Ch. 2 Had I Hit Life’s Pause Button?

At 68, just as life seemed to close in around me, it began opening in ways I hadn’t imagined

(Long Beach, California (all pictures by author)

“I’m calling about your mother,” the woman who came in every day to check on her said. “I’m not sure, but . . . she thinks the girls from Sex and the City are dropping by to visit.”

My 98-year-old mother had seemed a bit confused, the woman said. I drove to Seattle, caught the next flight to Long Beach, rented a car and went straight to her retirement complex in Seal Beach. By the time I arrived, she’d been admitted to the medical centre with a possible stroke. Tests ruled that out; the diagnosis was severe dehydration.

She’d told me many times in her later years that she wanted to remain in her home and never, never to go to a nursing home. The memory of an old friend of hers, admitted to a place next to the retirement complex, haunted her. A stroke had left the woman unable to speak. With tears in her eyes, my mum used to imitate the sounds the woman made, a clear cry for help.

I knew I would do everything I could to ensure that my mother remained in the home she’d lived in for thirty years. While her Sex and the City visit wasn’t the stroke I’d feared, it was clear she needed more than just the daily caretaker. I decided to move down there for as long as necessary.

At 98, who knew how long that would be?

(My Belmon Shore studio, Long Beach CA)

Looking back through the early drafts of the memoir, I’m surprised by how little space I gave California. I dismissed those two years in a sentence or two because I thought the memoir was about moving to France.

I no longer think it was that simple.

When I felt life was closing in around me at 68, I had a sense of California opening it up again. Living in my mother’s one-bedroom place, sleeping on her pullout sofa would be impossible; we’d drive each other crazy. I found an unfurnished studio apartment in Belmont Shore, five minutes from her. Small, but full of light and just across the road from the beach.

While I could have managed the rent, since I was still paying rent in Port Angeles, my mum offered to pay rent on the studio. Although I’d come down to California to help her, she was helping me as she’d done throughout my life — even at the tender age of 68.

“Janice has never had much common sense about money,” she used to say. Unfortunately, I’m not sure old age has blessed me with much more.

But, moving on. It didn’t take long to transform the empty studio with thrift-shop finds. An old futon I covered with velvet throws, cushions, and a huge yellow armchair with a matching footstool that I couldn’t resist. The fireplace didn’t work, so I filled it with plants and put the yellow chair beside it. With afternoon light streaming in, it became my favourite reading spot.

And, since writing was always a constant, I set up a table for my laptop and a canvas director’s chair. When I wasn’t busy with my mum, I’d write. I started the Margaret book, as I thought of it then, in Port Angeles. All about an English schoolgirl who arrives in America with her mother, a GI Bride. Margaret, desperately homesick, wants only to return to England.

When the first chapter made it to the finals of a literary contest, I was thrilled. When I read an article by a famous author who wrote that creativity ends around 70, I was devastated.

And the Margaret book stalled.

Thinking of that now, at 81, it seems laughable that his words would have produced that reaction. But at 68, I was flying under the radar of old age. If I didn’t look old, I wasn’t. Except what if he was right and 70 really did slow the brain down? What if creativity did gradually wane?

And my 81-year-old self wonders, what if 68-year-old Janice had taken this guy’s words to heart and just stopped writing forever? Every word looked like rubbish anyway. And she only had two years before her brain completely turned to mush, and then the phone rang, and it was mum wondering where Janice was. Even if the Margaret book hadn’t already stalled, there wasn’t much hope for it now.

Or so I thought then.

TBC

Thank you for reading this. Since it’s still a preliminary draft, part of it adapted for Medium, it will undergo revision. Probably a lot. For that reason, I haven’t numbered chapters at the top of the page. But if you want to follow along chronologically, this is Chapter 2.

I hope it leads to a completed manuscript, but even if it doesn’t, it may have helped me understand a bit more about myself.

Comments and critiques are definitely welcome.

Memoir