It's Spring

There have been many notable markings of time lately. A year since the COVID pandemic brought Italy into total lockdown, and right now most of the country is still dealing with severe restrictions on travel and returning to normalcy. We’re about halfway into the first 100 days of the Biden administration in the US, and over two million people are getting the vaccines. In Italy it’s not quite 150,000 so far. My mother has an appointment for the first Moderna vaccine in early April. Yesterday was the vernal equinox, so now we have the spring to look forward to. 

It’s also been nearly four years since I have been my mother’s caretaker full time. 
 
Given how ill she was about a year ago, I am quite relieved about her amazing recovery, and all signs point to continued good health, notwithstanding she has Alzheimer’s, weak kidneys, heart arrythmia and high blood pressure, plus asthma. 
 
There are many reasons for this miracle.

Arianna and Irene

I have a fantastic squad of female helpers, two full time, one parttime, and a marvelous physical therapist who comes once a week. Maureen and I finally have Italian health coverage, so she has had home visits from her internist, a geriatrician, a nephrologist, and most recently a cardiologist, all free. She has a private doctor who regularly comes to see her, and a private dermatologist who has also done a home visit and helps me to treat her skin cancers through email and photos when feasible. We are eating a healthy Mediterranean diet with freshly prepared meals made at home. We live in a beautiful spacious apartment with two terraces, surrounded by trees and plants and fresh flowers. We listen to music almost constantly, unless we are watching nature or cooking shows on TV. 

I get flowers weekly from
the wholesale market. 

 

Still, the pandemic could have easily brought me into a spiral of depression and anxiety. My life outside the home mostly consists of excursions to buy food or go to the pharmacy. I do everything I can to reduce the risk of exposure to COVID but the risk is ever present and terrifying. My broken ankle and subsequent surgery over a year ago presented a long painstaking healing process that tried my patience more times than I can count. I am often sleep deprived, which feels like having chronic jet lag. For the first time in my life, I enlisted the help of a therapist online recommended by a friend, and she made a big difference in just a few sessions. I decided to focus on my health, and found an endocrinologist who uses nutrition to heal. She helped me lose 17 kilos so far and has gotten my thyroid back into balance with a lower dose of medication. I started doing more gyrokinesis exercise online with my teacher and in my own home practice. Once my ankle was really better I started walking more. I returned to a music project with a friend in Milan and we released a fun electro swing version of Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend on a compilation. Now we’re putting together a collection of swing standards that has been in the works for years. I have a home

 

Singing brings me joy

studio, and I bought myself a guitar for Christmas and started playing my favorite Joni Mitchell songs with a childhood friend who sends me recorded tracks to add to. I discovered Call My Agent, a superb French TV series about an agency for famous actors based in Paris, and managed to not binge watch it but to savor it in weekly episodes the way we used to watch TV. Does all this amount to self-care? Maybe. All I know is caretaking involves caring for your loved one and yourself. You have to do both.

 

In closing, I offer a poem. I don’t write them very often. This one just came to me.

 

crushing two pills

little gestures of caretaking
measure days
3:30am alarms to check on you
that I confess sometimes I ignore
only because I’m so tired I wonder 
if I remembered to set the alarm
that time I switched am and pm meds hoping it wouldn’t be too big of a problem
oof I’m no nurse
but I am brave now about things like first aid trimming hard toenails bloody noses
falling
oh then the catheter 
butt shots
you got better that time
yes I know that your brain is in decline
conversations slip away as I say I don’t know
when I mean I didn’t understand 
even though you clearly had a question that needed an answer
every morning 
every evening
crushing two pills
stirring in yogurt or applesauce