Common Ground by Barbara Felton

“Am I supposed to give you lunch?” 

My sister’s question laid bare our mutual uncertainty about how to understand my visit. It wasn’t a holiday. And she hadn’t invited me. Or rather, she hadn’t explicitly invited me. Instead, she’d called me with increasing frequency over the past several months to tell me she’d lost her car keys, her house keys, her credit cards, her Medicare card.  She asked me to read her email to her (I’d added hers to mine so I could tell her what was there). We hadn’t yet said the word dementia – and I couldn’t tell if the idea was in her mind — but the threat of diminishing mental capacity hung over all our conversations.    

“Good to see you, Marge.” 

I stayed by the door, knowing Marge was not a hugger and wouldn’t welcome my approach. It was a relief to see her largely unchanged since my Fourth of July visit, five months before. Short and stocky with frizzy gray hair, she looked well-put-together, a contrast with the clutter of kitsch and unwashed dishes in her kitchen. She stood in the middle of that narrow room effectively barring my movement further into her house. Our family’s rules of reciprocity dictated that she should give me lunch since I had driven three hours through winter weather to visit her, but she sensed we were not operating reciprocally – she needed help – and she seemed to be having trouble figuring out how to proceed. Both of us were in uncharted territory. 

“Maybe we’ll just chat?” I offered.

She turned toward her living room and I followed her. The room felt cramped. Her full-sized organ, filling a corner by the front door, was out of scale among her small house’s living room furniture. Piles of keyboard music, rows of books, certificates on the wall testified to her status as a sought-after piano teacher and church organist. Although these objects were clear indicators of genuine accomplishments, I saw them as a defensive wall, part of her carapace of self-reliance that she’d built up over 60-plus years to disguise her peculiar liabilities. She held idiosyncratic fears about things like fumes emanating from driveway asphalt. She believed we couldn’t sit in her piano studio because she took it as a tax deduction. She was terrified of violating copyright laws. Long before dementia entered her life, she was rigid and defensive. She’d never married and limited her social life to her piano students and members of the church choir.

Our sisterly relationship transpired in monthly phone calls and holiday visits. Somewhat warily, Marge and I held ourselves to each other with bonds of obligation, not fully trusting familial love. “Don’t call me sweetie!” she’d shrieked years before, ordering me to keep affection submerged. Periodically, I’d tried for closeness but the gap remained. I was her closest family member – closer to her in age and in affection than our older sister — and bore the responsibility for getting help for her, probably eventually moving her into assisted living. How, with our history and the increasing beat of dementia, could we develop trust?

“Did you find your checkbook? I could look for it if you want.” I longed to move around the house.

“Robin found it.” Marge had obviously called our cousin who’d stepped up and found the check book.

 “How’s Robin?”

“Fine.”

She wasn’t giving me any conversational hooks. Sitting catty-corner from me on a straight-backed chair, she fidgeted with her hands and looked toward the door. Visible dust in the room added to the emotional thickness in the air. She was scared. She’d lived in defiance of her older sisters’ judgments of her eccentric ideas and solitary life, and we’d been complicit in her deception. Over the years, where there’d been signs of social difficulties like her dismissal from public school teaching years before, we’d glossed over the loss. She owned her own home, paid her taxes, got along, so we all pretended she was fine. 

Now she was trapped. Help from me, Barbara, help that she knew she needed, came with the unspoken but dismal truth that she couldn’t manage on her own. I surveyed the room again, trying to think of an engaging topic for chat. Even as I tried to suppress judgment of Marge’s life, I found myself thinking that people who have glass coffee tables need to be especially diligent about dusting. I crossed my legs to keep from getting up to find a dust cloth.

Eventually, in the room’s silence, I resorted to the weather as a topic. Marge mentioned the sunshine. The dirt on her windows obscured an undeniably sunny day.  Suddenly I thought to suggest a walk: Marge could take me on her daily walk through her neighborhood.

She liked the idea. “I’ll show you the Christmas decorations.”

Outside, the fresh air broadened my chest. My shoulders dropped as I watched Marge leading off down the sidewalk with a confident stride. 

“The Kratz’ always put on a big display.” She gestured toward a house dense with lights and a full-scale creche in the front yard. Her voice had warmed.

“Nice,” I said. 

Most of the small 1960’s houses in her Pennsylvania neighborhood were decorated. Snow lent drama to the homes’ lights and added its charm. Marge and I began to assess the houses and their holiday decor. I liked architectural outlines in lights. Marge liked figures and scenes.

“I don’t really think people should use blue lights in Christmas displays,” I said at one point.

Marge leapt at the concept. “Right! Blue is totally wrong!”

I turned to face her and smiled.

She turned only half of her face toward me, but she was smiling. Here was common ground. Disapproving of blue lights. A future with dementia wasn’t going to be pretty – and it would, in fact, take two years of similarly awkward bi-weekly visits before Marge would move to assisted living – but we’d found common ground. Blue lights at Christmas. We had something to build on.

Barbara Felton, a farmer and writer in Warwick, New York, began writing creative nonfiction in 2014 following careers in psychology and mental health administration. Her personal essays have been published in journals including: Psychiatric Services, Duende, Pulse, InScribe, HerStry, Oyster River Pages, Tupelo Quarterly (contest finalist) and The Southampton Review.