Crossing Over

Did I step on first, or did I follow the suitcase?

I close my eyes and think back to the memory, but this is one of the details where the sequence of events seems correct in either order. Part of me wants to get the sequence exactly right while another part of me asks, does it really matter?

I play the memory over and over in my head, and everything else is there….the feeling of descending on the escalator, my daughter’s hand in my own, an empty lane on my left to make room for those in a rush to walk down. I even see the blinking of the red lights on the glass barrier that signal the metro doors opening and closing.

My wife trails behind me with her suitcase. We’re returning from a trip, a combination of excitement mixed with travel-weariness, sandwiched between gratitude to be returning home to Taipei.

We’ve made the descent to the platform. The lights on the glass door are flashing.

Hesitation.

Do we walk forward, or do we wait for the next train?

My brain stalls. My body moves. My daughter steps forward — executive function in action. A three year old acts, her life in perpetual motion.

I face the computer screen and see my mother in a room where the background is both familiar and strange to me. After observation and assessment at a more locked-down institution, she has been transferred to Brightview Care, an independent and assisted living community for the elderly. She is on a stepping-stone pathway back home towards semi-independent living where she will be accompanied by a rotating staff of caregivers to assist her with daily living needs, establishing social boundaries, their fingers-on-the button for executive function and decision-making.

My mom didn’t set up this Skype call with me — for that I have my older brother, Bryan, to thank for the connection. Even though he is based in Seattle, Washington, he has answered the magnetic call towards filial responsibility to spend large chunks of the year back on the East Coast in Virginia where my parents live. My younger brother, Jonny, is also in our hometown of Lexington, Virginia for the long haul with his wife, Stephanie. My older sister, Kimberly, lives with her husband, Gary, on the West Coast in Oregon and makes it back to the East Coast sporadically for a few days at a time. With the four children so spread out, it’s up to technology and flights across the ocean from Taiwan to Washington DC to bring our family “together”.

The care for my parents in what many refer to as their “Golden Years” has been haphazard, makeshift, DIY, and a constant series of experiments. They didn’t plan for this stage of life, and neither did we. The lights have been flashing, the doors closing.

Hesitation.

Do we walk forward, or do we wait for the train to hit us?

My father had spent many months in Brightview where my mom calls me from, and at this moment he is back home where he wants to be — albeit separate from his wife, my mother. The tables have turned, irony is served on a platter, and Mom finds herself on the bridge of transition in the same facility where my father was, previously. Nothing is perfect, but there’s not a human being out there who would know perfect if it hit them square in the mouth. The situation is where it is, and all we have is the present.

While part of the purpose of this call is to catch up with my mother, connect, and listen to her frustrations and snippets of joy, another reason for the call is to help her decide when she would like to be driven to the nearby city pool in Staunton, Virginia, a short ride away from Brightview. Swimming is an essential part of my mother’s life — her self-care and submersion into the blue world of calm. Due to her recent time in transition, rotating the merry-go-round of medical/mental assessments, this part of her life has been missing. Without swimming, my mother is more on edge, her impulsive tendencies ramped up to full volume as she tries to grasp hold of the ever-changing situation. I see my mother’s impulsivity within myself. It’s a trait that I wrestle with and love at the same time.

We sit down. Her eyes have a weariness and there’s a general resistance in her voice during the call.

“I don’t want to be here. I want to go home.” Her voice reminds me of my daughter, Luna, exercising her own independence through her discovery of the words, “no,” and “I don’t wanna’ like….” (her way of saying, “I don’t want to do ‘so and so’).

I am talking with Mother.

I am talking with Myself.

I am talking with Luna.

Hesitation only for the slightest of seconds. My daughter looks up as the doors on the metro start to close. I am still on the platform with one of the suitcases. My wife stands behind me with the other one.

Luna has crossed the gap and is standing on the metro car, head raised and eyes looking upwards at her parents, her caregivers. The chimes on the metro indicate the closing of the doors.

It all happens in slow-motion in the span of 3 to 4 seconds of time. I lift up the suitcase to block the closing doors and step forward to cross the space from the platform to the metro car.

The distance between the platform and the metro car is so small, and yet it is at this moment while crossing over that I feel I am truly living — between two different fates and outcomes.

Time and motion.

Father and daughter.

Safety and danger.

Decision and inaction.

I live for the crossing over, the crossed is a bi-product of the transition.

Part of me wants this moment of suspense to stretch on eternally. It’s where I feel my greatest dread and comfort simultaneously, a niche carved out in the gap between moments. But I’ve already made a move, and time continues to roll onwards. The ticking towards the ending never stands still for long.

Executive function in action.

I feel a slight pain as I hit my right elbow on the closing door and launch myself into the train as it closes behind me. My wife stands on the platform behind the glass. The train begins to move.

The conversation is painful. The seemingly simplest of decisions to choose a time to be driven to the nearby pool is an excruciating extraction to take from my mother’s thoughts. She is simply unable, or unwilling to choose a time. I can begin to understand and appreciate the effort my older brother and the other caregivers have put into helping her make decisions. At the same time, I also feel my mother’s own frustration. She obviously doesn’t want to be where she is, both physically and emotionally. She doesn’t know how to make decisions at this point. A part of her wants others to share in and feel the frustration she is feeling at having so many things seemingly beyond her control.

In the end, we decide upon a time. The swim will happen. She will be able to submerge under the water without distraction or further need of executive function, floating through the blissful motions of the water. The pull towards conflict and inner turmoil will dissipate stroke after stroke, lap after lap.

The crowd disappears and my daughter’s face scrunches, her lips turning into a frown, eyes dropping as her mother vanishes on the receding platform. She glances around at the strangers who are staring at us on the metro car. She is a stranger in a strange location, not wanting to be here, no one else to turn to.

She turns to me and looks up.

I kneel on my knees and embrace my daughter.

“It’s ok,” I tell her, holding her tight. The world around us blends and bleeds into the darkness, blocked out. The only two people that exist at this moment are my daughter and me.

Full focus.

“I’m here,” I tell her.

She holds onto me tightly, her tiny hands gripping around my shoulders. The inner turmoil dissipates and merges into the rhythm of the metro as it moves-track after track, until it pulls into the next station.

We emerge and await on the next platform, a step further in our journey home.