Last Tuesday I cancelled all my appointments and drove to Plymouth Massachusetts, where English settlers landed in 1620.
Maybe I did this remembering that vivid day in the 80s when I heard one of Plimoth Plantation’s historical interpreters speak about the many uses of a pig while gesturing towards the freshly-slaughtered beast beside him.
Or that day after Thanksgiving in the far-distant 1950s when my cheerful blue-eyed uncle took all us kids to see Plymouth Rock.
Whatever my motivation, I left these two secular shrines knowing I had not until then grasped a fraction of what really happened there.
I didn’t know that those on the Mayflower were really aiming for a spot at the mouth of the Hudson River before strong winds blew them 200 miles northward, landing them in this region of the thin rocky soil – and just ten days before the Winter Solstice at that, with the wind off the water so damp and cold their clothes froze on their backs.
It makes me wonder how much else of what we all learn is myth, and how much is real.
The Mayflower II is certainly real. It is a meticulously reconstructed replica of the original tiny ship that bobs like a bath-toy not 200 yards from the grandiose portico sheltering Plymouth Rock, a mythical entity surely, since there is no evidence that those arriving in 1620 ever set foot on it.
There was so much I didn’t know before last Tuesday.
I didn’t know that European explorers had been raiding these shores since the 1500s, in some case kidnapping native peoples to use as slaves or to parade back home as exotic ‘specimens.’ Didn’t know that in 1614 they had kidnapped “Squanto,” real name Tisquantum, a figure endlessly helpful to the settlers when he returned in 1621, so fluent in English that he could act as their translator. Didn’t really grasp the fact that native peoples had been here for 12,000 years before the Europeans arrived with their Plagues and their muskets.
If you go to Plymouth, you will leave knowing that the Wampanoag Nation once stretched from Cape Cod and the islands almost all the way to Worcester.
You will leave having seen both how those first English settlers lived and how the Wampanoags managed then – and still manage now – in their own nearby reconstructed encampment.
They are not historical impersonators. They are real indigenous people who day after day graciously answer the public’s questions as they go about the age-old tasks of cooking and feeding children; of stitching deer hides and using slow-burning fires to fashion tree-trunks into canoes.
They are self-contained and dignified and their leather-covered shelters seemed to me anyway to be far cozier than the drafty cabins of the impersonators down the road.
Of course it is human nature to put a gloss on things in retrospect and for all my bleak talk of Truth there, I admit that such nostalgia beckons me every hour of every day.
And I am thinking now of that merry uncle who took time for all us kids; who years later walked me fatherless down the aisle though 13 months after that, when he was to have done the same for his own darling eldest, he was four months in his grave.
Salute with me now the dignity of those first inhabitants; and the courage of those early settlers; and your own version of that wonderful uncle who always had time for the little ones, smiling and talking and jingling the coins in his pocket.
Note: the comments that follow could belong to any week’s column.
September 27, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Hello Terry,
What a gutsy and good thing you did to write about Alzheimer’s with a touch of humor and a boxcar full of sensitivity!
Something that amazed me when my mother-in-law and I attended a support group for caregivers of Alzheimer’s was that in one of many pamphlets they shared was a comment that those affected report seeing a “golden girl” of sorts. Prior to this meeting, we believed my father-in-law was the only one to see the “golden girl.”
It always made me curious that when I was around he would always see water everywhere. He saw random dripping water or puddles of water where there were none when I wasn’t around too but never ceased to see it when I was around. (The times he “saw” water in which I wasn’t present were much fewer in comparison to those he saw it when I was present.)
He had the added destruction of Lewey body dementia (I’m not certain of the spelling,) so each day was an adventure. Another thing he saw a lot of was children at play. Some of these children he saw were not very nice to him and would play tricks on him, he suggested. Their constant presence and overly abundant energy made him so anxious and constantly jittery.
The most painful effects of his illness, to me, were his constant fear and worry about death and losing God’s love, his delusions that my mother-in-law had numerous male guests around her all the time, and his confusion and disgust when everything he tried to eat appeared to him to be full of insects.
It seemed I was just getting to know him well (being newly married into the family — only for a few years at the time) when he was diagnosed. Sometimes, I told myself that whatever it was that made him, him (such as a soul or spirit) had left long before the illness and so he wasn’t suffering. What we were seeing was his body trying to make its way around in the world without the “him” inside, I reasoned. Most times, that brought me comfort. Others, it made me sad, knowing whether that was a possibility or not, the man we all knew, loved, admired, enjoyed life with, was gone and wouldn’t be returning.
Alzheimer’s isn’t funny at all, but I agree that we must find the humor somewhere in all the pain, no matter how well it’s hidden.
Thank you for the way you tackled the subject with such care, sincerity and cautious humor. And don’t feel bad about the cup of coffee in the cabinet; afterall, at least it was with “fellow cups” and not in the clothes dryer or mailbox.
Johnna “Jo” Ray
September 28, 2009 at 6:18 am
Your article “Our old people care for us while we attend them” truly touched my heart. I think your kindness in handling the request to write something humorous about Alzheimer’s disease was handled with such diplomacy. Although there is nothing funny about the disease, humorous moments do occur and a person does need to laugh about the absurdities.
As a caregiver for my 68 year old husband who has had Alzheimer’s for over nine years, and a an Alzheimer’s coach who supports other caregivers in their journey, I have shared a lot of laughs. My husband picks up and/or pockets everything that is not bolted down, batteries from Wal-Mart, other folks last bite of food, their slice of pizza, piece of cake, the hat off their head or the pen with which they are writing. He is quick like a frog catching a fly. The choice is to feel amused or become upset. Neither response will change the behavior, but a smile or inner laugh will leave the caregiver feeling more positive.
I have learned so much about love, laughter and living in the moment from my dear lost husband that I could write on and on.
Again, your sensitivity to the disease and those who are living with it is admirable.
October 4, 2009 at 10:54 am
Cousin Terry-caught your column and wanted to tell you about a time I was volunteering for the Hunt Home in Nashua and drove a contingent of the demented residents to a restaurant. Quite an adventure! As we were getting back into the van to go “home,” a lovely girl with a beautiful, shiny-coated dog walked by and an old man who had barely been able to chew his lunch, spoke clearly and in a “with it” voice. Usually he never spoke at all. But this time he said, “Look at that well-groomed Labrador Retreiver! What a beautiful coat!” Startled by the sound of his own voice, I guess, he sort of jumped, then met my eyes and said, as tears filled his own, “Where the hell did that come from? Most of the time I don’t know my own name!” I never heard him speak again. It was funny-sad. Nicest Alz. story I know is about a man who cared for his afflicted wife day in, day out, spoon-feeding her, talking to her, etc., till she died. Then he died too, later that same afternoon. And there was nothing wrong with him. She was in the Hunt, he still lived independently. Stories, stories, stories! Julia (Sullivan) Breveleri
October 29, 2009 at 2:19 pm
[...] This Week’s Column [...]