Day Care

“Fiction”: Adult day care is supposed to be interesting. Mom disagrees.

These days my mom’s favorite word is interesting. A typical sentence is It’s so interesting how people get out there and do the things, just going out there and doing the stuff and it’s just — it’s just really interesting, I mean interesting. She talks vaguely because she has a blend of Alzheimer’s and frontal lobe dementia that is eroding her memories and speech at the same time.

Sometimes she forgets things. Other times she forgets how to explain things she very clearly remembers. It’s hard to tell which is which, but rest assured she has no idea what she’s talking about when she says something is interesting. She’s just trying to convince herself and others that she can still have a conversation.

A few months ago, when it became clear we’d passed Mom’s got a problem and were heading into Crazytown, I signed her up for an adult day care center called “The Club.” The Club’s main room was full of desks and it felt like being in a Kindergarten class only instead of shuffling and giggling you hear a lot of gasping and throat clearing.

The wall was decorated with a collage of everyone in the program, which included one new photo and one old photo. As instructed I’d brought two myself: A recent photo of mom looking like the Heath Ledger joker with wobbly lipstick and hair that’s kinda-dyed/kinda-not. Then another of her in the lacy wedding dress she made herself. After getting married mom and dad got in a car and drove from Philadelphia to San Francisco for a honeymoon that began during the Summer of Love and literally did not end because my parents still live in San Francisco.

The program director at The Club was gratingly positive and had scary wide eyes and a ponytail. The lanyard around his neck was full of buttons full of affirmations (and exclamation points!). It occurred to me that he was destined to be one of two things: He could’ve become a camp counselor or he could’ve become this.

I felt like kind of a dick for being annoyed with him so I reminded myself that he was here to help us. I reminded myself that it’s important to be upbeat because people with Alzheimer’s respond to emotions over words. The guy’s doing a hard job and I’m a cynical prick and he’s Genuinely Good.

When “class” started he did all that annoying public speaker stuff like raise his voice too high and ask obvious questions to goad That Guy into answering. Everything he said or did felt like a metaphorical pat on the head. I was trying to be the better man but this dude was making it hard.

Then mom turned to me and said: “This is so stupid.”

Oh?

“Do you want to leave?” I asked.

“Yes. Can we leave now or do we have to stay?”

“We can leave now.”

So we left, and even though the class was quiet and the director continued his jokey counselor spiel like nothing was happening, all around me I could feel rising thought bubbles that were all What’s their problem?

Outside on the sidewalk my mom was flustered and tense and talking with the heavy duty hand motions she used to scold me with. I asked her why she didn’t like the program. Again, she said it was so stupid.

Then she said it wasn’t interesting.

As many times as I’ve heard my mom say something is interesting, I’ve never once heard her say something isn’t interesting.

So I asked why it wasn’t interesting.

She said I’m not fucking five years old.

I knew just what she was saying, and also how she felt.