Tales from the Shark Tank

Over the years, I’ve provided what I referred to as an external spine to more people than I can count. Now it seems to be my turn. One of the current projects is moving our housemate out of the house. It has to happen. She was supposed to be here no more than 2 or 3 months, and its been a bit above a year and a half now. Of course, she (and I) underestimated quite dreadfully the amount of time it would take her to find a job. She figured it would be a matter of a month or six weeks. Instead it was 11 months. But she started that job back at the end of September, and she’s still here. So when it became clear we were going to have to move, I told her that she was going to have to find herself a place.

She found a roommate, or perhaps more accurately, one found her. And then we stalled, and I didn’t quite know what to do about it. If I pushed and prodded, it felt like I was being a bitch, which I hate. And it caused enormous tension and dissension in the house, which is worse. It affects my son, who like many children thinks it’s his fault and doesn’t understand or accept the explanation that it’s the grown-ups who have the problems, and he just happens to be here. The whole thing had me stuck, waffling rather uncharacteristically between putting my foot down and keeping peace in the house.

Enter my friends. They have taken over, led by Li. She has determined that the first date the new apartment is available is the day on which my housemate moves out. She started packing, where S. had not. She’s coordinated a moving crew, gotten S. a storage unit so that there’s a place to put the filled boxes, and is keeping me apprised of each new development. She’s called in the people who normally look to me, getting them to help get S. packed in advance and get stuff into containers (trash bags if necessary) if she’s not ready on The Day. I hadn’t realized, until she took over, just how spineless I’d become in this matter. Now she’s lending me hers, backed by those of my friends who were just waiting to be set loose. I’m bemused to learn just how much I needed the help, and even more grateful to have a friend good enough to lend me a backbone when I need it.

My husband and I are trying to choose a community in which to live that balances his needs with a job in Merrillville (up by Gary, for the Indiana challenged) with my obligations in Indianapolis and our son’s educational needs. It’s not an easy balancing act at all, so yesterday I spent the day driving around, looking at communities close to the interstate to get an on-the-ground idea of what’s out there and what it’s like. Most of the area between West Lafayette (think Purdue University) and Merrillville consists of tiny farming communites, and I do mean tiny. We’re talking about places that are 5 streets square, with populations of under 1000 souls according to the latest census. But I drove around, then came home and began investigating the ones that looked at least vaguely reasonable. It was a good thing to do. There are things I noticed being there in person that I wouldn’t have gotten investigating these places as names on the map or summaries on county websites.

I haven’t found a place I’m willing to live. The only town of any decent size, and that is only comparatively, was sued a few years back for permitting the Gideons to pass out bibles to all 5th graders. They argued in federal court that they’d been doing it for 45 years, and no one had objected previously, so how could it be against the law? I can understand their attitude at the beginning of the dispute. First they had a letter from a parent. Then they got a letter from the ICLU. Then the ICLU sued them in Federal Circuit Court, and they defended themselves. Ok, that’s how the system works. If no one’s said “don’t” to them before, then I can see how they might be unaware. It was what happened after that I get concerned by. Told in no uncertain terms to stop, they appealed to the Federal District Court. They lost again. Then the school board tried to appeal to the U.S. Supremes, which refused to hear the case. I know of no case law whatsoever that would have been in their favor. But near as I can tell, they never did “get it” beyond “the court says we can’t.” There was, by the time I ran out of material, still no understanding of why it was a problem. Needless to say, the prospect of living there scares me.

But in wandering around the other towns, I learned a good deal about what I don’t want. These are places where the average level of education is 10th grade, and the primary occupation either farming or factory work. I don’t want to be the only college educated woman in town. I don’t want mine to be the only Jewish family in town. I’ve done that, and it’s damnably uncomfortable. I don’t want to live in a town in which the only doctor is a large-animal veterinarian. It scares me when the nearest hospital to be 50 or 60 miles away. I don’t want to live in a town which has neither a grocery nor a book store, where school supplies are sold in the gas station which is the only retail establishment in town. My lifeline is the internet – and I’d be stunned to find broadband access in these places, though I haven’t checked. I’m not even sure there would be dial-up access on a local number. I know there isn’t in some of the small towns in southern Indiana. Why should rural northern Indiana be different?

And then there are the schools. What I found were consolidated school districts drawing from all the little communities in the county. Even with that, there was one grade school, one middle school ,and one (small) high school. Those were a little shabby, a little the worse for wear. What resources will such a school system have for a child who doesn’t break the mold, let alone for our son?

I had not quite realized, until now, the extent to which I really am an urbanite. I knew I liked my air conditioning. I’d thought about access to medical care. But I never thought much about access to things like bookstores, groceries and restaurants. To me, they’re part of the landscape, ubiquitious and easy to take for granted. I’m not at all sure I’m willing to live in a place where I can’t, and where I have to drive 30 miles to find them.

I actually managed to do what I hoped, with the assistance of my husband and my mother. I drove up to Mishewaka to visit my friends C. and D. and their son. I enjoyed the visit. It was a necessary trip, and I shall do it again. But if I said it was easy, I’d be lying.

C. took me on a brief tour of Mishewaka, showing me some lovely stonework in the local parks. Unmarked and often unnoted, the town had an inspired artist designing the masonry on the local WPA projects. They aren’t in perfect condition, as a result either of lack of budget or lack of artisans with the necessary skills or both. But they’re in amazingly good shape, and you can see the sense of fun that went into the staged, landscaped ponds leading down to the St. Joseph River, or the mosaiced bridge over a tiny stream in another park. She’s doing as well as can be expected, and better than I had feared to find. We discussed things like funeral plans, and the viscitudes of caregiving. She said that it was rather a relief to know that the span of several years when her husband seemed unkind or unreasonable, it was the effect of the tumor. She got her own sweet husband back after the surgery, and he has remained so these past several years. I can see it too. I’ve known him since he was 18; I too was delighted to see the core personality return even as his cognition was impaired.

I played several games of air hockey with their son. He’s a great kid, he really is. He isn’t talking much, but when I looked at him and said “I look like you need a hug” he agreed, and clung as if I were a tree in a windstorm. I’ve got good roots, but that left me wishing I had some clue what to do or say for him. If I were there, I’d take him bookstore hopping or hiking in the local state parks – things he enjoys that his folks can’t do with him right now. But from here? What can I do from here?

I didn’t get to visit much with D. himself, which he noticed. He was asleep most of the time I was there. He’s convinced that he’ll be stronger the next time I come, that he’ll be able to sit up longer and talk more easily. And yet he tired more easily on Sunday than he had on Saturday, and C. says that’s the pattern now, that he’s getting perceptibly weaker each day. If needs be, I’ll sit with him while he sleeps next visit, so that I am there when he wakes up and we can talk. That’s what crocheting is for…sitting and waiting quietly in a dim room.

But it was still hard. It’s hard to be making funeral suggestions for a man 3 years younger than I. It’s hard to see this glib humorist search for a word, and finally settle for one that’s “close enough”. It’s hard to see his wife, my oath-sister these past 27 years, trying to deal with his diminishment day by day. It is a long, hard way to say goodbye. It’s not Alzheimer’s, which is merciless and slow. This is just as merciless, but much faster. And I’m not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse that D. himself doesn’t realize how much he’s lost. Like so many things, I suppose it’s both.

Sometimes, it is necessary to create greater disorder than already exists to be able to ultimately find order, and so it is with home repair and housecleaning. I have a classic example of that in my front hall. Back last winter, when the furnace died and a water pipe began to leak, the ceiling in the hall got completely soaked. Some of it fell down on its own, and more was taken down by plumbers in search of the source of the drip. It was a mess, and has remained so for the past several months. I grew accustomed to seeing the guts of the house every time I went out the door, but never comfortable with it. Now it’s closed up properly, and the ceiling retextured so well that if I didn’t know where to look, I wouldn’t be able to find it.

Of course, now I get to deconstruct and reconstruct everything affected by the ceiling and wall repairs. That means taking down wall-paper that was put up with the intent to make it proof against the depredations of the little fingers that had removed strips of the prior paper. It was proof against little fingers, all right. It also turns out to be proof against water, scrapers, adult fingernails, vinegar solutions, etc. I’m having to fight every inch of it off the wall, which means that a task we all assumed would take an hour or two has taken over a week. That gives me coats in the family room (the coat hooks being under the ceiling to be repainted, which can’t be done until the paper is stripped), bits of stray wall-paper intermingling with the matzah crumbs on the floor, dry-wall scraps leaning against the living room wall in case we need them elsewhere in Project House Refurbishment, and general chaos we ourselves have created. But this is chaos I can deal with. When it’s done, greater order will have come from it. I’m just wishing we’d done some of this when we ourselves got to enjoy living with the results.