SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue 1 - Journal - Page 80
me to guess a word she can’t remember based upon signs in the air that are unseen by me
and unintelligible. She is not asking for logic, but, rather, miraculous communication of the
Fourth Kind. According to mom, when I was writing stories in the middle of the night as a
nine-year-old, I had better command of the language.
Afterward, her frustration growing, mom will trawl the bottom of her experiences and
memory and surface what language pathologists often call word salad – sounds, syllables and
idiom tossed from a kind of evolutionary thresher. Sometimes, I can actually separate seed
from stalks and husks, but, mostly, we settle for emotional intelligence, how communication
can be frustrating for any human being. We are both equally comforted. We share a deficit.
Now, let’s circle back. Mom often does think that I am in the room with her when we talk.
She might ask me to open or close the door. I remind her politely that I am not actually there,
that I am one thousand kilometres away. She’s more bemused than embarrassed. Similarly,
she will sometimes ask me to do something for her before I leave, such as retrieve a particular
sweater from a drawer. I remind her politely that I am not actually in the room with her. She
would do better to ask my brother, Dwight, when he visits next. Ironically, when I actually get
my mom on the phone, she often forgets that we are on the phone.
But before this stage of bewildering, saddening decline, mom could be cranky about our
communications. “You know what pisses me off?” she once said. “No, mom. What pisses you
off?” “You don’t call back right away when I ask you to.” “Mom,” I said, “I wait a few seconds
and I call right back. I don’t know what else I can do.” Here’s the thing. Mom wants to make
sure it’s me on the phone so she requests an additional redial or two. According to her, this is
our winning strategy. She won’t answer to one call in the event that it is someone she doesn’t
want to talk to. Unfortunately, mom might only be aware of my last call in the series [see
paragraphs two and four]; in which case, she harbours deep resentment toward my perceived
defiance or indifference. Mom forgets lots of things, but not that. Oy vey.
And even when her strategy works, when she answers to the third or fourth call, mom
is often uncertain to whom she is talking. Usually, when she is mistaken, she will call me my
brother’s name. Sometimes, this is the naming deficit thing or a simple error. She knows it’s
me. Case closed. Move on. Other times, for example, she might ask about my [Dwight’s]
recent skiing trip. I remind her that she is, in fact, talking to Dean, someone whose idea of
alpine skiing includes a bunny hill and an inflatable body suit. But this is par for the course and
mom is painfully aware. She perceives my questions on the phone as a test she can’t win. I, my
brother, and our spouses now have interchangeable histories in her octopus brain: immediate
interest in my day is black ink and camouflage for an escape.
Now, I only reach mom on the phone through an intermediary. Occasionally, my brother
will help, but, more often, I call when a professional person happens to be in the room. Mom
is amazed that we’ve connected. How did that happen? I tell her that we had some help and
quickly change the subject. Sometimes, circumstance willing, I ask her if she can hear my dog
barking. She says she does and immediately starts woof, woofing with reckless abandon. I put
the phone on speaker. It works. Pixel, our whippet, comes to my side and listens intently to
the phone in my hand. Before long, the two of them are yapping up a joyous storm. Their
ancestors might have shared a full moon.
And then mom and I laugh our fool heads off. When we do connect on the phone, we
often laugh. Mom hasn’t lost her sense of humour and she loves my lame jokes more than ever.
We typically close our increasingly infrequent conversations in the same way. I say, “I love you,
mom.” And she always counters, “I love you more.” And then, with equal measures of doubt
and hope, I announce, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
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