Magentic

by Emily Dietrich

August 1, 2012
by Emily
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Coldplay’s Specially Generous Effect

The Palace at Auburn Hills

This beautiful night made walking the parking lot to the stadium a pleasant summer stroll. I loved the people I saw, people older than I and younger than my daughter. Seeing Coldplay was a gift to my daughter for her 16th birthday, and we had been looking forward to it for months.

Before we climbed the stairs to our level, we were handed what we assumed was a bracelet to signify that we had shown our tickets and were officially allowed to be there. We put them on, surprised that they weren’t made of paper. Mine was pink; my daughter’s was orange.

When Coldplay came on stage, they turned us on! Our wristbands blinked fast, neon blinks. Every wrist band went crazy, and the crowd became activated with fun and by waving our wrists. It looked incredible—like fun, like happiness, a vast twinkling in our collective eye.

I loved to know that the people across the stadium were as pleased with the effect from my wrist as I was with theirs. It made you feel giddy. I felt part of something, part of the show. We both did. We ourselves were the special effects.

They didn’t act like we were simply to be tolerated, or worse, invisible. They let us in on it. Chris Martin signaled their intentions and challenged us, too:  “Let’s make this a show where you say ‘I remember the show on August 1, 2012 as the most amazing show I ever saw.’ ”

Later, confetti from the ceiling added fun, too, in different colors and shapes,

something to carry out of the stadium like a moon rock or something, evidence. Huge neon-colored balls bounced about, for us to bop in the air. There was even birthday cake, for a Coldplay guy’s birthday.

They were sweating hard and working hard, and they made sure to give us our money’s worth. We worked too, to milk those moments. They gave us the chance to be there now. Using Twitter to light us up, I later learned, they gave us something unattainable through Twitter, Facebook or YouTube—the irreplaceable, being there, in it, part of it, making it happen.

Thanks, Coldplay! 

June 25, 2012
by Emily
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Scripps Enclave

I had promised myself I would write when I was in Los Angeles. I took a trip down to accompany my daughter to a language program at Pomona College, and we had a lot to do. The school year had just ended, and it had been far from smooth for any of us. We rushed down to LA, packing and stocking up for her six-week stay as we went along.

I needed to write.

But I had filled my days and evenings up with seeing relatives and friends after Rosalyn’s program began. I barely squeezed in a swim, another promise I made to myself, in the hour the pool was open after I returned from dinner out.

I was leaving in a few hours when I visited the Scripps campus, my notebook in hand. Addict that I am, I first had to find a Diet Coke. I wrote while I drank it in a crescent of shade amid young women on a break from something. Writing felt like a relief, just putting pen to paper started to soothe me. I was nowhere near finished, but I wanted to find a special spot, revealed to me by a Scripps alumna.

Her tip was invaluable, because the garden she directed me to was more than secret. The entrance through a nondescript wall brought no attention to itself. Only the little map and my friend’s assurances kept me from walking past the very spot for the third time.

Inside the walls, inside the walls! Just being inside those walls, my shoulders dropped and my breathing slowed. First, I felt safe, as if I had arrived, intact, finally.

Then, the pleasures came upon me, every sense sharing in the riches there. Feet crunching quietly on the gravel, I looked in every corner to discover sculpture, fountains, tiles and murals. The air had a slight perfume to it, cooler by many degrees than the day.

I found my spot on a built-in bench near an encouraging mural of a strong woman, in view of a maternal sculpture. Writing now, finally, eagerly, I looked up during pauses at a magnificent vine, knots think and Celtic, sheltering my writing nook.

By turns writing and gazing, I passed an hour or a bit more. I still needed to peek in the chapel before I left. I felt gratitude as a looked at the leaf, orange, rock others had left at the tiny altar under a vaulted ceiling, and I offered my own thanks.

I felt as if I had been to an exotic, customized spa day for off-balance moms when I walked toward my car. I began to heal in that lovely space by writing, and by being there.

April 26, 2012
by Emily
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Having the Conversation

There was this conversation that Philip and I thought we would have, that we imagined. It would take place with our father and us, instigated by us, difficult for all of us, but crucial and beneficial. We would explain the realities of Dad’s situation, the impossibility of his living alone, of his driving, of his getting better. In that conversation, Dad would be Dad, and he would be reasonable, wise. He would guide us and advise us. He would tell us how to proceed.

That conversation that we imagined would clarify everything. Dad would make his wishes known, within the constraints of his Alzheimer’s disease, and my brother and I would do our best to create that life or that quality of life for him.

That conversation never happened. Waiting for it to happen, trying to make it happen, believing it would happen if we timed it just right—doing all of those things we wasted time, gave ourselves extended and increased anxiety.

I remember the last time I tried, the last time it would have been almost possible to discuss Dad’s future with him. He was still aware and present enough.

But he was angry.

He was angry with me for bringing it up. He was angry that he had Alzheimer’s. He was angry he didn’t really know what to do. My attempt left me hurt and bewildered. I had been so sincere and extremely gentle, completely open to his input, desperate for it in fact.

What I didn’t know then, and I do know now, is that what happened that day was the conversation. My attempt to have the conversation was the conversation.

When Alzheimer’s gets ahold inside the brain of our loved one, the standards for discussing issues have to change. I did not want them to change. I wanted to discuss, respectfully and with love, the situation with my father and how to move forward. Because that is not what happened when I tried, I considered the situation stalled. I planned how to approach him the next time so that the conversation would go better.

But what I should have done was accepted that outcome of that conversation. That conversation told me that Dad was no longer capable of having the conversation. He both would not and could not think about it in a way that would give me what I wanted: a clear picture of how to proceed in accordance with his wishes, respectfully, lovingly, and with his blessing.

Such an outcome was not an option. Not accepting that meant that my brother and I put off decisions that had to be made, waiting for the conversation, waiting for a moment to discuss it with Dad. Waiting for him to miraculously become lucid again just at the moment when we needed to figure this out

We wanted him back, to tell us what to do. We needed him to do that. We didn’t want to move forward without him, without our father.

But that’s what we had to do, wait as long as we could. We had to move forward without our father, on our father’s behalf, without benefit of conversation.

April 7, 2012
by Emily
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Why I’m Blogging

Once my jaw went nuts on me. That strongest of all muscles put its back into clenching all night long, and I awakened to skull-crunching pain one morning. Yes, I grind my teeth, been doing it for years, protecting my teeth with a mouth guard nightly. The guard protects my teeth, but my muscles can’t be restrained.

Whew! I mean, it really hurt, and I didn’t last but a day or two before calling the dentist and being notably more assertive than usual in securing an appointment. He gave me a muscle relaxant, but I think it would have taken twenty times the dose he prescribed to get rid of the pain.

So what was that all about? Why did my jaw-clenching, teeth-grinding ramp up out of control? I did know I was stressed out. My father’s Alzheimer’s caused him to fall more and more frequently, and each call from his care-facility sent me into flight or fight mode. Things with the kids worried me more than ever and had been getting worse for months. My first novel was in the publication process and I did not know what the heck was going on, missing tasks, flubbing opportunities for promotion, feeling baffled. Those were the biggies, but they’d been biggies and baddies for some time.

I went about abating the pain, deploying methods varied and goofy. I microwaved a wet washcloth and pressed it against my jaw over and over. I rubbed each side continually. I ate only oatmeal, pudding, soup and mashed potatoes, and didn’t talk much. I got cranial-sacral, facial and reflexology massages and hung out more than I wanted to in hot tubs. I visualized, meditated, did Tai Chi, visited a vortex and stared at awesome nature. I got it under control! To realize, of course, that I’d cracked a tooth and needed a crown.

But that was nothing. I wasn’t wracked with pain. And I began to understand the tiny, massive difference between earlier pressures and the ones got my jaws clamping tightly while I slept. The difference was that I had some pressures that I couldn’t talk about. They were confidential. I could tell people things were stressful but I could tell only one or two people WHY they were stressful.

So I couldn’t talk about them. But I didn’t write about the issues much either. I kind of held myself in this unnaturally reticent position.

That does not work for me. I will have to do it sometimes because some things are just private and that’s all. But I have to find a way to release and process or I will be made by my knowing unconscious to feel the effects, one way or another, and feel them good.

One thing I was supposed to have been doing was getting a blog going. Even though I couldn’t have shared what was going on, I could have shared something. I believe that would have helped me.

So you see, I have to do this, like it or not. I’ve been doing it all my life, from my first diary when I was 9, to notes passed between classes in junior high, letters in college, and all the talking talking talking that helps me be happy. I have to release the ideas and feelings I have.

I will be releasing here ideas and thoughts. I read books and then I have ideas about them. I see plays and get riled up, or art exhibits. Or I have an interaction that activates me. (By “activate” I mean, “gives me insomnia”.) Books, art, music, justice, nature, love, people. Food. Pets. Parenting. Alzheimer’s. Working out. These are things I think about most days. Television. Movies. Facebook. What’s wrong with me? How to fight depression.

So I have to do this, like it or not, and I hope you’ll like it sometimes. I’ve liked writing this right now. I think I’ll go ahead and assume that something good will come out of my writing a blog, and that something good will also come, I do hope, from your reading it.

Here we go!