I was coming back from a circus show in North Beach. I had gotten there by train, the same train I took to visit my mother when she was in San Francisco living on the street. (She’s doing the same now in San Jose.) Going out I remembered the weight…

Turning the new year and coming on the two year anniversary of the COVID lockdown, I am thinking about my mother and her challenges over the past couple years. When we went into lockdown, she was staying at a hotel. She thought that she was having money added to her…

I could start with the first time she was hospitalized, in what was supposed to be my last year of college. In the hospital, she greeted me in her nightgown with one of my stuffed animals, a mouse, in her hand. …

I don’t want to talk with her. If I talk with, I’m reminded of how bad the situation is. I’m reminded of her delusions. I’m reminded of her struggles, her vulnerability. I’m reminded that I can’t help her because she won’t let me. I don’t want to try to find…

Something is changing the way I express my compassion, how I feel compassion. Something is different and it may look like I’m lacking compassion. One thing I have noticed in caring for my mother is a basic change in my temperament. I have had to learn to tolerate a new…

I meet her now for lunch. We share food and conversation. I can check in on how she’s doing. She can see that nothing bad is happening to me. Her mind is lively. She’s still interested in art, architecture, politics. She showed me a couple political books she’s read lately…

Self-care comes naturally to some people. I am not one of them. Self-care has long been difficult. In the past several years it has become even more challenging. In my support group, we go around the circle at the end of the meeting to talk about what we’re doing to…

She asks me if I even spoke in Meddler. I tell her no, I don’t even know what Meddler is, except for what she has told me. She says it’s a communication system. She says that someone in Meddler spoke to her who she hadn’t heard before. She had a…

I was walking through the city today, seeing people wrapped in blankets sleeping on the sidewalk, elders sorting through their belongings, women my mother’s age, women homeless as mother is. I thought it was the alienation I have been feeling towards this city, how we allow this. It is also the knowledge that these are people. Each person has a story, a read life that has brought them here. They are not only like my mother, they are my mother.