Tilt-a-Whirl

“I would never want to go through what you have to,” I insisted. My friend and I were commiserating about our respective challenges in life. Among hers are frequent and debilitating episodes of vertigo. 

Clearly, the universe, in its infinite cruelty, overheard me. A few days later, in the wee hours of the morning, I awoke to a world spinning violently. “Maybe it’ll go away,” I thought, returning to sleep. But each time I opened my eyes over the next few hours, it was progressively worse. Door jambs warped and started to collapse in on themselves. Tile floors swirled. A bug that turned out to be a nail hole raced across the ceiling toward me. I couldn’t walk, but only lurch and stagger, grabbing onto things as I went.

Advice: stay away from mirrors when your vision goes skeewompus. For a few days I was sure my right eye was fully half an inch lower than my left. (It’s finally creeping back up to a more acceptable location.)

Trying to call the doctor was no picnic when the phone buttons were in motion, and it didn’t help that after a long hold the agent disconnected me after I’d answered all her questions about my symptoms. Nor did it make me happy that they had no available appointments until the next day. Or that one nurse pooh-poohed my concerns, saying, “It’s probably because you take so many medicines.” Which I don’t.

Kaiser can be impossible, but once past those initial hurdles I made it to the “urgent track” and access got better. In the process, Ember memorized the Kaiser hold-music, which she now hums occasionally. Five days and five doctors later, I’m doing better, though still not quite back to my usual dynamic, ebullient, vivacious and generally awe-inspiring self. I missed a week of life, including an essential dentist appointment and Ember’s 5th-grade class field trip to Audubon Canyon Ranch in Marin County.

Maybe I should have seen a red flag about upcoming eyesight-wonkiness when, a few days earlier, I read the little yellow placard in the window of a passing mommy-van as “Body on Board.”

Why did all this happen? Who knows. Will it happen again? Who knows. I hope not. But lately I’ve started to wonder if hope and denial aren’t one and the same. That is, I keep hoping for things to be different but I suspect I’m just denying that they will remain as they are.

The results of last night’s brain MRI are back already. (They did in fact manage to locate a brain, which was a good start.) As expected, they found nothing sinister. Well, except for this little hitch: “[S]cattered foci of white matter signal abnormality… likely sequela of chronic microvascular changes, not unusual for age.” Google says: “This tissue damage is linked to cerebrovascular dysfunction and is associated with cognitive decline.”

Oh, jeez. So it’s not my imagination that my intellect has diminished. Damn it. Yet another example of my hope vs. denial problem.

Anyhow, though it’s great that no evil lurks in my encephalon, it also means the docs now have no idea what’s up. All we do know is that it’s not BPPV (improved with an exercise called the “Epley maneuver”) or an inner-ear infection. Remaining options aren’t as treatable.

Speaking of old age, a couple weeks ago my high school graduating class held its 50th reunion in Delaware. I have never attended one. I hated everything about that place, which catered to snobs, jocks, scholars and preppies who had no use for shy, quirky, arty folks. From pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, I tried to find a way to belong, but was always on the outside. Once in high school, I began to scorn them right back, and couldn’t get out of there quickly enough, graduating after 11th grade.

Yet when one former classmate suggested I make a brief appearance at the reunion via Zoom, I got curious, though we all know how well that worked out for the cat. I waffled for a few days. I could see no good reason to subject myself to that, except to get a glimpse of the good’uns (I’m looking at you, Anne, Lisa, Maria, Peter and Sam). But at what cost?

I decided to go for it anyway. Just before logging on I took a quick glance in the mirror, polished the lenses of my glasses, and Bobby-pinned down the chunk of hair that was aggressively swooping straight out to the side, as always.

Back in Wilmington, about 30 or so people had gathered around a huge wooden table in a conference room at the school. I worried they’d all get Covid, one of many reasons I was glad to be 3,000 miles away. On my computer screen, everyone’s heads were only wee dots, so I couldn’t see faces. Later I emailed aforementioned Peter to that effect.“We WERE wee dots in real life,” he replied, “as our crania have shrunken over 5 decades into pinheads!”

Noticing that my visage loomed larger than life on their multimedia screen, I carefully pasted on a smile to disguise my natural tendency toward Resting Bitch Face, but soon my cheeks began to tremble with the effort, as rarely used muscles tired under the strain. 

I didn’t ask anyone’s permission to use their likenesses here, so I’ve completely disguised the identities of the Big Zoom People.

After a bit, someone asked me, “So, what have you been up to?” Some others had chosen to trumpet their array of successes and accomplishments over the past fifty years. I entertained the notion that it might be more entertaining to rebel (consistent with my high school reputation) and launch into an unvarnished account: “Well, I’ve had a long history of major depression and anxiety, a fondness for Poitín, two failed marriages and a slew of troubles too numerous to name.” That could have been fun. 

But no. I didn’t want them to know anything real about me, so instead I tossed out a random, superficial tidbit: “The highlight of my life was twenty years ago when my dance team and I won the North American Irish Dance championship. First place!” 

Then came the follow-up question, which I didn’t hear but learned about later: “And how’s your brother?!”

Before my 25 minutes of reunion-fun was up, I mentioned our terrifying English teacher, Mr. Griesinger. He would rage and scream. He shoved kids into the blackboard so hard their heads would bounce against the slate. Once he threw Teddy H. into one of those tall, green, industrial trashcans, and the poor kid got stuck in there, butt down and legs and arms waving. Not only that, when one of us didn’t understand what Mr. G. was saying, he would pull up the corners of his eyes into slits and sneer, “You Chineee, maybe?” 

He liked me. One day in 5th grade he called me up to the front of the class as my peers looked on from the safety of their desks. He produced a snapshot of himself on the beach. In it, he sported a tiny Speedo that revealed a repulsive little bulge. I still don’t understand: why did he do that?

Some students were assigned to Mr. Griesinger for one year. An unlucky few got him twice. Because fate is cruel and unfair, as I’ve mentioned, I am the only one in the school’s history who endured him for three torturous years of essays, sentence diagrams and grammar minutiae. 

I remember writing a story for his 7th grade class. It was about a tiger that wandered freely through the jungle until one day it fell into a booby-trap armed with countless sharpened bamboo sticks, which skewered the unsuspecting beast. It bled to death, but only after a great deal of suffering. Mr. G. thought it was a pretty decent tale, once I’d revised it several times.

The weird thing is, if I can write now, I believe it’s largely because of him. Apparently terror can be an effective instructional tool for the timid.

Anyhow, after I signed off the Zoom meeting, I found a picture of this great man in my 1969 school yearbook. Certain that my Class of ’72 peers would love it, I emailed it to all of them, and eagerly awaited their responses.

Ember said he doesn’t look scary at all, and I agree. He looks mild. A veritable pussycat. But this dude, who lived in Media, Pennsylvania with his elderly mama (or maybe her skeleton in a rocking chair in the attic?) was a madman.

And what did my classmates think of the photo? No reply. Not a single peep. What did I expect? Some things never change.

What else has been happening over the past six or so weeks since I last wrote? Ember and I both got our latest bivalent Covid boosters, and both had pretty icky reactions (a fever of 105° for Em), but it’s worth it.

Recently, while Ember (who just turned 12!) was tasked with doing homework, she got busy instead with other things. For hours. Look at how well she organized her bookshelf! I’d like to point out that everything’s in alphabetical order by author.

At school she’s rocking math and vocabulary.

She’s excited about Halloween. We’re enjoying some of the neighborhood decorations.

On the sides of nearby houses, six-foot furry spiders clinging to giant webs also abound, but you’ll just have to take my word for that.

When we walk home from school in the afternoons, sometimes Em likes her independence:

But yesterday as we walked side-by-side up the avenue (“You don’t walk as fast as you used to,” she observed) she told me about what her friends had said. “They think you’re a cool grandma.” Sometimes Em agrees, but definitely not always.

Beyond Albany, people around the world continue to struggle. Some Albany-ites express compassion for the trials of those who suffer. Unfortunately, the person who created this shrine did so by pilfering the neighbor’s Mexican sage. Uh, it’s the thought that counts?