philippina home aide throughout the previous two weeks and frozen to survive the flight.

The first leg, to Dulles, was smooth. The second, to JFK, was bumpy. The final stop, at the baggage carousel, was a no show.

What the fuck! This is the second time in two trips that the same damn suitcase has been lost. But I know the drill. I went to the office, made a fuss, filled out the forms, got a promise it would be delivered this morning before noon and headed home to if not Pictionary—or Scattergories, our favored game—lots of hugs and, yes, happiness. Finally got to sleep at midnight—and my cell phone went off at 2:30 a.m. I was sure it was a heart attack or a seizure on the West Coast, but no! It was the misguided delivery service bringing my bag to me at 2:30 in the fucking morning. Call me ungrateful, but I wonder, In what universe is it an act of responsibility to deliver your lost suitcase at 2:30 a.m.?