Crazy Stable

Right: Don V. Becker, January 7, 1913 - December 27, 2006

Left:    Richard Q. Becker (my dad),  March 10, 1917 - December 19, 1985

At the last, tenderly,

From the walls of the powerful, fortress'd house,

From the clasp of the knitted locks--from the keep of the well-closed doors,

Let me be wafted.

Let me glide noiselessly forth;

With the key of softness unlock the locks--with a whisper,

Set ope the doors, O Soul!

Tenderly! be not impatient!

(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh!

Strong is your hold, O love.)

                         --The Last Invocation, Walt Whitman

That's what my nearly-94-year-old Uncle Don proclaimed as we delicately shoehorned him into the car for his trip home from the Good Nursing Home. Yes, it all came together, and he's back home, at least for now--a Lady was found, his apartment was readied to the best of our ability (with invaluable help from Spouse and Child), and we sprung him yesterday morning.  He was keenly aware of his surroundings, and jubilantly cried, "You've rescued me!" as we pulled out of the patient drop-off and pick-up area (located, symbolically, right next to the garbage dumpster). The weekend nurse and aide barely flicked us a sullen glance, but they did make sure that we didn't make off with the tired and grubby wheelchair cushion under him--"that belongs to the nursing home." Here, nursie, sit on it.

Peering through his one working eye, Don was thrilled with the ordinary slipstream of life on the streets of Brooklyn--people, cars, businesses, signs, all delighted him afresh. He greeted the foggy outline of the George Washington Bridge like an old friend as we nosed up the Upper West Side, carols on the radio. Once home, he consumed some Chinese take-out with gusto and retired to bed for a nap, clearly feeling very weak and tired. There followed some harrowing hours during which we waited for the Lady to arrive--realizing that we had no feasible back-up plan if this stranger failed to show. Fueled by anxiety, I gloved up and destroyed the Ground Zero of his stupendous roach infestation while we waited. (Had no idea that dead roaches  could fall apart into that many pieces--far more than merely "head, thorax, and abdomen.") As  I mopped up the last of the mother lode of exoskeletons, Muriel arrived--a gentle, motherly lady and a blessing from above.

Shortly before we left, Don had a nightmare--he awoke terrified that the "ladies" in the nursing home were "tearing him apart." He lay there and determinedly repeated the word "peace" to calm himself, (he and his twin sister were great believers in the power of positive thinking), while we gathered around and assured him he was home. 

When illusion spin her net

I'm never where I want to be

And liberty she pirouette

When I think that I am free

Watched by empty silhouettes

Who close their eyes but still can see

No one taught them etiquette

I will show another me

Today I don't need a replacement

I'll tell them what the smile on my face meant

My heart going boom boom boom

"Hey," I said, "You can keep my things,

They've come to take me home."

--Solsbury Hill, Peter Gabriel.  (c) 1977  Peter  Gabriel Ltd.

The Great Christmas Detour continues its frantic and bumpy ride, as Uncle Don, almost 94,  languishes unhappily in the Good Nursing Home and I struggle to cobble together a workable home-care arrangement in his hovel-like Manhattan apartment, which we will call Stable II for the purposes of this discussion.  Yes, this is an actual picture of Don, a modeling gig he did for his commercial photography studio employer in the Sixties. Now do you see why I'm trying so hard?

Nothing like a quickie renovation a week before Christmas in another neighborhood far away. Don's co-op is in a sturdy middle-class high-rise development in Manhattan's Morningside Heights. When I was little, it seemed urbane and exotic; they had a statue of Buddha, a beaded curtain, a yellow cat and a canary, and a fascinating-smelling elevator that went "bing." As a suburban bridge-and-tunnel child, I was entranced by my Aunt Louie's proto-bohemian style, and looked forward to our occasional visits.

But the place went to seed in classic failing-little-old-person style. Louie was a Collier-sister pack rat. In the decade since her death, Don  has taken the opposite tack (straight into Crazyville), bragging about how much clutter he has "eliminated" and giving away, basically, all his furniture and most of his household effects except a few bizarrely repaired bits, the better to display his "museum" of piles of photos, memorabilia, and random oddities. He is also obsessed with rewiring lamps and other appliances; the place was festooned with swags of crumbling and oddly spliced extension cords and other electrical terrors. (My favorite was a homemade lamp consisting of a socket, several clamps, and a Dixie cup.) We buy him new, clean, functional stuff--from clothes to light fixtures--and they disappear. Eliminated, presumably.

Getting Don home from the Good Nursing Home, unfortunately, is more complicated than just turning him loose up there again. Now there must be Discharge Plans, and oversight, and safety, and all the things he was blissfully free of before he landed on his bedroom floor. It's like pulling moss off a rock; somehow it was growing there nicely, but just try smacking it back on. What it all boils down to is: A Lady. Anyone facing the prospect of a falling-apart elder knows about The Lady. Unless you're primed and ready to be a 24-hour caregiver under your own roof, she is the critical glue that binds the entire fragile arrangement together.  Don has had Ladies before; some worked out okay, some caused him to spend his days "hiding" in his room, and some inspired daring escape attempts. (One zealous guardian of the body called me from the elevated subway platform at 125th Street, having followed him there, and then called on a transit cop for mediation; Don was howling in the background about how the "maid won't obey him and go home." The cop seemed amused and worked things out and sent them both home, but it was an incident worthy of Thurber's My Life and Hard Times.)

Before a Lady could be installed on a newly ramped-up basis, his place had to be rendered halfway livable.  Thus, in the past week, the Taking of Stable II:

--Spouse let off a bug-bomb in every room. The place became an instant killing field of cockroach corpses, although Don's caches of hidden cookies have permitted some sleeper cells to remain.

--I got one of his two bedrooms painted and plastered by a superb handyman in the project. (The walls hadn't been painted since they moved in 49 years ago; they were the color of, well, death itself.)

--Had same handyman replace eight (8) wall and ceiling fixtures that Don had "fixed" into stumps.

--Tore down miles of old wires and plugs.

--Had handyman toss the ancient  gas stove and run wiring and outlet for a new stove with electric pilot.

--Ordered stove, and cable TV service (in the hopes that more nature and arts shows will distract Don from wiring).

--Ordered new chair on casters and thrown out his old one, which he had repaired so often that it looked like Kevin Costner's raft in Waterworld. 

--Ordered new mattress set for Lady and new bed frame for Don (he had made himself a headboard out of lumber lashed to the bedframe with wires and string). 

--Watered his precious plants, which he steals shamelessly from the co-op flower beds. His collection is heavy on impatiens and pachysandra. 

--Left his piles of stuff untouched, so that he'd feel like it still was home when he got there.

 The goal became a mystical one: Get him home by Christmas.  The Good Nursing Home, a Jewish institution,  is short on Christmas atmosphere (although there is plenty of Chanukah cheer in the lobby, and the other day Don, a cheerful nondenomnational Christian, was sporting a yarmulke and saying "oy-oy-oy"  in PT).  But we've had no luck finding a Lady to start work on Christmas weekend, not surprisingly-- so it seems he may be stuck there til the middle of next week.  We'll bring him nice food; we'll try to put some decorations up in his tiny half-a-room; we'll try to explain. And then next week, God willing, we'll get him back to Stable II...and try to explain The Lady.

Meanwhile, would the stores please stop playing this?:

I'll be home for Christmas;

You can count on me.

Please have  snow and mistletoe

And presents on the tree.

Christmas Eve will find me 

Where the love-light gleams.

I'll be home for Christmas

If only in my dreams.

                                     ---Kim Gannon and Walter Kent, (c)1943 

Housebloggers, countrymen, lend me your ears. If ever you find yourself edging toward despair over matters mechanical, architectural, or financial--from leaking roofs to cracking grout to flooding basements--restore your perspective by paying a visit to a nursing home. Make sure you go to a floor for "low-functioning" or cognitively impaired patients, the ones not likely to raise a credible ruckus over rough treatment, sensory deprivation, or vile food...a floor like the one where my almost-94-year-old Uncle Don is in "rehab" after suffering a small heart attack a week after joining us for a CrazyStable Thanksgiving.

Here are some of the liberties you will learn to savor anew, however unfinished or imperfect your domicile:

...Choosing the time of your waking and retiring.

...Preparing your own meals, smelling them while they cook, eating them with your family (or alone, without the proximate company of disruptive strangers), and consuming them at a time of your own choosing. 

...Walking to the bathroom, using it, and walking out again...alone.

...Seeing interiors lit after dark by the glow of tungsten light bulbs instead of fluourescent tubes.

...Piling your stuff up, knowing that no one will disturb it.

...Dressing yourself in the clothes of your choice.

...Walking out your own front door.

Until Don collapsed on the floor of his apartment almost a fortnight ago, he took these pleasures for granted, as we all do. His life--in his own grubby and threadbare CrazyStable in an apartment in upper Manhattan--was high-risk for someone as frail as he, and he'd already been mugged, hit by a car while crossing Broadway, and brought home by kindly strangers after becoming disoriented or behaving inappropriately in various restaurants, bus stops, and stores. They would call me, his Next of Kin, with obvious Samaritan concern; should someone in his state be living alone?

Of course not...but the alternatives are few and fearsome. This  widowed and childless gentleman, whose Dickensian cheer is so radiant that he posed several times as a beaming Ebenezer Scrooge  for magazine ads, is now "safe" and "clean." He is also agitated, baffled, and despondent, trying night and day to struggle to his feet and walk to the bathroom...only to be wrestled back into bed by bawling nurses well-drilled in the avoidance of lawsuits. They don't believe him that he is able to walk, albeit unsteadily, with his beloved crutch (Scrooge morphs into Tiny Tim!); hell, they don't believe me, and when I matter-of-factly got him to his feet for a demonstration, hysterics ensued and a Supervisor was called. Only in physical therapy could such daring maneuvers be attempted, she insisted!  I take full responsibility, I told her, as I held his hand. (He did fine.)

And so it is that the Christmas decorating around here is barely begun...as I ready Don's stable for his imminent return. He'll need an attendant round the clock, and the attendant will need a place to sit and rest and watch TV, and that means renovating at least a corner of his bare and squalid "bat cave" of an apartment. Spouse has already let off bug bombs, a painter has been hired, adaptive devices will be bought, and -- the crucial link -- a Wondrous Helper is being sought who can assist him without sore oppressing him. 

 "All I want is to be fully active," he told me. "Why won't these women let me have any peace?" I have no good answer, except that Very Good $400-a-day Nursing Homes Don't Want You to Fall Down and Sue Their Lazy Asses. And so Don is going to go home--by Christmas, if possible. The best idea? Probably not. I take full responsibility.  

And though home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit answered to, in strongest conjuration.

Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

When it comes to Christmas shopping, there are just too damn many creative types in Brooklyn these days...too much good art, good writing, good crafting. One could wind up needing respite care in a mall or an icy Soho name-brand designer emporium.  Not.

Here, then, are a few blatant plugs for some gifted friends' gift possibilities:
Ravishing color is just the start of what's luscious in the artwork of friend and neighbor Karen Friedman, who's having a home/studio art sale this coming Sunday, Dec. 10, at 190 Marlborough Road from 1 to 5 p.m.  Original paintings, prints, notecards, jewelry, and new small-scale collages that are as irresistible as gems...all inside a Victorian house that's a work of art on its own.  If you like stark minimalism or snarky social commentary, stay away...Karen's stuff is fizzy and generous and joyful, from a pair of earrings to a giant canvas.  (And afterwards, you can walk a few blocks from the landmark district toward the park and see if you can ID the CrazyStable.)

In nearby Park Slope, check out Rare Device for hip, nifty goodies. Curated by owner Rena Tom, RD--a tiny  jewel box of a store--has bags, books, offbeat but beautifully wearable clothes, and fragrant made-in-Brooklyn "Bubble Room" soaps and lotions, among other good things.  I'm dropping in soon to check out this fascinating pendant from Inhabit Structures, a crystal bubble holding the delicate parts of a watch--very metaphorical and touchable-looking, no?  Rena is a jewelry designer herself--the store carries some of her work (which transforms natural shapes and materials into fresh, clean, surprising designs), and more can be seen at her website.

Finally, for booklovers on your list, two brand-new books from our Brilliant Blogroll Buddies:
Forgotten New York, by Kevin Walsh, is a ghost-hunting guide for intrepid souls seeking to explore deeper into the traces of New York's recent past. 

And The Thrill of the Chaste:  Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On, by the irrepressible Dawn Eden of The Dawn Patrol, looks to be both smart and wise--the fearless freefall of a Catholic convert and born-again virgin from "Sex in the City" to the "theology of the body." Talk about conversation starters!

Now get out there and shop, or, as we all know, The Terrorists Will Have Won!