Fog

Foggy might be a masterpiece of understatement when describing my sweet mama, a stroke victim who hardly knows her own name anymore, let alone ours. Except for occasional explosions of almost manic conversation when she suddenly seems to be aware of events—“Lewis is dead? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”—she is relatively passive, no longer a master of her own fate. These explosions of memory when they do occur (maybe once a year or so, sometimes lasting a few days) lead my siblings and me to wonder just what is memory? Does it have a place if it can be retrieved occasionally in someone who is approaching a vegetative state of mind? How do some historically precise details suddenly find themselves woven into my mother’s otherwise fantastic narratives?

While in China, I only heard stories about the last such explosion—one in which my mother allegedly expressed relief that I had decided against becoming a nun. (Mind you, it had never crossed my mind. Among other things, I’m not a Catholic or anything close to it.) She did, however, know who her children and grandchildren were, and my sister tried like crazy to get her on the telephone with some of us while the awareness lingered.

While in China, I think about her fogginess a lot. I think I’m getting a preview. There may be nothing like living in a foreign culture, immersed in a foreign language before you’ve mastered it, to get a taste of what dementia might be like. 

I remember being an exchange student in New Zealand, scanning the strange night sky for the Big Dipper, only to remember I wouldn’t find it, not in that sky. I remember looking up at the noontime sun—shining brightly in the north—on Christmas Day—a hot summer day. Those were disorienting moments, but not disorienting the way it is when living in a culture with a completely different language, when living so much at the mercy of others, without really knowing just what it is the others are doing because so much is not transparent, even under ordinary circumstances.

Yesterday the phone rang. It was the DHL delivery courier wanting to know where to leave the book he was supposed to deliver. He understood me, but there was a problem. What it was I didn’t really understand. Eventually he got someone who could speak English (somewhat) to speak with me. I understood her. But she didn’t understand me (really). We persevered. They persevered. I got the book, something my New Zealand host brother had recommended on his Goodreads site. Now, I should tell you that all my mail first goes to the Office of Foreign Experts on campus, but I came home and found the package on a chair inside my hallway. I do know that I can thank Mrs. Niu for putting it there, but exactly how it got to her is part of the mystery.  This package hadn’t been opened. The thing is, I’m not directly in control of things I’m used to controlling. It just is what it is.

Control. I’ve just had to let go. I’ve come home to find my apartment crawling with workers moving in beautiful pieces of furniture, furniture I didn’t ask for but can appreciate. A huge wardrobe, cedar lined with a gorgeous wood veneer. Again, I know that Mrs. Niu will watch closely to make sure nothing is stolen—but there’s much that isn’t transparent to me.

Time. I would probably fail the Mini Mental State Examination. What day is it? What year is it? The whole rhythm of the calendar is different—even the school calendar. How disorienting for it to be a few days before the start of a new semester—at the end of February. For it to be a week before the end of the semester—around the Fourth of July. My computer and publications from home (for example the daily digital NYT) constantly tell me it’s one time, when it’s a different day here. I was into the rhythm of writing dates in the logical Chinese way of big to little when I went briefly to Thailand and Cambodia where they write from little to big, only to do my taxes and have to use the US mixed up month-day-year way. Little things, these, but they add up.

Place. I’m very visual and like maps, but I find it difficult to find Chinese maps—and Google maps and other online maps may not be labeled in helpful ways (for me). So I might be on a bus somewhere, winding through places I had no previous knowledge of to arrive in a place I had only minimal knowledge of.

Language. And everything it mediates, which is culture and life itself. I’m working on it—and loving working on it—but there’s so much to learn. So much to miss—if I’m not quick enough. It means I’m in for constant surprises—thinking I bought a little bottle of one thing that turns out to be something else when shaking it into the stir fry. So it goes.

If I’m in a fog some of the time, I can laugh. I can imagine how others feel, maybe Chinese students arriving on US campuses. Strange food. No mass transportation. So many things so different. So much mystery.

I suppose—I hope—one of the best ways to clear the fog, just a little, is to keep building my little collection of Chinese characters, these amazing visual-verbal representations. Sudoku for some; Hanzi for me.