Torda, Lee

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Bridgewater ReviewVolume 31 | Issue 1 Article 10Jun-2012Creative Non-fiction: How I Spent My SummerVacationLee TordaBridgewater State University, ltorda@bridgew.eduThis item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts.Recommended CitationTorda, Lee (2012). Creative Non-fiction: How I Spent My Summer Vacation. Bridgewater Review, 31(1), 21-24.Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol31/iss1/10June 2012 21JuneWhile I was about the Pond, I listenedto music sometimes or old episodes ofThisAmerican Life, but I don’t like bookson tape.A lot of the time I talked to mysister,who still lives in Ohio.We talkedabout all the sorts of things you’d imag-ine, but we spent a good portion ofour time talking about our mother.She hasAlzheimer’s.One thing we sometimes talked about,morosely, is stuff we would have talkedabout with my mother, if she could stilltalk.Perhaps it’s not morose,perhaps it’sjust a normal thing to do,but it strikesme as odd because I didn’t talk to mymother all that much until she got sickand not really about important things.We talked a lot aboutTV,as a matter offact.But then, as her illness progressed,we were afraid to call her because she’dforget to hang up the phone. It was kindof funny until my sister had to driveforty minutes to her house to hang up.Before that point though, in the twilightmoments when my mother was morecoherent than not, the television pro-gram Lost premiered.My mother startedto watch the show out of a deep andabiding crush on the lead actor whoplayed the doctor—I can’t remember hisname on the show,but he used to playCharlie on theTV show Party of Five.That’s how I know any actor,never bythe role I mean to reference but by arole they’ve played in the past.When IgetAlzheimer’s I will no longer be ableto tell you who any movie star is, andthat will be a considerable loss to mebecause I love to talk about movies.I did not watch Lost at the time,but Iwould ask my mother, in one of ourphone calls, how it was going.We hadthis same conversation:“I’m so excited.”“Why?”“Lost is on tonight.”“I think it’s on onWednesday,Ma.”“Uh-huh.”“Today’sTuesday.”“Well,whenever it’s on.”My motherwas often exasperated by my need forprecision that way.A version of the Lost conversation hasbecome a kind of shorthand for my sis-ter and me.“I’m so excited,”one of uswill say,“Lost is on tonight.”And theother of us will know that we are con-fused about something. It’s just generalcode for that floating sort of uncertaintythat everyone feels sometimes and someknow excruciatingly well.When I watched the show this summerI wondered what my Mother and,morespecifically,my mother’s ailing brain,made of it. She had no ability anymoreto try to figure the way some bit ofplot from two seasons ago made sense.I guess all she could do was plow for-ward with the plot left ahead of her.The irony of a woman addled byAlz-heimer’s enjoying Lost cannot possiblyescape anyone.We made any numberof inappropriate jokes about Jean (ourmother) watching Lost because that isjust the kind of people we are, thoughwe try to avoid obvious jokes aroundpeople with lesser senses of humor and agreater penchant for tragedy.Sometimes,though,while I’d be running or walkingaround the pond,putting one foot infront of another, some joke would makeme laugh out loud.Creative Non-fictionHow I Spent My SummerVacationLeeTordaIf you want to know how I spent my summer I’lltell you. I read eleven books—a summer record forme unheard of since those heady days of childhoodsummers whenAunt Lee took me to the library, theonly air-conditioned building you didn’t have to spendmoney to be in. I cleaned my house the way houseshave been cleaned in my family for three generations.I watched the final season of Lost and all the seasonsofMad Men. I went home to Ohio. I went to theCape for the first time ever. I memorized theGettysburgAddress. I ran Jamaica Pond every day.The glamorous Jean ZanzanoTorda22 Bridgewater ReviewJulySometimes when I am not talking aboutmy mother to my sister, I am thinkingabout her while I run. I don’t think justabout her. I think about teaching,bills,what I’m reading,what to wear.Peoplewho run know that that’s the sort ofthing you do while running:wholemiles will pass, and you won’t even real-ize it because you are thinking harderthan you are running.The decision tomemorize“The GettysburgAddress”happened that way.One of the books I read this summerwas The KillerAngels, a fictionalizedaccount of the battle of Gettysburg.So I thought,while I ran, I would tryto commit the whole of the address tomemory and then recite it to my stu-dents come Presidents’Day.Memori-zation is a very old and old-fashionedform of pedagogy that probably a greatmany modern experts on the subjecthave no use for, but I have an excellentmemory, and I welcomed,when I was astudent, assignments that required useof my talents—state capitals, the year ofthe Norman Invasion (1066—also verynearly myAunt Phil’s mailing address),the lobes of the brain. I can still reciteFrost’s “Stopping By theWoods onASnowy Evening.”There is some research that suggests thatthe more active you are with your brainthe longer you can stave off a disease likeAlzheimer’s (though less so with earlyonset,which is what my mother has). Sowe will see, long term,what memoriz-ingAbe’s well-spoken 289 will do forme,but, come the day after Presidents’Day next year, I’ve got an excellent classplanned for my students.Other researchsays that people who make a living usingtheir brains can hold off the disease for along time,but when it hits, it hits hard.An individual spirals downward, awayfrom herself and her memories, at greatspeed. I think that this straight and directline to oblivion is the option for me.Some days this summer I lost track oftime and arrived too late at the pond.On those nights I tried to beat sunset.Most of the path is fairly bright and usu-ally populated by other runners, dogs,their owners.But there is one stretchwell canopied by trees.The cars race byhigh above you, the beams of headlightsnot even denting the foliage. I feel a pro-nounced disorientation in this section ofthe park.An athlete friend of mine once told meI have no kinesthetic sense.This I taketo mean that I never accurately assesswhere and how my body is movingJamaica Pond at dusk, July 2011 (Photo by author).June 2012 23through space—Alzheimer’s patientssuffer from this too.So when I findmyself in this space I am unsure ofwhere the path is (I can’t swim or run ina straight line). I don’t know if uneventerrain will send me tumbling down theincline into the lake. It scares me whenpeople or animals loom up out of thedarkness.The path clears eventually asI near the well-lit spot where the boathouse is and the path is closest toJamaicaWay. If I had to run like that, inthe dark, all the time—and some peopledo, I see people running at night all thetime—there’s no way I’d see it through.It is at these times that I most oftenthink of my mother.Because,withAlzheimer’s, I have no real way ofknowing what it is actually like so I findmyself imagining what it might be like.And I imagine this: not being able tocomprehend how things are supposed tounfold. I think this is terrifying. It’s notthe past I will regret losing. It’s a feelingfor the present that I will mourn.AugustIn addition to Lost,my mother and Iused to talk aboutGeneral Hospital.When I was a little girl,my motherwould go with her sisters to clean mygrandfather’s house, iron his shirts, andcook his meals. In summer, I would gotoo.This is how I learned how to dothose things myself.None of my aunts,much older than my mother, could pro-vide me with a single cousin to playwith so I would watchGeneral Hospitalwith my grandfather,who did notunderstand English.Then I wouldreport to my mother and aunts aboutwhat was going on. I’ve watched it eversince.While I was home this summer, Isat with my mother and told her whatwas happening onGH (Brenda is back,Ma.You’d have liked her wedding dress).I did it to fill the room with the soundof something familiar.I would have liked to have talked to mymother aboutMad Men.One of theepisodes had a story line that resulted inthe office knowing the real age of thezaftig office administrator, Joan. It turnsout that she is over thirty, and, the audi-ence is to understand, a bit less desirable,a bit less powerful than she was whenpeople didn’t know this.The character’sdate of birth is given as 1931, just twoyears older than my mother.Like Joan,she was a secretary from the time shegraduated high school until she marriedmy father—when she was 35.No onethought my mother would marry, letalone have children.In truth, I know so little about mymother. She was an intensely privateperson and anything I do know abouther I know from stories other people,mostly her sisters, have told me.So,notto put too fine a point on it, I learned agreat deal about my mother by watch-ing this television show.Or I made up agreat deal about her.But either way, it’swhat I’ve got to work with. I wouldhave liked to have checked my factswith her.Cape Cod.Truro,August 2011 (Photo by author).24 Bridgewater ReviewAt the end of the summer, after Ireturned from visiting my sister and mymother, I visited the Cape for, really, thefirst time since moving to Massachusettstwelve years ago. I feel fairly certain thatmy mother would have hated the placewhere I stayed inTruro. It was mustyand old and there was nothing cleanenough about it, but she would haveloved to eat out every night. She lovedlobster,which is not often on the platesof Ohioans.When I lived in Maine shevisited me and, I remember, ate lobsterevery day for a week. I couldn’t believeshe didn’t get sick.This house inTruro had exactly thenumber and kind of musty books Ithought a house on the Cape shouldhave. It had Emerson and a lot of WaltWhitman.There was also a set of Time:TheYear in Review, annuals that collectedbits and stuff printed the year before inthe magazine.They were the worse formold and inattention. I couldn’t resistpulling down issues—the year I wasborn,my sister,my father. In the yearmy mother was born, a man,describedby newspaper reports as “anxious andintelligent-looking,”walked into a jail inPasadena,California claiming he couldremember nothing of who he was.Heheld his hands out to surrender to who-ever was in charge, though he hadcommitted no crime that he or anyoneelse knew of.He asked the men to lockhim up until his memory returned.There the man sat until one night hesaw a picture of himself in a newspaper.He yelled to the officers that he was theman in the picture. I could find no fur-ther stories on Mr.X,nothing thatcould tell me how life went on for him,if he ever recovered his memory or ifhe had always to rely on the facts thatothers delivered about his life in orderto know it.The last time I was home this summer,while I sat with my mother and toldher aboutGeneral Hospital, I noticedher rubbing the tips of her pointer andmiddle fingers together with her thumb.She never stopped unless I held herhand.The second I released it, she wasback to rubbing. It was as if she weretrying to tell me that someone hadspent an inordinate amount of moneyon something or that she was searchingfor a word—the precise description,maybe,of a flavor in a dish.Whatever itwas, it was on the tip of her tongue andthere it will remain.LeeTorda isAssociate Editor ofBridgewater Review andAssistantProfessor in the English Department.3-D Illustration of neurons in the brain.

Creative Non-fiction: How I Spent My Summer Vacation

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Creative Non-fiction: How I Spent My Summer Vacation

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