Home Free (16 page)

The big divider between generations, though, was the so-called sexual revolution. The birth control pill made the ludicrous notion of “free love” possible at the same time that it cleared the path for more sexually transmitted diseases. For women, the choice to have sex or not no longer pivoted around wanting children or fearing pregnancy; it became a choice based on sexual pleasure or “exploring relationships.” We wanted to become not just equal to men in freedom of choice (jolly good) but
similar
to men in as many ways as possible (a bad idea and unattainable). Second-wave feminism— a surfer term, I believe—suffered from an implicit sexism of its own; it undervalued the traditionally feminine spheres of housekeeping, caregiving, and motherhood. It targeted the male paradigm of that era instead; let's all become competitive, job-identified workaholics with no close friends!

I think of it as “the sexual devolution.”

I took the pill for a year or two but it made me depressed, so I went back to using the moronic but straightforward diaphragm. In London, the National Health supplied me with one, but I had to go through a bizarre “fitting” overseen by a nurse in a clinic. I had to demonstrate proper insertion of the little latex boat. I was afraid the thing would slip out of my grasp and fly off across the room,which they often did.

The diaphragm is a fallible device—wellies for the cervix—but at least it doesn't mess with your hormones, suppress ovulation, increase your risk of blood clots, or give you suicidal levels of PMS. I was leery of the pill from the start (and wrote a gloomy harbinger of its potential consequences that a women's magazine declined to publish because it wasn't sufficiently upbeat).

It was very nice not to worry about getting pregnant, a relief not to have to resort to abortion, but the sexual revolution came at a price: chlamydia, gonorrhea, pelvic inflammatory disease, urinary infections, all the afflictions that the unprotected female reproductive system, on the pill, became vulnerable to. Multiple partners without condoms was a new experiment and basically it failed. Thousands of women were left infertile from infections caused by an intrauterine device, the fiendish-looking Dalkon Shield— another freedom appliance we embraced too eagerly. (The women sued and won. Small consolation.)

And what about the heart? Was “sleeping around” good for women? That was another failed experiment, if you ask me. When sex is severed from the possibility of pregnancy, it alters the whole geography of intimacy. The stakes are lowered; the mystery train pulls out of the station. “No regrets, Coyote. . . .” (Speak for yourself, Joni.
Je regrette beaucoup.
) Free love was a sweet deal for the men (give or take a case of non-specific urethritis) but it was disastrous for women's sexual health and maybe their peace of mind too. How many of us lumbered through our twenties on Clydesdale-sized doses of Premarin? How many of us compromised our fertility in order to make ourselves available to the next guy in our life—old What's-His-Name?

The pill freed us to behave just like guys. So much for feminism.

It's my theory that the womb doesn't like a lot of traffic. It raises the risk of cervical cancer, among other things. It's men with their billions of sperm who biologically lean toward the scattershot approach. They're the spendthrift gender that has an urge to spread the seed in order to ensure that one or two plucky sperm fall into the right, hospitable vaginas and find their way to bingo. There's a lot of collateral damage when it comes to sperm—it takes a village, including the village idiots. But women are born with every egg already numbered and unique. When ovulation is thwarted (the logic of the pill), the orientation of the female body and mind is radically altered. The unique dialect of pheromones falls silent; some studies have shown that men are less attracted to women on the pill because the chemistry of ovulation is missing. Other studies reveal that lap dancers get more tips when they're ovulating.

A woman unafraid of getting pregnant with the wrong man has lost a portion of her good sense and connection to nature, her body, herself.

This isn't really an anti-contraception rant,much as it begins to sound like one. I don't think biology is destiny. But biology is a sweet, integral part of our female identity, and the reproductive narrative, whether it's expressed or latent, is part of our forward momentum in life. When we lose the biological signals, obscure them with chemical decoys, ignore the cycles of ovulation and receptivity, we may be losing the top notes and bass lines of our body'smusic.

Women who feel armoured and invulnerable in their bodies are going to be less forgiving of their potential mates, less attuned to the men who somehow become irresistible to us, despite their flaws—when the stakes are high and the chemistry is right.

Genes call to genes. Our bodies dance with one another in ways we don't understand. Chemical contraception might suppress more than our fertility; it might also muffle the dialogue between the biological body and the social self.

I don't think this kind of wild-eyed, pro-ovulatory thinking will necessarily lead to an increase in 15-year-old mothers either. The more attuned to their bodies women can become, the more likely they are to take responsibility for avoiding unwanted pregnancies. Using chemical contraception is like putting on a hazmat suit; it creates a false sense of inviolability. It overrides the notion of consequence. And without consequence, sex becomes a monologue. Okay, let me pause for a moment to wipe the flecks of foam from the corners of my mouth.

I could also put it this way: I might have had a second child if my fertility hadn't been compromised as a result of “the sexual devolution.”

In 1968, all these factors—the pill, the new music, and recreational drugs amplified the importance of choice, self-expression, and individual freedom. These values felt like progress after the post-war drive to hunker down, buy bigger refrigerators, and stabilize society. And for a time they were.

Most of all, there were the numbers. In 1971, the average age of the population in North America was 26. There were so many of us that no matter how crazy we acted,we always had company.

Incidentally, I still believe that we can see the universe in a grain of sand. Mr. Blake was right about that. It's just harder to get to the beach these days.

Long-Term Care

M
Y MOTHER'S FACILITY sits at the end of a street called Corporate Drive, at the northern rim of Burlington. A suburb of a suburb of a suburb. As I drive toward it, the pink and grey building looks pale as a mirage, as if it's slowly vanishing, like its residents.

I park in front with my usual mixed emotions. I look forward each visit to seeing her 97-year-old face and to spending time with her. But it's the new drifting mother, not my regular old one. She takes some getting used to.

I press the code that opens the doors and keeps the forgetful ones from wandering. I'm relieved when the woman at the front desk doesn't look up as I sign in. There's enough forced merriment in here.

The St. Patrick's Day clover leaves have come down from the bulletin boards, and the bunny-and-daffodil Easter decorations have gone up. I suspect these are more a form of occupational therapy for the staff, because I've never seen any resident of my mother's wing looking at them.

For one thing, most are belted into wheelchairs, well below the level of the notice boards. For another, many are lost in their own little wildernesses. If they don't arrive in one, they soon build their own. When I pass through the common room, one or two of them might chant, “Help me . . . help me.” Like the rabbit in that camp song (“In a cottage in a wood/a little deer at the window stood. . . .”). They don't say it loudly or urgently because they know not to expect rescue. And the staff, most of whom are kind and patient, know to ignore their chant or else to lean in close to the new one, pat her knee, and clearly say,“Eleanor, you're fine.”

There is no actual emergency. It's just that some unquenchable part of their brains continues to be alarmed at their predicament, of finding themselves old and powerless.

It's surprising how easily one acquires armour here. I breeze in through the sun-filled day room, where the residents gather each day in their cones of isolation. Today there is a newcomer sitting in a wheelchair by the windows, with down booties on her feet. She sits closest to the budgie in the cage. “Please,” she murmurs as I pass by, smiling. She's not where she is used to being.

“Hello!” I say, smiling at her. I use the same bright inflections as the staff now.

I spy a familiar resident in a saucy striped sweater as she toe-creeps down the hall in her wheelchair.

“Hello, Mabel!”Mabel likes to roam, using her slippered feet to slowly pedal her way up and down the corridors. She doesn't speak but she has clear eyes and a steady, knowing gaze. That's because she hasn't been here long, she hasn't gone inside herself yet. Mabel gives me a foxy smile as she passes by. I wish I knew what she was thinking. I zip into my mother's room, where two of the staff are helping her do the transfer from bed to wheelchair via a complicated block-and-tackle device hooked to the ceiling. I retreat to the corridor to let them finish.

Sometimes I like to visit in the evenings,when the residents are all in bed and my mother is lying in her nightie with her hair fanned on the pillow. Her face is soft and beautiful when she is lying down. Also, our roles are clear-cut: she is in bed, while I am the mobile, capable one, pulling up a chair. She also likes the cozy noise of the staff moving through the corridors,wheeling the snack trolley from room to room.

One night I sailed in.

“Oh, I'm so glad you're here,” she said rather gaily. “I was just trying to think of ways to commit suicide that wouldn't reflect badly on the family.”

This didn't faze me. It was like a Sudoku puzzle for her—a problem to put her mind to.

“Yes,” she went on, “it's not easy when I can't get up, you know. I could take the drugs off the carts when they go by, but that would be hard for me to manage, and I wouldn't want the staff to get in trouble either.”

“Why are you thinking about this?”

She flipped her hands, one of them covered in plum-coloured bruises. I think she bangs them against the bed rails in her sleep.

“Oh, I'm so useless like this. I'm tired of being such a burden on everyone.”

“You're not a burden. I think you make life easier for the staff because at least you can kid around with them.”

“Well, yes, that's something. And they wouldn't have jobs if we weren't here.”

“So you are being useful. You're giving people jobs.”

“That's right. I do think of that sometimes. I was just having a gloomy moment tonight I guess. So you picked a good time to come.”

Then she demonstrated how she could still reach over, ever so slowly, and find the switch on her lamp. She turned it on and off, twice. And that was a better moment.

In the corridor, I hear the staff murmuring as they tend to my mother. The halls are lined with colourful prints. Most are pictures of flowers, in vases or fields, but another theme is crueller: empty chairs at tables for two, on the deserted patios of some vaguely French or Italian café. At the end of each corridor are sunny nooks with artificial flowers, plug-in fireplaces, and faux Victorian armchairs. It really is very pleasant here, I remind myself, except that the main activity is dwindling, and everything that precedes dying. Sometimes that too.

Inside her room, the walls are ringed by photographs of her three children and three grandsons. My sister Jori hangs the pictures and keeps things homey. She is a hairdresser, among other things, and cuts my mother's hair. After my father died, she and her family moved in with my mother, into our old family home,and lived with her for three years. It was hard on everyone. My mother couldn't accommodate another household,one she wasn't in charge of, swirling around her. The lawyer who drew up her estate when this plan was hatched gently warned us; families tend to fall apart under the strain of elder care, he said. Oh that won't happen to us, we laughed,we all get along.

A year later,my sister, the gentlest, kindest person in the world, was shocked to discover the anger she could feel toward someone she loved. My powerful mother was teetering through the house like a stilt walker on Benadryl; any day she was going to fall and break something. So the glacial process began of researching homes, along with the endless paperwork and scheduling of social worker visits, while we convinced my mother that this was a good and necessary decision. It was too hard for Jori and her husband and son to be a family with my mother still trying to rule the roost. The three of them spent most of their time sequestered down in the rec room while she sat alone upstairs. Everyone was living under the same roof in deepening estrangement.

My mother remembers this phase, dimly. “Jori and I had different ideas about decorating”is how she puts it. Or “I've never known anyone who loves to shop like Jori,” to explain why my sister had to regularly flee the house to avoid committing matricide.

It is to my sister's credit that they both survived the transition from the tensions of the family home to the flat horizon of the institutional bedroom. Jori continues her kindnesses, visiting her almost daily. My sister paints, as well. One of her pictures, a watercolour of blue hollyhocks, hangs opposite my mother, and although her eyesight is almost gone she still takes pleasure in it. Jori is the hero of this story.

My brother Bruce and sister-in-law Kathy take care of my mother's financial and medical details, and visit every Saturday. They monitor her 17medications. I show up on Sunday afternoons, having spent the hour's drive from Toronto playing loud music to get pumped. You need to bring energy into this place or it will take it from you. I have to keep reminding myself that this is only normal, and we were lucky to find a bed in such an affordable, pleasant place.